Not That Way

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 25, 2007

Not That Way
Zechariah 7:8-14
Luke 7:18-23

Why were John and his followers so confused?
What was it that they were looking for?
They thought that Jesus was the one they were seeking,
the Messiah, but why weren’t they sure?
After all, John and Jesus were related,
shouldn’t it have been pretty easy for John to have figured it out?

The lesson from Luke’s gospel is confusing:
“Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?”
If they weren’t sure who Jesus was,
then why would they believe him?
What if he had not been the Messiah
but wanted others to think that he was?
‘Yes, look no further:
I am the one you have been seeking….’

Jesus’ response to their question muddies
the already opaque water:
“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
the poor have good news brought to them.
And blessed is anyone who takes no offense to me.”

All well and good,
but how did those words prove the case?
How was this evidence of the Messiah,
the anointed one,
the one who would come to claim the throne of David?
Wouldn’t that person be a warrior like David,
strong, strapping, astride a mighty steed,
gleaming sword hanging from his belt?
Surely that person would be obvious,
one look and you’d know that he’d been
born to the purple, royalty,
a man of strength and power,
destined to be a king.

John and his followers had been living Advent lives,
watching and waiting,
waiting for the Messiah,
looking, hoping, praying each day
for the one they knew was to come.
But even if they knew the Messiah was to come,
how would they know him when he did come?

We may remember that Matthew and Mark
both recorded scenes in which John baptized Jesus,
and realized as Jesus came out of the water,
the dove descending upon him,
that Jesus was the one.
But Luke recorded no such scene,
no baptism of Jesus at the hands of John.
Yes, Jesus was baptized, but it isn’t clear by whom,
since Luke recorded John’s arrest
right before Jesus’ baptism.
So all the more reason for John to be filled with uncertainty,
asking the question: “are you the one?”

What were John and his followers looking for?
What were the clues they thought would convince them
that Jesus was the Messiah?
This Jesus looked so ordinary:
he rode no horse, carried no weapon,
and seemed so uninterested in matters
of politics and governance.
He surrounded himself with such ordinary people,
even rather questionable people
from the very fringes of society.
He neither looked like nor acted like a king.

One commentator asks such a simple question:
“what do you do when Jesus turns out to be
someone other than [the person] you thought he was
or hoped he would be?”

What do you do when your focus is one direction,
one way,
and a voice calls to you from the opposite direction
saying “not that way, but this way…”?

Let’s do just what Jesus’ told John’s followers to do:
let’s take a look at what Jesus had done to this point
that should have made clear to John
that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
Luke began the story of Jesus’ ministry in chapter 4,
following the birth narrative.
Jesus returned to Nazareth, his hometown,
and went, very appropriately,
to the synagogue on the Sabbath.
As a guest, he was handed the Scroll to read,
and he read from the prophet Isaiah,
“…[The Lord] has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.”
(Luke 4:18ff)
In those words lay the very foundation
of the ministry of Jesus Christ,
the Messiah, the Savior, the anointed one.

And then, as we read on,
we find Jesus put words into actions:
healing at first: leprosy, fever,
a paralytic, a man with a withered hand.
Then Jesus taught, with his Sermon on the Plain,
Luke’s version of what we call
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.
Jesus spoke cryptically, as he often did,
words that didn’t seem to make sense:
“blessed are you who are poor,
blessed are you who are hungry now,
blessed are you who weep,
blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you…”

And then words that were even more challenging:
“love your enemies;
do good to those who hate you;
bless those who curse you…;
If anyone strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other one also.”

How was this the language of a king,
a great leader?
Is it any wonder that John was confused?
Is it any wonder that he went to Jesus and asked,
“are you the one”

Ah, but they could have figured it out,
if only they had done a little homework,
if only they had gone back to the Scriptures
and done a little reading, a little studying.
They had only to start with Isaiah,
the passage Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth:
“[The Lord] has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
…to provide for those who mourn.”
(Isaiah 61)

If they had rolled back the scroll of Isaiah,
even just a little,
they would have found these words:
“is this not the fast that I choose,
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your home.”
(Isaiah 58:6ff)

Weren’t those the things Jesus was doing?
Weren’t those the things Jesus was talking about?
Wasn’t Jesus focused on God’s words
we heard through the prophet Zechariah:
“Render true judgments,
show kindness and mercy to one another,
do not oppress the widow, the orphan,
the alien,
the poor,
and do not devise evil in your heart against one another.”

