Snowed Out Sermon

Night Vision

When I was a little boy, my brothers and I would often play outside in the evenings after the sun had gone down. We’d play hide and seek, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, commando raid—you know, boy stuff. And the fact that it was dark and hard to see each other wasn’t the deterrent you’d think it’d be. Really, it only made things more fun! There’s nothing quite like poking around in the pitch black, never quite sure when someone’s going to pop up and scare the living daylights out of you! Talk about your excitements!

I can remember, back in those days, wishing I had some of those special glasses that soldiers and police people use to see in the dark. You know, those night vision goggles. You can see everything just as clear as day through them, although everything was a sickly, glowing, green color. If only I could’ve had a pair of night vision goggles, then I could have seen where everybody was, and who they were. Because in that kind of darkness, you couldn’t even tell who it was that was standing right in front of you!

Later on I remember I read in a magazine that before the days of those magic goggles, soldiers were trained to see in the dark in a different way. Rather than look directly at something they wanted to see in the dark, they’d look at it with peripheral vision—out of the sides of the eyes, either side. It seems that the physiology of the eye is such that the rods and cones, the receptors if you will, on either side of the retina, which is like a movie screen that the images you see are projected upon, are more photosensitive than the ones in the middle. So by looking to either side of what you are interested in seeing in the darkness, you are more able to see and identify it. Lookouts in old sailing ships used this little trick too. They looked just to the side to better see what lay directly ahead.

Sounds far out there, but give it a try the next time you’re out at night. I wouldn’t suggest doing it driving down Route 101 in your car, but to help you find the keyhole in your front door—that’s the ticket! Look at the periphery and you’ll see.

You know, if you stretch your imagination just a wee bit, that’s about what Jesus was saying in response to John the Baptist’s question. John sent a messenger to him asking, “Are you the one we’ve been expecting, or should we continue waiting?” Like we said last week, John was in prison, and maybe by this point losing heart and beginning to doubt. Characteristically, his cousin Jesus’ answer is not a simple yes or no. Not a maybe. Not even a “Whadda you think?” Instead, to answer this question about himself, Jesus points to what’s going on all around him--in the periphery.

“Tell John that the blind can see and the lame can walk. Tell him that the deaf can hear and the sick have been healed. Tell John that the poor are hearing the good news. Tell him the dead have been raised! Tell him that.”

Jesus asks John to look at the periphery to find an answer, instead of looking directly at him. If John looked directly at Jesus, what would he see? A man. Dirty and tired perhaps from traveling the countryside and camping out. A good speaker probably, charismatic—but just a man. It’s only when he looked to what was going on all around Jesus that he could see that everything that Jesus was doing was exactly what the prophet Isaiah said of the Messiah! The blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking—they defined Jesus as Messiah—more powerfully than any statement by Jesus ever could.

And, in a way, Jesus is only repeating what he has probably heard from John himself. When they came to him seeking baptism, John cautioned the Pharisees to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Not to just say they repented, but to evidence it with lives that showed a true change of heart. Jesus reinforced that idea even more later on when he said “by their fruits shall you know them.” It seems that not only is the Christ recognizable by what happens all around him, but also the Christian.

That leads me to wonder. First, in our times of doubt--when we begin to question if Jesus really is the one, or should we keep looking amidst the many religious choices in today’s world--what answer would Jesus have for us? Tell them that …what? What kind of Messiah would I see if I looked, not straight at Jesus, but to the sides? What actions of Jesus in this dark world speak louder in their definition of Jesus, louder than the words others tell me, or that I hear at church, or read in the bible?

I think perhaps the most amazing thing is that they would be not at all what I expected. Jesus wasn’t at all what the people of Israel expected, not what the Pharisees expected, not even what John expected perhaps! He didn’t do what they all expected. And I would even hazard to say that Jesus is not who most of us picture him as.

Now, let me explain that incendiary remark.

No doubt you’ve all heard about the movie The Lord of the Rings. This movie is based upon books that have been read and reread and reread by extremely loyal fans. Fans who have lovingly constructed in their imaginations all the characters and settings down to minute detail. So what’s interesting about this film is that its success in many ways depends on how true the filmmaker has been to the reader’s expectations visa vie, for example, what Frodo the hobbit looks like. No doubt some people will be very pleased, and some utterly disappointed in how the books have been translated to the big screen.

