How Many Messiahs?
April 22, 2007
Luke 3:15-20
Everyone was waiting for the Messiah to come. There had been enough suffering. They felt they had learned their lessons. It was time for the Messiah to come. Everyone knew that he would come from David’s family. Everyone knew God was going to send him. Even the Roman Empire knew that he was coming, and they feared the presence, the possibility, the transforming power. So, they kept an ear open for any news regarding a Messiah. Because there would be very little time and opportunity to make sure that the message of transformation didn’t spread. Obviously, the stakes were high, if a Messiah were coming all those in power would be upset. This is not something the powerful would be rooting for. This is something that could grow and swell until everything is turned upside down and life as one knew it would be over. Everyone was waiting for the Messiah to come.
And then John showed up. He was charismatic. He was devout. He saw things in a new way, but was loyal to living with God. He was orthodox in new and exciting ways. He took the vow of poverty before it was invented. John was high on God and willing to confront anyone about where the Godlight was out in their lives. John never had an off day, a moment missed, he was present. He was so embodied that he could pierce you with his gaze looking right into your soul. John said the things no one wanted to hear. John called out to all those who would listen and those who wouldn’t and confronted them with their own choices and lives. John was a Wildman because he lived solely by the premise of his call from God. No other standard, only how he himself saw God. And that rocked the boat of everyone he met, particularly those who held power. He was a man that could outstand everyone because the only thing he cherished was the thing they couldn’t take, his faith.
This charismatic man of simple means had followers. He confronted and transformed. He offered people forgiveness of sins and new life through baptism. He was a new beginning, a doorway, a messiah. He offered something to hold on to and powerful transformation just by being with him. But, John was not fooled. I’m not the Messiah, in fact I’m not good enough to even untie his sandals. Nope. I’m not him. I have to work with water but he’s going to work with the force of God, known as the wind or the Spirit of God to give new birth. Finally, the Messiah will bring the good news of judgment. For at last, it will matter how you are living and being, and if it is not in accordance with the love of God, if we screw it all up, we have an opportunity for a do over, a repeat, a sequel if we just admit what we’ve done and learn from our obstacles, challenges and mistakes and begin again. John reminds, this is not me, this is not my work. Someone greater is coming.
It is important for the writer of this gospel known to us as a writer called Luke, it is important for us to realize that some 90 years after the death of Christ people are beginning to fight over who was the messiah. What the real message of Jesus was about versus what the message of John was. Who was the greater prophet, John or Jesus. Who had the best disciples. And through this scene today, Luke is interrupting John’s message. Yes, John is good. John offers a pathway but it is not the journey of the Messiah. You can get to the Messiah through John’s offerings but he is not actually the messiah. He is one who prepares the way for the Messiah because he is confidant, passionate, direct and fearless. John is a man with a call that will not keep him silenced.
But, because of John’s simple truth telling ability he quickly made enemies with power. He was quickly in trouble with the legal messiah, Herod. John spoke out about Herod’s marriage to his own niece. John had criticized her for leaving a good marriage to marry her uncle which broke the holiness codes. Power and dominant culture does not like to be criticized by another person’s values. Rome did not like to be criticized or held to any religious system. Herod’s desire to be the only messiah in town with leadership qualities and disciples shut John up by throwing him into jail. The town was only big enough for one Messiah, and that was Herod.
We have seen this fight for power. We have seen this concept that some are doing things for their own warped sense of personal gain and control while others are clearing a pathway for many to walk together in peace more united. It has been a gruesome week of comparing this exact kind of struggle.
We had two people who tried to be Messiah’s this week. Two people who took the lives of others into their own hands. Two people who took their own deaths into their own hands. And two people who desperately tried to change reality with their own forces. One messiah at Virginia Tech and one messiah at one of the Nasa training centers. Two men completely convinced that they had to stop the way life was happening and teach the world a lesson. Mr. Phillips felt his call and life work were going to be invalidated and he was going to be fired. This ignited in him an unquenchable fire that allowed him to kill his boss and then turn the gun on himself. Mr. Cho felt he was cast aside, marginalized, and abused by the dominant culture. He felt called to attack all signs of status, dominant culture, unethical values, and meanness. Neither one of these men professed to be the Messiah, but they took on the work of God by ending lives and leading the way to ending lives. They also took on the work of God by making statements on how life should be lived. Mr. Cho also backed up his work by quoting Scripture, the experience of Jesus on the cross, the differences between being marginalized and dominant culture, the difference between professing a certain way of life and living a certain way of life.
So, how do we sort out the Messiahs? How do we sort out who we are going to follow? We need to sort out our own values and then we need to process, where our actions lead us, the consequences of those actions and again check them with our values. We must connect our thinking with our hearts. We must compare our outcomes with the love of God.
Mr. Cho was certainly a victim of hate crimes. He was abused by his peers for not having a good grasp of the English language. He was cast off by girls and women at first for being weird then in college for being mean and cruel. He was isolated, angry, distant and disconnected. Mr. Phillips has most certainly dedicated his life to this work. He felt tormented by his boss for not honoring that life work by suggesting his termination through performance reviews that were substandard. He was afraid, angry and felt backed into a corner.
We have created these Messiah’s. We have done this ourselves. We have given these two men all of the skills they need, including the indignation, that their being wronged is more important than the breath of life. We have given them access and support to right their wrongs in any way deemed possible, including taking other lives and then their own. We have fully supported their rise to Messiahship. We have done this by scorning others. We have done this by creating insiders and outsiders. WE have done this by pushing people beyond their limits and not acknowledging their work. We have done this by making work more important than life. We have done this by backing it all with a Christian speak that is never backed by actions. As a country we value brutal force and retaliation. We are quickly teaching our children an eye for an eye. Even more dangerous we are teaching a hurt for a hurt, living should be easy and welcoming. We have done this by inviting the world to come to the land of opportunity and the melting pot. And then resenting them for being here. We laugh at their lack of English we make fun of their lack of education and then we slaughter their spirits for not fitting in.
John and Jesus both had disciples and surely Cho and Phillips in the following weeks will have disciples. But, we as the followers of John and Jesus must not step into these stories without a more critical eye and passionate commitment. This is the example of separating the wheat from the chaff. Farmers would throw the wheat with a shovel or pitch for up into the air and the wind would carry the chaff away. Or they would just pour the wheat from one container to another on a windy day creating the same effect. The goal was to keep the wheat in its integrity. Farmers also know even today that if a wheat field catches fire, it will burn with an explosive and unquenchable fire that can not be contained.
I would like to suggest that both Mr. Phillips and Mr. Cho were human beings, people that held the face of God within them, they were part of the wheat. WE are all part of the wheat. But, there are things that can ignite within us an unquenchable fire of hatred, revenge, violence, anger. That is the chaff, that is the stuff we must give to the Spirit to carry away. Because when we engage that stuff, it creates an unquenchable fire and instead burns ourselves up. Both Jesus and John were interested in allowing people to be more of who God called them to be: loving, compassionate, merciful. Both Jesus and John came with messages of hope and opportunity to live in a more united and harmonious world. This is why they threatened the power of the day, if people become united those who stand upon others will eventually be thrown over. Jesus and John were transforming slaves into free persons by just inviting them to table and giving them a family and a name. Mr. Cho and Mr. Phillips were simply into burning people up. They acted out their frustration and fears by creating a world where they dominated those who harmed them. Neither Jesus nor John were interested in dominating. Neither Jesus nor John were interested in sticking it to the empire. Neither Jesus nor John were willing to incite others for anything except healing, forgiveness, transformation.
We as people of the Jesus movement should take these two incidents very seriously. There are people who are taking our words and making war out of them. And, we as part of the dominant culture, we are supporting them with our actions, our silence, our money. We as people of the Jesus movement need to value living and this gift of life that we have. We must fight for the living. We must fight for the giftedness of the life around us. When we allow and support bullying. When we allow and support poverty. When we allow and support education for the people who can afford it. When we allow and support slavery because of a lack of paperwork. We are choosing to be disciples of Mr. Cho and Mr. Phillips. When we meet our neighbor. When we take their hurts seriously. When we offer pathway to a bigger love, a wider welcome, food to quench our hunger, water to quench our thirst we are being disciples of John and Jesus.
It is not difficult to find a messiah these days. It was not difficult to find a messiah in Luke’s time. It was not difficult to find a messiah in the days of Jesus and John. But, we are not the people seeking a messiah. We are not the people called to need a new messiah. We are the people who are called to live in the witness of Jesus. When we forward the tools of killing and violence from games to weapons we are not living in the witness of Jesus we are living in the witness of Cho. When we forward the message that wielding power through violence is equivalent to the cross we are not living in the witness of Jesus we are living in the witness of Herod and Cho. When we decide to take someone out through our verbal slurs and shunning we are not living in the witness of Jesus we are living in the witness of Herod. I can see no better time to make a commitment to throw off the chaff. To let that stuff that is making us volatile and combustible off interrupting a message of loss for a message of love. Love, love, love. Let us pray. Oh Holy Spirit, wind of God blow through us. Pull from us our hatred, our anger, our resentment. Help us to see how transforming that energy creates a new life open to hope. Help us to see how transforming that energy can foster new relationships, new eyes to see the world and new hope that violence will not always be our answer, death will not be an acceptable way out. Help us to nurture our living that all may be welcomed, that all may be named, seen and fed. We pray all these things in the name of the Messiah who must not be interrupted, the loving, compassionate witness, Jesus the Christ. Amen.