Jesus’ teaching reached all the way back to Moses,
who taught the children of Israel,
“Love your neighbor as yourself”.
(Leviticus 19:18)
He knew his Proverbs
those pithy words attributed to the wisest of the kings,
the great King Solomon,
“If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;
and if they are thirsty give them water to drink”
(Proverbs 25:21)

Everything was right there,
they were just not looking;
they had determined in their minds
what the Messiah should look like and act like.
They had created an image and Jesus didn’t fit that image.
They were looking in the wrong direction.
They were looking their way,
not Jesus’ way.

Don’t we still do that?
Don’t we try to shape Jesus,
our image of Jesus, who we think Jesus is
rather than letting Jesus shape us?
Don’t we transform our image of Jesus
to fit ourselves and our lives,
rather than letting Jesus transform us?
Aren’t we possessive of Jesus?
“My Jesus is the real thing, while yours is not.”
Shouldn’t we instead let our hearts be possessed by Jesus?

We look the wrong way,
because, like John and his followers,
we don’t do our homework.
We don’t read, study, listen, and learn
the way we should, the way we need to.
Are we really any different from the children of Israel
of more than 2600 years ago?
Don’t we often stop up our ears and refuse to listen,
especially if we don’t like what we are hearing?
Much better to turn it off,
or as many of the prophets in those days learned,
much better to stone the messenger than heed the message.

Are we quicker to embrace gossip, rumor, innuendo,
than we are to do the hard work of listening,
learning,
discerning?

The current flap over a new movie due to be released in two weeks
suggests that the answer to these questions is yes.
The movie is entitled “The Golden Compass”
Two weeks ago, a member sent me an e-mail she had received,
an e-mail which raised an alarm about the movie,
claiming that the movie was anti-God,
and worse, it was based on a book
from an author who wants nothing less
than to foment hatred of God among children.

Pretty strong stuff,
But there was a phrase in the original e-mail
that piqued my interest.
Whoever wrote the original inflammatory words
-- no one in this community --
began his or her case with the words,
“I have heard that the author.,,”
“I have heard…”
In law this phrase would be referred to as “hearsay”:
inadmissible, not grounded in fact.
We have a simpler term for it:
gossip, or at best, rumor.

I ordered the book and read it last week.
The book was written in 1995 by an English writer;
It is a fantasy aimed primarily at the teenage market;
It preceded the first Harry Potter book by a few years,
but it is of that same genre.
Apparently when it came out it was quite popular,
and the author won a number of awards
from prestigious literary groups.
After reading the book, I can say two things:
It isn’t my kind of book,
but other than that,
I don’t know what the fuss was all about.
I found nothing in the book that I thought
was disrespectful of God.

I checked the author’s website just to see if
he has said things there that weren’t in the book,
but again, I found nothing there that alarmed me.
He seems to me a rather ordinary British writer,
who isn’t sure about the existence of God,
but doesn’t deny God’s existence either,
more agnostic than atheist.
If he is against anything, it isn’t God,
but the institutional church and organized religion,
and there, whether we are willing to admit it or not,
it isn’t hard to make a case.

I also went to the website for the movie,
and it looks like it is fantasy movie,
aimed primarily at young folks.
It stars a number of major Hollywood actors.
Once again, I found nothing that suggested
that the movie was a fiendish plot to
turn God into a villain.

And even if the book was, and the movie is,
I think God can handle it.
I think we can handle it.

We can handle such things as long as
we approach our faith with some sense of reasoning,
exploring, as we look, as we study,
as we learn,
reading Scripture and then always,
looking to God to illumine our hearts and minds,
to open our eyes and our minds,
to help us understand.
Jesus, our Lord, our Savior,
is not our possession;
we are his,
and we should come to him
with our minds open to his transforming power.

The Advent season that is before is
is a wonderful time to read,
to study, and to learn,
all in an effort, to use Marcus Borg’s phrase,
to meet Jesus again for the very first time.

The Advent season is the perfect time to remember
that we come before Jesus on bended knee
humble, attentive to his words,
slow to speak, quick to listen,
ready to look in a new direction,
walk a new way,
following the one who is our King,
the one who is the head of our church,
the one who calls us to new life
in him and through him.

“Lo, our king comes to [us]…
humble and riding on a donkey..”
(Zechariah 9:9)
…He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”
(Isaiah 11:3)
…and his authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace,
for the throne of David and his kingdom.”
(Isaiah 9:7)
For this is the word of the Lord.
AMEN