Beloved

We are lovers, not fighters

It is something to have to justify your existence.

And who is John to ask justification of Jesus? Jesus says the man is the greatest on earth and the least in heaven. Which strikes like a complement and a dig at once.

Jesus, of course, takes the challenge in stride. He has little trouble listing the accomplishments under his watch. But he doesn’t need to justify himself to John. He tells John’s disciples to open their eyes. See for themselves:

“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.”
Matthew 11:5

This is the record. And we can see it. But it doesn’t explain the conflict. That Jesus’s record is John’s problem with him. John wants him to be something else. He wants the Messiah to be a warrior king. The general who leads the Hebrew people into battle to overthrow their Roman oppressors once and for all.

And this guy is soft.

The Messiah

The evangelist writes that John sends disciples to bring word to the Messiah. Not Jesus, the man. But the office he embodies: Messiah.

And that word they are to deliver is that John doesn’t think Jesus is the real deal. He can’t see it given the evidence before him. Surely because John defines Messiah as warrior and not healer.

So there is nothing Jesus can do to persuade John. Not like this. But these people who are here, who can see what is happening…if they’re open to the possibility that this is Messiah work, then maybe they can understand how much bigger God’s plan really is.

Forced Justifying

There is so much going on around us right now that resonates with this dynamic of expectation, dismissal, and justification. In recent weeks we’ve seen acts of violence on the national stage against Jews and LGBTQ+ persons. And locally, the horrific racist acts at West Vigo High School.

And we take on this weird posture of forcing minorities to justify their right to be there while assuming God wants us all to toughen up, fight it out, and just deal with this stuff. Often dismissing it as Boys will be boys. Arguing that These are football players, of course. They’re supposed to be tough.

No, they’re supposed to throw a ball, catch a ball, run with a ball, block, tackle. Photoshopping racist images and urinating in lockers isn’t tough. And tough isn’t the point. It’s a team sport. Life is a team sport.

Some in our midst would like to engender abuse, hatred, and cruelty as an expectation. What it means to be a man. And a warrior.

This narrow focus keeps us from seeing what God is doing in our world. And what God has called us to do in our midst.

To heal and bring good news.

After Jesus makes his appeal to John’s disciples to open their eyes to the Messiah’s actual mission, he turns to the crowds, and highlights the contrast.

Who did you come out into the wilderness to see? A bookworm or a prophet? He asks them what they expected John to be: “A reed shaken by the wind?”

The reed is not afraid of the wind. It’s moved by the wind.

If you’ve ever sat in on a 300-level college class or a county meeting, you know what this looks like. When the wind starts blowing in a different direction, that reed starts leaning a different way.

Nobody expects a prophet to be like that. A prophet stands up for her convictions. Regardless of the wind.

The ones in the soft robes, on the other hand, spend their time in the Temple with prayer and Scripture. Religious leaders wear soft vestments to mark their office. As priests, scribes, and rabbis. Like Jesus.

John doesn’t want Jesus to be the Messiah because he belongs to the camp John wants to despise. It isn’t just that Jesus isn’t wearing armor. It’s that he’s the “wrong sort of person.” A wimpy intellectual.

Here’s the good news:

We’re not followers of John. We’re following that wimpy intellectual, Jesus. The one who isn’t bound by John’s narrow vision of God’s dream for humanity and a narrow vision of his role in it.

The one who gets that armies don’t bring peace and hatred doesn’t bring love. We follow the one who understands that if we are to have the beloved community in the future, we need to start acting like it now.

Jesus is doing a new thing because he is part of the new thing God is doing in the world. A new thing that John was given the honor of kicking off. The prophet in the wilderness, as a voice crying out: Prepare! Help God’s Kin-dom to come!

This is our job, just like it was our ancestors’ job.

And this is why the difference between the visions of John and Jesus are so important.

Because John’s vision was for God to do exactly what they did last time. That God’s way is not only predictable, but identical from generation to generation! The Messiah must be a warrior, a revolutionary, and future king. Because that’s what David was.

Jesus, on the other hand, widens the vision of salvation, liberation, and hope in the transformational love of God. And, in so doing, widening our expectations beyond a military victory and nationalistic zealotry.

Jesus isn’t a tough guy. He’s a whole person.

And while this shouldn’t be surprising, the other is how we often end up viewing the Messiah. Through a lens of power, static history, and ultimate supremacy.

The most popular atonement theory of Christianity’s first thousand years was Christus Victor: an image of Jesus as…you guessed it…warrior king who wins the war with evil by defeating its minions. Famous medieval poems and plays depict Jesus descending to hell to liberate the captives with mighty sword.

Today’s more popular satisfaction theory, also known as substitutionary atonement, evokes a similar vision of supremacy without the warrior king motif. It’s problematic for a whole bunch of other things, though.

When our theories are dependent on a future that matches the sins of the past, we are prone to miss the expansive light in Jesus’s messianic identity!

What is ultimately most profound in the first and second comings of Jesus cannot be captured only by looking at our history. It is found in the hope that God transforms us in the present to create a different future.

John’s certainty of who the Messiah would be prevents him from seeing who the Messiah is. And it will therefore deprive him of the vision God is inviting him into.

This is our challenge, too.

To respond to our moment, with respect to our history, that enables us to build a Kin-dom-like future.

But it is also the reason we can rejoice in our work. Why we can see the glory of God in Christ-like service. Not because it has always been and therefore will always be thus. But because we are invited into a promise of community and love that is serving a dream of a better, more vibrant creation.

We can rejoice in Jesus giving sight to the blind, helping the lame to walk, cleansing the lepers, giving hearing to the deaf, raising the dead, and bringing good news to the poor. The blessing of the world.

Let’s rejoice in healing and sharing and giving and hoping! In being there, sitting with, listening to, praying for. All the ways we express our love, and share God’s love, with the beloved children of God. Making this the Beloved Community.

Let us rejoice in the generous glory of God! Generous because it is for us and in us and through us; it’s how such love is known!

We are beloved to spread God’s beloved glory generously. And with the unyielding hope in the ever-expanding love of God for all of creation.

We have that love, are offered that hope, and given a wide-open world with faith to share it. May we be known by that love.