Sermon 12/16/07 (Matthew 11:2-11)

“Almost Perfect...But Not Quite!”
Matthew 11:2-11
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 16 December, 2007
Third Sunday of Advent

I collect Christmas cards. I like to buy them around New Year’s, when they’re at deep discount, and I have several large boxes full of cards. I then send them out to friends and loved ones the following year, or even several years after that, so that I can choose from my stash and send a different one to each person every year.

I try to find unusual cards too. I have some secular cards, for nonreligious loved ones, a few Hanukkah cards for Jewish friends and relatives, and a batch of Christian cards, with images of the baby Jesus or other religious themes on them. I choose my Christmas card themes very carefully, and I make sure that the religious cards I buy are as “accurate” as I can find. No blonde, blue-eyed, 25-year-old Mary holding a roly-poly blond, blue-eyed baby Jesus. If I get a card that shows a Nativity scene, I try to find one that has a slightly more accurate depiction: an olive-skinned Middle Eastern family, a young, teen-aged Mary, and an infant Jesus, with not a sign of blond hair or blue eyes. I do not always succeed in such accuracy, as the makers of Christmas cards seem to have it directly from God (I missed that part in the scriptures!) that Jesus was a blond, blue-eyed, chubby little boy, but I try my best.

There is one point of accuracy, however, at which I have never been successful. Modern Christmas cards almost always show a happy Holy Family. Often, the Three Kings are pictured in the background, in all their glory. Even if they’re not present (remember, they actually did not arrive until the time of Epiphany, when Jesus would have been a toddler), the shepherds and angels are pictured happily looking over the baby, no sign of poverty in their clothing or healthy-looking sheep. The inn from which Mary and Joseph were turned away is pictured as a homey, if somewhat shabby, domicile, and the manger nearly always looks welcoming. That is, the tremendous poverty of first-century Judea is nowhere to be seen.

Then there are the royal images. Jesus is often pictured with a crown or halo, and sometimes the members of the Holy Family have them also. Purple, the color of royalty, abounds. We attempt to picture “the humble birth of Christ,” but instead it ends up looking quite homey and comfortable. (Oh, and by the way, Mary’s face looks calm and fresh, with no sign of her recent labor.)

As much as I love Christmas cards, the images printed on most are not only inaccurate; they probably would have upset Jesus deeply! As this morning’s lesson from Matthew draws us, once more, out of “the Christmas season” and back into Advent, we learn why.

We modern Christians await the coming of the baby in a manger, a sweet baby (blond, quite often!), who will be crowned with the kind of royal fanfare about which we sing in Christmas carols, and which we send around the country on our Christmas cards. But the Messiah for whom John the Baptist waited fit a somewhat different description.

When we first hear from John today, he is already in prison, after annoying King Herod with his disturbing prophecy. Mind you, John himself, who we know as Jesus’ predecessor, and as the great prophet, was no looker himself. Long before he was sent to prison, he dressed himself in animal skins, lived in the wilderness, and ate locusts and wild honey. Not exactly the picture of loveliness, the picture of the predecessor to a great king. But there he was.

We know that John had great faith in Jesus. He could barely bring himself to baptize Jesus, for he felt already that Jesus was greater than him, something truly special. He was Jesus’ cousin and greatest follower.

So, what do we have here? When we meet John in prison, he seems suddenly to doubt whether Jesus is truly the one for whom he -- and the world -- had been waiting. He asks, through his disciples, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It is as though he is trying to compare the images of the royal king he had perhaps expected -- as though he had looked at some of our modern Christmas cards -- with the harsh, persecuted, seemingly powerless Jesus about whom he had heard from prison. “How is this the one who is to come? I don’t see him crushing our oppressors, or asserting power over the authorities. How can it be he for whom I have been preparing -- for whom we have all been preparing?!”

Jesus seems to take John’s words of doubt in stride, even matter-of-factly. He tells his disciples, “Just tell John what you hear and see! People are being healed, and the poor have good news brought to them. I may not be what he expected, but here I am, and I am bringing hope to the people in some other ways.”

In similar fashion, John the Baptist does not seem to be what the people expected. A wild man, a fire-and-brimstone sort of preacher, whose life in the wilderness probably gave him a bit of body odor, John hardly looked like the predecessor to any sort of Messiah, even a humble one. But Jesus responds to the people’s questioning in similar matter-of-factness: “What did you go out to the wilderness to look at? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.”

Neither Jesus nor John were what the people expected... nor are they often what we expect. As we send off our pretty Christmas cards every year, with the pretty (blond) baby Jesus, the homey setting, and the clean surroundings, we imagine Jesus as such a baby, and we proclaim, as in Handel’s Messiah (quoted from the prophet Isaiah), that “he will reign forever and ever.” But is that really what the season of Advent, or what the incarnation of Christ, is about? Even as we cry out, “King of Kings,” Jesus finds himself not in royal palaces but in the darkest parts of our communities. Even as we put on happy Christmas pageants, Jesus finds himself crying for peace in a war-torn world. Even as we write cheery messages on our Christmas cards Jesus reminds us, through the words of the gospel of Matthew, that he is not quite what we expect. He will bring hope to the world, but not necessarily through pretty pictures or happy images. He will bring love to the world, but not necessarily through calm words and smiling faces. He will bring peace to the world, but not necessarily through acts of force or power.

Jesus is the one for whom we wait -- for whom the John of Matthew’s gospel is preparing us -- but he may not be the Messiah we expect. Let’s rethink the images. Let’s rethink the stories, even as we cry out, “Joy to the world!” He will bring joy, yes. But not in the way that we thought he would.

Now let us pray.