Sermon Matthew 11:2-11 The Age of Miracles at Christmas
By Fr. Bill Wigmore
(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)
Tonight, weve reached the Third Sunday in Advent
Its the third week of readings that are meant to help get us ready for Christmas.
And if you were here with us last week,
you heard the story of John the Baptist.
John always appears on the Second Sunday of Advent.
He comes storming out of the desert dressed in camels hair
and warning us to turn our lives around:
Repent! Change your ways! He says,
Or look out for whats coming next.
(Weve heard his fiery message preached to us before
especially if were addicts or if weve ever been married
and it always pretty much fell on deaf ears.)
But then, every year, John puts in another appearance
He shows up on the third Sunday of Advent as well
And at first, we might be tempted to say: Hey, not you again!
We dealt with you last week Lets get on to something new!
But every year, Johns second appearance comes to teach us a very different lesson.
See, the lessons of the Third Sunday
always compare the message of John with the message of Jesus.
They come to drive home the point
that the messages of these two prophets were not even remotely the same.
John said: Repent, the Kingdom of God is coming!
Jesus said: Rejoice! The Kingdom of God is here.
When tonights story opens, Johns sitting in prison
Hes been arrested for stirring up the crowds and challenging the status quo.
King Herods had him thrown in the slammer for criticizing him
and for turning the crowds against him.
A few more days and hell chop Johns head off
and serve it to his mistress on a platter.
You didnt screw around with Herod and live very long to tell about it.
So, while Johns sitting there in chains,
hes starting to hear stories about one of his best and brightest students
a young carpenter from Nazareth.
Some of Jesus followers both back then and now get a little uncomfortable
admitting that John was actually Jesus teacher;
but the record seems pretty clear that he was.
John had quite a reputation and a huge following
Jesus was drawn to him and he asked John to baptize him.
Its very likely that Jesus stays with John for some time,
learning all that he can
But then, it seems equally clear, that the teacher and his student parted ways.
Jesus travels north – and his ministry goes off in a different direction too.
Theres very little evidence that Jesus continued baptizing people
He wasnt so interested in warning the crowds about what was to come;
Jesus seemed much more interested in welcoming them
into what he said was already here.
Both he and John called that thing the Kingdom of God
John said: Get ready cause its coming soon
Jesus said: Start the party now cause its already here.
And maybe another thing that made these two men different
was who it was that God was inviting to come into his kingdom.
For Jesus, it was the outcasts and the broken
the ones living on the edge and about to fall off
These were the ones that Jesus seemed drawn to
probably because they were the ones desperate enough
to say YES to his invitation
to leave their egos behind and come follow him.
So Jesus didnt travel to fancy Jerusalem;
instead, he carried the message out into the boondocks to all
the backward, little towns of his day
to Capernaum and to Nazareth to Bastrop and out to Buda.
Some of the people asked: Can anything good come out of Nazareth or out of Buda?
But John thought maybe it could Hed seen God do stranger things.
So he sends some of his men to ask Jesus,
Are you the one weve been promised? Are you Gods Anointed?
The one whos going to come and lead our people to freedom?
But, as we said, Jesus was different from John
and if he was to be the long-hoped for messiah
then his was going to be a kingdom very different from what they were expecting.
We tend to think of Jesus as a miracle worker and he was –
But its becoming more and more clear
that there were other healers and miracle workers back in his day too.
And Jesus wasnt so much remembered
for his miracles being so much bigger than the other guy.
But what he was remembered for and what blew everyone away
was who he performed those miracles for.
See back there in the Jewish culture the culture that raised both John & Jesus there was this thing called the purity code, and much of the Jewish religion was built on it,
The purity code told the people who was clean and who was not
Who was acceptable to God and fit to come inside the camp
and who was impure and had to stay out!
Back then, they thought that the sick & the lame were being punished for their sins –
And the blind & the lepers were being punished for doing something even worse.
The prostitutes and the tax collectors were right up there with them
and collectively, they were all the scum of the earth.
You couldnt so much as touch one of them
and if for some strange reason you did
then the purity code gave you a whole bunch of things you had to do
to make your own self clean.
Getting clean often involved sacrifices of lambs and other animals
that put it outside the reach of the poor.
So they were trapped both in their sickness and in their sin.
They were truly the hopeless ones
But then one day this carpenter arrived in their towns
and he started turning their worlds and
turning their religion totally upside down.
He began to eat his meals with them, and heal them.
He touched them and he began telling them what sounded like some pretty good news:
He said: Youre Gods very own kids and youre welcome in his Kingdom!
He said Gods kingdom was being opened up to them right here and right now
all they had to do was take a step inside
and then do just one more thing:
they had to welcome others into it too
They had to welcome them in just they way they were being welcomed.
The more hopeless the ones outside were
the more welcome they oughta be made to feel.
And so when those messengers from John finally meet up with Jesus
and ask him if hes the one he tells them this
He tells them: take a look around and see whats happening here:
Here, the blind see again and the lame walk;
Here, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear;
Here, the ones who were as good as dead are being raised,
and the poor have the good news preached to them free of charge.
Truly, the age of miracles has come, Jesus said.
And blessed are those who dont take any offense at what Im doing.
Well, then as now, there were people who took offense.
The rich & the powerful were especially offended and threatened.
And just like the rich & the powerful & the religiously
proper were the ones who had John killed
pretty soon theyd take care of this little
nobody from Nazareth too.
But the age of miracles had come
And once it came, once people came to believe it had come,
and that it had come to include even the likes of them,
then there was no going back to the way things were before.
That little group from backwards Galilee was now on fire
And it was a fire that would spread all around the world.
The word went out to women and to lepers
to the blind and to the lame to Samaritans and prostitutes and Prodigal sons
Wherever the weak, and the wounded, and the oppressed heard it
Wherever they heard God speaking directly to them welcoming them wanting them – the ones that nobody else wanted it lit a fire in their hearts
It did then and it still does today.
Our reading from the Big Book is titled a Vision for You.
And I know, when I first came into the rooms,
what attracted me wasnt the brilliant theology of the Big Book
or the brilliant oratory of the speakers I heard.
What attracted me was the vision that had grabbed hold
of the people I met sitting around the tables.
They were people who were down
some of them were so far down they should have been counted
out and they knew it, and I knew it,
and everyone who saw them knew it too.
But for some strange, mysterious reason
they werent down and out any more.
For some strange and mysterious reason
they were alive again – and their lives were filled
with new meaning, and purpose, and power.
They talked about a loving God who had found them, and welcomed them back home
They talked about a fellowship that didnt care
where they came from or what they had done
only that now they wanted to change
and now they were willing to help others do the same.
And the Age of Miracles is what the Big Book says has arrived for us too. But being in sobriety is very much like being in the kingdom that Jesus preached:
Some days were in it and some days its not even close.
Some days were happy, joyous & free
And some days were not doing much better than Herod
Were out looking to chop somebodys head off!
Any Baptist will do!
Jesus said his kingdom is here and now
Its right in front of us Hiding in the very last place wed ever think to look for it
Its in our lives and in our hearts,
Its in how we love & treat ourselves
and in how we love & treat one another.
Were all weak and wounded Were all prisoners to something –
All blind, and deaf, and dead to something or to someone were
trying to keep outside our camp.
Maybe its an old resentment
or a very deep shame about something weve done
something weve been told is unacceptable or unforgivable
Maybe that would be true for John but its not true for Jesus.
With him its always now and with him were always in.
Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?
Jesus says thats completely up to us
But before we turn and walk away
he invites us to stay just long enough to look around
and see whats happening in this camp:
The blind drunks see
and the ones who fell down a lot are learning how to walk;
People who felt like lepers are being touched and cleansed,
Every day new drunks & addicts are being made whole;
Even the ones who were as good as dead are being raised!
Truly, the age of miracles has come.
Dont leave before the miracle happens and the kingdom come for you too.Amen.
Copyright 2008 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission.