Advent 3, Year A

December 16, 2007

The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

In the movie Miss Congeniality FBI agent Grace Hart is working undercover as a contestant in the Miss United States Pageant. The night of the televised final she makes the top ten and comes on stage to perform her talent with her hair in braids and wearing a very silly Bavarian style costume. She addresses the audience directly, saying ‘I know in the program it says that I’m playing the water glasses, but the girls got a little dehydrated….” The audience laughs and Grace turns instead to an alternate talent, calling out her ‘friend’ and FBI colleague as she demonstrates her martial arts skills, declaring that every woman needs at least a basic knowledge of self defense. The incongruity of the silly costume and the considerable physical skill with which Grace flattens her partner make for an unexpected twist in the world of beauty pageants, but since it is entertaining, the audience loves it.

At times people behave in ways that we least expect. I find it surprising but not unusual to have to revise my impression of someone and what kind of person they are when I meet their spouse, find out what kind of job they held before the current one, or discover that in high school they belonged to a group that seems completely different from who they are now. One person can have many different facets, some of which may not seem to fit at all with the others. This kind of complexity can lead to amusement, amazement, puzzlement, or dismay.

“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?’” John had expected—and proclaimed—the arrival of a Messiah who would judge. John preached the need for repentance, for being truly sorry for one’s sins and turning back to a God focused way of life. He was intense and dramatic, both in his preaching and his appearance. He did not fear to speak confrontationally to those in power, greeting the religious leaders who came to him for baptism with “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” John both announced and awaited a Messiah who would separate the godly from the ungodly, one who would toss the undeserving into “unquenchable fire.”

Jesus seemed to begin on task, proclaiming “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Imagine John’s surprise when Jesus gathered a group of fisherman, a tax collector, a woman who had been possessed by demons, and other odd folks to be his followers. Jesus then engaged in a ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing. He even declared, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Clearly Jesus was not meeting the expectations John had for the Messiah. The difference was striking enough that John had to ask his own disciples to question Jesus for him while he was in prison, so that John could try to reconcile the inconsistency.

Jesus’ response to John’s query is interesting. He does not give a direct yes or no answer. Instead, Jesus describes his ministry using the categories articulated by the prophet Isaiah: “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.” Jesus is indeed the Messiah, but not the kind John was expecting.

Rachel Naomi Remen tells of a time when she had completed her training as a medical doctor and was associate director of the pediatric clinics at Stanford. She decided to participate in a two year part time internship that focused on holistic health. During the internship she began to experience panic attacks and decided to quit the program. The director, instead, asked her to explore whether she could discover the cause of the panic attacks by seeing if an image came to mind when she had one. Sure enough, the image of a flat, white rectangle popped into her head. Dr. Remen assumed it was a business card. Later, during another attack, however, the rectangle began to puff up and take a new shape, one of a marshmallow! As she saw the shape changed she realized that for her it was a metaphor. She had assumed the values of education, rationality, and professionalism esteemed by her immediate family. These had led her to great academic and professional success. Yet to achieve this she had flattened out the other parts of herself, particularly the parts taught her by her grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi. In order to stop the panic attacks, she needed to pay attention to both parts of herself, to give value to more than one facet of who she was. It changed the course of her medical career.

The vision John the Baptist had for the Messiah embraced one facet, that of judgment. That facet is a valid part of who Jesus is as the Messiah, but it is only one part. It is rather like looking at the cross as only from top down, as God judging each individual. The cross of Jesus also has a crossbeam going from side to side, one of God reaching out to those in need of being saved and reconciled. To imagine one without the other is to have an incomplete picture, a distorted understanding. Jesus did not deny the validity of judgment--in fact it is the aspect of Jesus we expect to encounter when he comes again at the end time. He simply pointed to a second definition of what it means for him to be the Messiah. Both are necessary to understand more fully who he is.

As we seek to observe Advent, a time of waiting for the Messiah to come, we can prepare ourselves in more than one way. The first way is to do as both John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” We need to engage in thoughtful self-examination, in prayer, and in readiness to make the apologies and changes we need to make to be in right relationship with God and others. If we know that we would wish we had made different choices if Jesus chooses to return this Christmas, now is the time to ask God to help us do something about that. The second way to prepare for the Messiah to come is to recognize, as both Jesus and Dr. Remen did, that we have been given gifts and talents, some of which we may not be valuing or using as we could. Now is the time to recognize those abilities as gifts from God and to begin cultivating them for use in honoring and pleasing God. Christmas is, after all, a time for sharing gifts. And, as Jesus makes pointedly clear, the best gifts are seldom found under the tree.

Amen