Leap Deer
Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11: 2-11

December 12, 2004

The historian Perry Miller wrote a collection of essays in the 1960’s entitled Errand Into the Wilderness. Miller is not to be confused with an activist from the Sierra Club or other earnest organizations that fight to maintain the integrity of natural wildernesses on our planet. Miller’s wilderness was no less beautiful, but it was not a place untouched by human hand.

Miller was writing about the grand religious experiment of the Puritans who came to the Americas, particularly New England, in the mid-1600’s. Collectively they were convinced that they were not settling randomly in a new world that had simply happened upon. It was an intentional errand they were on, and a serious errand at that, sent in fact by God to a virgin land to establish the Gospel on one more section of the planet.

Both Miller and the Puritans were too idealistic of the nature of the New England wilderness. It wasn’t the Garden of Eden transplanted; it was a harsh, albeit beautiful land. And God had already sent human beings to tend this Garden, the Native Americans who had lived there for millennia.

“And what did you expect to see when you went out to the wilderness?” Jesus interrogates the disciples of John the Baptist. “A sheik in silk pajamas?” (Peterson) “A man dressed up in his Sunday best?” (Jordan) They thought they were interrogating Jesus on behalf of their imprisoned leader John. “Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?”

Jesus never seemed to fit other people’s expectations. There were always a group or two who thought he was not Messiah enough for their needs. Perhaps John had his doubts too. Jesus appeared too soft for his agenda.

John wanted everybody to repent yesterday. Judgment day is coming, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it. Herod the governor had divorced his wife in order to marry his brother Philip’s wife Herodias. She was not a nice person and bore grudges. John gave her plenty to grudge when he called Herod to account for his blatant immorality. Herodias, of course, famously had his head for his judgmental words.

So John was suspicious that Jesus wasn’t challenging the powers-that-be. Jesus to his thinking was supposed to finish it off, send the Herods and others in his camp to hellfire and damnation and inaugurate a kingdom of heaven on earth.

Jesus is not soft on John’s disciples. Go back and tell him exactly what you see. He recited Isaiah’s declarations about the new wilderness when God is taking over. We’ve read the Gospel stories; by the time in chapter 11 that Jesus sends his message back to John, all these things have happened.

Blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears unstopped. Lame men and women will leap like deer, the voiceless will break into song. Corpses are coming alive and the poor people are being told about big doings. This may not be a political revolution. This may not be the judgment day for all those wicked people holding back the kingdom. But it is judgment day for a lot of powerless people. Today they get power, they get sight, they get to leap high, they get to be alive – that is their judgment!

What are we waiting for in Advent and at other times of the year? Do leaping lame people meet our standards for the Messiah? Or do we want something bigger? Are the economic impacts deep enough, the programs wide enough in their impact?

Certainly, Jesus’ brand of Messianism did nothing to change the corrupt political system of that Palestinian society. The government stayed in power and inevitably a revolt against the Evil Empire of Rome resulted in Jesus’ people being crushed once more, a brand of Judaism liquidated, and oppression continuing on business as usual. Jesus’ approach simply got him the same fate as John the Baptist.

No, Jesus went about being the Messiah in the way that did not bother with changing political regimes and political systems. Jesus went about changing life from the inside out. John the Baptist, he reminds his listeners, is the greatest person in human history. Yet the lowliest person in the kingdom of heaven is greater by a far sight than John. We keep trying, but we do not make the rules about what kind of Messiah the Messiah really is. We receive the Messiah God knows we need, by grace.

You see, the kingdom of heaven did not just arrive in the first-century A.D., it persistently keeps on arriving. And despite it all, the kingdom where the desert starts blooming and becoming lush does have an impact upon the way our political regimes and systems function. Politics have always had something very important to do with religion. The Gospel never lets the state alone.

Whenever the blind see again, the lame leap, the deaf hear, it gives hope to a lot of others, “maybe I can be cured too!” What a politically dangerous scenario. What else are we waiting for in Advent?

When an AIDS patient regains his immunities, that will create a revolution far more powerful than any political coup d’etat. For there will be the possibility of life that will alter the way whole societies operate, from the resurrected possibilities of those entrapped in a living death to the possibilities and power of compassion that medical providers and governments can now command. Imagine a society that turns its soul towards healing people rather than policing them, waging war against them, making more money than others. Everything will then be different, everyone will think differently. In the wilderness a highway will be there. That’s what we are expecting to come in Advent.

When the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side, that poverty is shameful, not the poor, well, the world shall be changed and least of all the poor. The wilderness of poverty and disease and discrimination and oppression will no longer be a barren land, a desert dying of thirst, but a garden bursting with life that gives birth to more life. What else in Advent are we waiting for? What else should we be working to change right now?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan