“Resolutions” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Matthew 11:2-11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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 brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 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. This is the one about whom it is written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
READING Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan
The First Christmas
We do not imagine that God will bring about a perfect world through divine intervention someday. We do not imagine a supernatural rescue of the earth…The Christmas stories are not about a spectacular series of miraculous events that happened in the past that we are to believe for the sake of going to heaven. Rather, they are about God’s passion, God’s dream, for a transformed earth…We who have seen the star and heard the angels sing are called to participate in the new birth and new world proclaimed by these stories…God will not change us as individuals without our participation, and God will not change the world without our participation.
SERMON
A few weeks ago I asked some of our senior high youth to share their Christmas memories. They are now getting old enough to have them. I want to begin this morning by having us share some Christmas memories, but I will begin with a few of our senior high youth who have had a chance to think about this ahead of time…
…Thank you for sharing those memories. Christmas is very much about nostalgia and tradition. We celebrate Christmas in similar fashion every year, and some of our families can even be quite rigid about how Christmas will be spent. The famous poem about the night before Christmas might be read, recalling a simpler time. However, our children no longer have visions of sugar-plums in their heads, a kind of candy that was popular at Christmas in Victorian times. No, nowadays our children have visions of Nintendo Wiis and Transformers and Webkinz and iPets. Every year it seems to get harder and harder for parents to resist the urgings of the consumer culture to provide their children with the stuff they want. Santa’s little North Pole operation has become a multi-billion dollar industry, and one of the traditions that does seem to change each year is how big our Christmas budgets are going to be.
We all make these promises to ourselves, don’t we, promises to spend less, eat less, and perhaps for some, drink less at Christmas? But the holidays come with the force of a category 5 hurricane and sweep us up once again in the merriment. We get “soft” at Christmas, leaning upon childhood memories…becoming children again ourselves. We usually decide at some point to reserve our resolve for a later date. Sometime in early January we engage in what will be thereafter referred to as our New Year’s resolutions.
John was in prison, and his disciples were curious as to John’s status. Some of them had probably assumed John to be the Messiah. But now, with Jesus on the scene, and John in prison, everyone was wondering what was going on. Some scholars even suggest that Jesus was a disciple of John.
So, John’s disciples approached Jesus, asking him whether or not he was the Messiah. At this point Jesus did not retell the Christmas story. He made no reference to angels or shepherds or wise men from the East following stars in the night sky. His response was as follows, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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 brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
Jesus’ focus was not on what had happened in the past, but very much on what is happening in the present. At the same time his focus shifts them toward the future, for these words echo similar words spoken by the prophet Isaiah, words that John’s disciple would have been very familiar with. (Isaiah 26:19; 29:18-19; 35:5-6; 42:7; 61:1). Jesus is saying in so many words that the future is now, that the future has plowed directly into the present, and that the kingdom of God is as present in that moment as it will be in any future time.
The Messiah is, perhaps, not so much a particular “who” as it is a collective “what.” Just as we heard last week, we are communally the messianic presence that we might seek. “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?” Jesus asks them. Let me suggest to you that if Jesus had been in possession of a box full of hand mirrors at that point it could have been object lesson time. He said look at what is happening all around you, and then look at how you are involved in these events. No need to wait. The Messianic era is now. The future is the present. Any questions?
Christmas is about the entrance into human history of a profoundly divine presence in the person and work of Jesus. He is divine only in the same sense that you and I are divine. He was special only in the sense that one who lives so fully the dynamic of God’s peace and justice and love is special. He quite simply showed us how to draw the future into the present, to take our visions of hope and peace and justice into the now by working our inner spirits together with the spirit of the living