The same holds true for the people of Israel and us as well. They heard from the Hebrew scriptures what the Messiah was to be like. We know from the gospels the things Jesus said and did. But from that point, they constructed a Messiah of expectation, and we, a Jesus of the imagination. On what basis do I make this claim? Well, look at the reactions of the people of Israel to Jesus. What they had come to expect, what they cobbled together in their heads using the words of prophetic scripture as a starting point, was a warrior Messiah who came to free them from bondage to Rome. The gospels are full of accounts of the people’s attempts to reconcile their expectations with the reality of this Jesus of Nazareth. The two were fairly incompatible. Jesus was not the “expected” Messiah, even though he was the Messiah! Hence even John the Baptist starts to wonder.

In the same fashion, I believe that we have heard what we wanted to from the gospels, and then built an imagined Jesus that in many ways doesn’t interface—doesn’t really fit--with the rabbi from Nazareth who sat with sinners and touched lepers. Our imagined Jesus, perhaps best exemplified in that famous, sepia-toned portrait that hung in every Sunday School in America, and indeed hangs in our own, our imagined Jesus is always gentle, always politically correct, and never controversial. He is always in control, all-knowing in any situation, and just oozing with divinity.

Now, the problem lies, not in thinking about Jesus in those ways, but instead in how we react in situations in which the real Son of God doesn’t match up with the Jesus of our dreams. When is that, you ask? How about when a child dies on Christmas Eve? Or what about when Jesus says we should love one another—even those we can’t stand, think are beneath us, or consider to be evil? Or what about when Jesus says, blessed are the poor and woe to you rich—yes YOU rich! Or how about in the dark of the night when you’re in pain, and scared, and lonely. How hard it is to see the Jesus of our imagination then. How difficult it is to hold onto our preconceptions when they are running like water through the sieve of our well-intentioned idea of who Jesus is. The problem lies in how we react to the real Jesus, the true Messiah, when he acts in unpredictable, yet grace-filled ways. When Jesus gives us what we need, not what we want. When Jesus tells it like it is and should be, not the way we think it should be.

What is often our reaction in times and situations such as these? Dissention. Conflict. Denial. And doubt. Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect another?

What does Jesus point to today to define himself? He challenges us to look with the eyes of faith at the things going on in the periphery, so that we might not doubt, but believe in him. The blind see—those who were lost in despair have had their eyes opened through the work of dedicated disciples to find themselves in the arms of loving God. The deaf hear—those who were hell-bent on sin have been checked by those who would call them to repentance. The poor and the lame and the sick are tended and not held in contempt. Not all the blind, not all the deaf, and not all the sick and poor and lame. It’s not like you would expect. But if you look carefully to the side in the darkness that our sensationalist media has drawn over us, you can see these things occurring. And if you do, then you know the answer to your own question.

Yes, he is the one.

And that answer holds one major implication for us. Because in this world, we are now the body of Christ—the church. And the question the waiting world has for us is, “Are you the one?”

How would we answer that question? By reference to personal piety, to creeds, to statements of faith, to orthodoxy? Or could we answer that question, as did the Christ long ago, by reference rather to deeds, to lives faithfully lived, to the fruits that we bear, as individuals and as congregations and as a church?
If someone came into our congregation today, could we say to them, "Go and tell what you hear and see", with confidence that what they would see and hear would be the modern day equivalent of the blind receiving their sight, the lame walking, the lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, and the poor having good news brought to them?

Think about the expectations the people in this community who do not attend church have of us, think about what image of the church they may have constructed using the interactions they may or may not have had with it during their lives. It may not match up with who we regard ourselves to be. But it is their reality. Jesus challenged the Jews’ conception as to the nature of the Messiah. With his radical message of grace and love, He continuously shatters our idealized storybook picture of him. Blessed are those who take no offense to me, said the Messiah, cause what I have to say and do is gonna defy the conventional, and rock the boat big time.

As his disciples it is now upon us to do as he did. We must say to this community, with actions that speak louder than words, “God is here!” With a little more than a week to go until the day when the greater majority of this community in some way, shape or fashion acknowledges in passing the existence of the Christ, think about this and pray on this—what will we show them when God awakens the wonder in them?