It was a painful experience for both of us. Jane was a young mother about my age. She had been on the pastor nominating committee that called us to New Jersey. And we had shared much laughter and friendship through the years. She also was on the session - and that cold November night she seemed edgy and distant. I soon found out why. Following the meeting, she waited for me out in the parking lot. And after I locked the church door, she simply lit into me. "How dare you!" she said. "How dare you push your own political viewpoints down our throats, and abuse your privilege as a pastor! And most of all how dare you play partisan politics on the lawn of church property!"
You see, it was election time, and I had put a placard supporting my presidential candidate on the front lawn of the church manse. Obviously it was not Jane's candidate. And she was furious. Of course, she was right. It was inappropriate for me to put a partisan placard on church property. And since that day I have never put political propaganda - stickers, buttons, placards - anywhere outside or inside church property - other than that which is the official position of our Presbyterian denomination. But Jane's outburst went much deeper than campaign posters. She was - all of a sudden - deeply disappointed in me - and angry that I had let her down, that I had not met her expectations, that I turned out to be human, after all. Well, after a few days of cooling down, I went and talked with Jane, admitting my error, but also encouraging her to think about what was beneath her outburst. And together we were able to understand that her disappointment with me was also a projection of her disappointments in general - her disappointment in a life that wasn't always clear cut, her disappointment in the church that - surprise! surprise! - is full of sinners, and her disappointment in God who didn't seem to be making the world turn out right.
This morning we meet John the Baptist in very odd circumstances. And what we discover is his deep disappointment with Jesus. If you remember back to last week, we first met John in the wilderness - a wild man with a hairy shirt and a locust diet - a passionate prophet who was ranting and raving about the wrath of God. Calling those of us in the crowd and in these pews a brood of vipers, he made it clear that the wrath of God Almighty will devour all of us who do not confess and change our ways. And if we don't repent, the consequences will be clear. The ax of God's judgment will cut us down and we will be thrown into the torture of unquenchable fire. Now, what I can't figure out is that, rather than walking away, according to the third chapter of Matthew, the crowds of people just kept coming back for more - more of John's verbal abuse.
Jesus, of course, was one of the crowd. Why? Because God, in human disguise, was living and feeling and yearning just like all the rest of us. But, scripture tells us, when John saw Jesus, he immediately knew that Jesus was the One - the One all of Israel had been waiting for. And he, John, did not consider himself worthy to carry the sandals of Jesus. "No," John shouts: "Jesus is about to baptize with fire. And then with a winnowing fork, this mighty Messiah will separate the chaff from the wheat. And all unrepentant sinners will be cast into the furnace of hell." Not a very comforting scene, is it?
Now, fast forward two years to today's text. John is in prison because, with his usual offensive audacity, he has spoken truth to power. Yes, John has told Herod that it was wrong for him to commit adultery. It was wrong for him to steal his brother's wife and then sleep with her. Such judgment has gotten John in deep trouble, and today he languishes in a prison cell awaiting his death. And while he sits there, he begins to hear all the things that Jesus is doing. And he has lots of time to think. Yes, John has lots of time to begin to realize that Jesus is not acting the way the Messiah - according to John - should act. Rather than blazing with the fire of indignation, Jesus seems to be telling stories and playing with children. Rather than railing against the sins of the world, Jesus is eating with tax collectors and prostitutes and poor people. Rather than tossing people into the blistering cauldron of hell, he is listening to them, forgiving them, and changing them from the inside out. Our Bible study group came up with a wonderful image. What John expected in a Messiah was a rottweiler, growling and attacking the sinners of the world. But what he got was a puppy, changing hearts with warmth and affection. No wonder John has started asking the question: "Is this the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
Now, in order to figure out this passage, we need to digress for just a minute into the world of the prophets. Contrary to popular opinion, prophets in the Bible are not primarily fortune tellers who predict what is going to happen in the future. They are much more social commentators who accurately describe what is going on now - and usually in ways that people don't want to hear. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets were those men and women who experienced the mystery of God in some deep and personal way, and then felt called to articulate what they had seen and heard for others. Marcus Borg defines the Hebrew prophets this way: "I see them as God-intoxicated voices of radical social criticism, and God-intoxicated advocates of an alternative social vision. Their dream is God's dream."1
According to this definition, John the Baptist was a true-blue prophet - a God-intoxicated dreamer who passionately advocated for God's alternative social vision of shalom. But passionate as he was, in the long run, John wasn't very persuasive.
Walter Brueggemann has made a very helpful distinction between prophetic criticizing and prophetic energizing - both of which appear in abundance in the Hebrew Scriptures. Prophetic criticizing takes a laser-sharp look at the world and lifts up all the blatant sin and selfishness of the world. Prophetic criticizing proclaims God's dream and desire for creation and then attacks each one of us in the heart of our apathy and our greed. Prophetic criticizing drops bombs of honest judgment and leaves us writhing in the ashes of guilt and failure, with radical repentance the only hope for survival. Prophetic criticizing has its prominent place in scripture, as John the Baptist can attest to. And God has the right to put it there. But there is very little good news in prophetic criticizing.
The other form of prophetic activity is prophetic energizing. And it is equally prominent in scripture. This form of proclamation is centered in hope. Despite our sin and our failures as God's people, God has not given up on us or the world. And God is about to do a new thing with and for the world that we have desecrated. When those disciples come back to Jesus and ask him John's question, Jesus responds with classic prophetic energizing. Is he, Jesus, the Messiah, or should John - should we - look for another? Quoting Isaiah, Jesus presents his positive messianic vision, his description of the new social order that God is bringing about: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news - not bad news - brought to them. And then knowing that John will be very disappointed in these words, Jesus adds a wistful benediction: "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
It is clear that in his preaching and teaching, Jesus combined prophetic criticizing with prophetic energizing. He railed at the legalistic religious authorities of his day, calling them "hypocrites" and "broods of vipers." He gently criticized Martha for her anxious busyness and the woman at the well for her promiscuous lifestyle. But he constantly forgave the ones he criticized and then energized them with visions of new chances, new beginnings, new opportunities for abundant living. I believe that Jesus took the prophetic vocation and carried it one step further. He combined prophetic criticizing and prophetic energizing by embodying them both. Through prophetic actualizing, Jesus became the incarnation of the dream, the embodiment of the new social order, the one who walked the walk and lived the vision. And, brothers and sisters, as the Body of Christ, we are called to do the same.
There is a wonderful parable that tells us what "prophecy actualized" might look like in our lives. There was once a woman who was disappointed, who was disillusioned, who was depressed. She wanted a good world, a peaceful world, and she wanted to be a good person. But the newspaper and television showed her how far we were from such a reality. So she decided to go shopping. She went to the mall and wandered into a new store - where the person behind the counter looked strangely like Jesus. Gathering up her courage she went up to the counter and asked, "Are you Jesus?" "Well, yes, I am," the man answered. "Do you work here?" "Actually," Jesus responded, "I own the store. You are free to wander up and down the aisles, see what it is I sell, and then make a list of what you want. When you are finished, come back here, and we'll see what we can do for you."
So, the woman did just that. And what she saw thrilled her. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air. She wrote furiously and finally approached the counter, handing a long list to Jesus. He skimmed the paper, and then smiling at her said, "No problem." Reaching under the counter, he grabbed some packets and laid them out on the counter. Confused, she asked, "What are these?" Jesus replied: "These are seed packets. You see, this is a catalogue store." Surprised the woman blurted out, "You mean I don't get the finished product?" "No," Jesus gently responded. "This is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. Then you plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits." "Oh," she said, deeply disappointed in Jesus. Then she turned around and left the store without buying anything.2
Friends, I believe that our passage for today speaks to us about our calling as Christians in a world of violence, in a world of increasing poverty, in a world of terrorism and intolerance. As disciples of Jesus, our text for today is calling us to follow him as those who embrace his prophetic vocation. Yes, we are called to criticize when necessary. We are called always to energize with hopeful visions of a new social order. But most of all, we are called to actualize Jesus' passionate dream of a whole and healed world. We are called to actualize God's creative plan by the way we live our daily lives.
So, my friends, let's pick up those packets of seeds. And let's plant them - for the sake of our children and all the children of the world.
May it be so - for you and for me. Amen.
1. Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (San Francisco: Harper, 2002), p.127.
2. As told in Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, F. and M. Brussat, editors (New York: Scribner, 1996), p. 359.