+Matthew 11:2-11
Isaiah 35:1-10
This is what we didn’t hear this morning from the Prophet Isaiah.
34 Draw near, O nations, to hear;
O peoples, give heed!
Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;
the world, and all that comes from it.
2 For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,
and furious against all their hordes;
he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.
3 Their slain shall be cast out,
and the stench of their corpses shall rise;
the mountains shall flow with their blood.
4 All the host of heaven shall rot away,
and the skies roll up like a scroll.
All their host shall wither
like a leaf withering on a vine,
or fruit withering on a fig tree.
5 When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
lo, it will descend upon Edom,
upon the people I have doomed to judgement.
6 The Lord has a sword; it is sated with blood,
it is gorged with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
with the fat of the kidneys of rams….
8 For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
a year of vindication by Zion’s cause.*
9 And the streams of Edom* shall be turned into pitch,
and her soil into sulphur;
her land shall become burning pitch.....
16 Seek and read from the book of the Lord:
Not one of these shall be missing;
none shall be without its mate.
For the mouth of the Lord has commanded,
and his spirit has gathered them.
17 He has cast the lot for them,
his hand has portioned it out to them with the line;
they shall possess it for ever,
from generation to generation they shall live in it.
Not quite the Peaceable Kingdom that we normally associate with Isaiah, is it? Don’t worry, this part of Isaiah won’t be enacted in the Children’s Pageant at 10AM! However, it is important to know that what was just read came from the 34th chapter of the Prophet. Our lesson appointed for this morning begins in the 35th chapter, immediately following the last verse just read.
This dark and gruesome portion of our shared religious legacy is from prophecies that are sometimes called the Fifth Gospel. It creates a stark contrast to the images of God’s return in our Gospel lesson, let alone the following chapter of Isaiah. It’s no wonder why Jesus asks the crowd not once or twice but three times, “What did you expect to see?” It’s telling, isn’t it Church, that the portion of Isaiah that Jesus answer’s John, piggy-backs such a terrible scene foretelling the coming of the Messiah. But as always, Jesus has a reason.
Our lesson from Matthew represents one of those instances when religious expectation, doesn’t quite add up to faithful reality. What does it mean for us as followers of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, that God chose to make himself known in the form of a baby? And more specific to our lesson this morning, what does it mean for us that Jesus comes fulfilling all prophecies; but is clothed in mercy and love, rather than armed with a sword? Jesus, over and over again, attests to the power of humility and mercy and compassion over and against tyrannical actions of what we seek to ascribe to an angry God. Jesus, Christ, in his birth, life, and death, testifies to the generations that true strength of God comes clothed in Mercy, not in a sword dripping with blood.
“What did you expect to see?” Jesus asks the follower of John the Baptist, the new Elisha, the forerunner of the Lord’s coming. Jesus, in fact, quizzes these disciples as if to say, “look, 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; even though these gory and frightening things haven’t occurred.” Even though what was once assumed to have to happen; even though these things didn’t occur.
So what do you expect to see at God’s coming again? Are you looking forward to take a dip in the lake of fire? Do you wish to see eternal combat between the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Lamb of God? Will you be offended if God still comes, even without these things? Jesus tells us in our lesson, blessed are we who believe that the Messiah has come, even without the all the apocalyptic fireworks.
Jesus is coming regardless of our expectations and He will come among us without exception. But the problem is the waiting part. But there is Good News….
Frederick Buechner, the theologian, novelist and ordained Presbyterian minister, reminds us that “To wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ’s stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ’s healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all….”
So I ask you for a third time, When Christ comes what do you expect to see? Perhaps it will be yourself and perhaps it will be on an ordinary day, on an ordinary street, but the gift you bring to the other will be so extra-ordinary, for they will see the Peaceable Kingdom, not a shaking reed; and they won’t see you at all, but the very vision and face of Christ, or Lord and Brother.
Amen, Come Lord Jesus.
Buechner, Frederick, “Waiting” from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006), pp. 284-5.
