Advent III 2004

Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matt. 11:11)

When I agreed some Sundays ago to give the sermon here for the third week of Advent, all I could think of at the time was how much fun it would be, at least for me, to spend the whole time discussing the significance of the single pink candle in our Advent Wreath: to wax (as it were) poetic about how the Advent Wreath’s pattern, purple purple PINK purple, repeats over and over in our world and in many ways serves as the pattern for life itself. There’s just something fundamentally more realistic about purple purple PINK purple than purple purple purple PINK or, Heaven forbid, PINK purple purple purple, I think…and I’d have done my best to draw your attention to it. That whole sermon would have tried to be very G.K. Chestertonian; and I’m sure, even if I do say so myself, that you’d all have liked it very much had it succeeded. I still think you should think about it.

But now the time has come for me to actually deliver the sermon for you—and I find that I can’t stand here and do what I’d intended. Here’s why: when one gets to thinking about what one’s going to say in a sermon, one of course also ends up thinking about what exactly it means to give a sermon: not only what one’s going to say, that is, but how the sermon’s addressees are going to receive it. Usually that doesn’t pose much of a problem: there’s a congregation, all right, nice people, fairly polite, open minded, good listeners. But as I was preparing for this sermon, on this Sunday, before this group of people in particular, I realized that the whole usually unconcerning matter of whom I would be speaking to did indeed pose a problem for me, and quite a big one. It wasn’t, of course, that I realized that all of my fellow parishioners were close-minded heretical recidivists or anything like that: I still haven’t found that out. J Instead, the very open-mindedness and receptivity most everyone present here brings to worship here on most every Sunday stymied me: to what do we owe that open-mindedness and receptivity towards our preaching here, and how can those of us who are preaching not betray our auditors’ trust in us? The Episcopal Church at Cornell has received a handsome grant from the Diocese of Central New York in support of a project that some of its members have undertaken to reach out: to the disaffected, the unchurched, people who are unfamiliar with Christian liturgy and doctrine or people who have somehow been harmed from past contacts with Christianity, yet who still want—not knowing how, perhaps, or why they’ve been called to it—for either the first or the second time in their lives to give Christianity a chance. How does the message in a sermon, so often overlayered—to us invisibly—with dogma and doctrine, secret-handshakes and cryptic insider language, ever reach out to those people? How do we translate the unchanging and unchangeable Gospel into a language that they CAN read, let alone will want to?

I think you’ll agree with me that this is a real problem, and you’ll understand why I couldn’t stand here blithely preaching about how clever Advent Candles are once I’d thought about it. It’s not that one shouldn’t talk about liturgical symbols in one’s preaching, that doing so somehow would make a "bad sermon": thinking about the symbolism behind the Advent Wreath would probably have made a perfectly passable sermon (assuming I could have pulled it off). In any case, ignoring our Anglican Christian traditions dries our roots up and makes those traditions useless: we want to avoid at all costs, I think, the dangers of inviting newcomers into a house entirely lacking roof and floor and walls lest our guests interpret it as the desert, or an empty house lest visitors who come in search of life experience it as the grave. But just what does an exposition on the Advent Candles say to someone who’s not clued-in, just a seeker?

I was thinking about it and was reminded of a friend of mine who tells me that he’s done with organized religion, that he just doesn’t get how a bunch of people can sit down in a large room and listen uncritically to what the person standing up front behind the lectern tells them to do. Now I have to confess that I find my friend’s particular complaints about the evils of "organized religion" to be at times both tiresome and simpleminded—that may be obvious, since here I am—but he does help make my point: we should be very worried. Maybe. For if it can be hard for someone raised in the Christian tradition to respectfully consider what he hears another Christian tell him in a sermon, how much harder must it be for someone to whom Christianity is alien or even hostile to do so?

I was puzzling over these issues when I finally got down to looking at today’s readings. I won’t say that the answer to all my questions immediately jumped out at me after looking at them. In fact, I was positively disappointed at the nature of today’s Gospel, which seemed at the time to be rather disconnected and decontextualized—as in fact it is. Today’s reading, for instance, begins at Matthew 11 verse two. Why two? Because beginning with verse one "And when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities" would make us want to read what happened earlier so that we could find out what Jesus’s instructions were. And yet if we had begun with verse one, or even with chapter 10, I think the episode at hand would make a lot more sense. As for what today’s selection does contain, alas, it ends with the cryptic verse I had quoted for you at the beginning of the sermon: "Among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Just what does that mean? How can a mortal man be the greatest person ever in God’s opinion at the same time that, in God’s opinion, there are other mortal men who are greater—yet, also at the same time, in God’s own opinion also, also lesser? Those of you who think you know can think about something else right now. For those still confused by the verse, like me, here’s where I’d like to posit a solution. It seems to me at least possible that we can make a good deal of sense out of Matthew chapter 11 by looking around: forward to the rest of chapter 11, but first back to Matthew chapter 10.

In chapter 10, of course, we get Jesus’s "instructions" to the apostles, the ones referred to so obliquely in the verse we didn’t read. These instructions are, interestingly enough, all about preaching; I didn’t plan it that way! In fact, Jesus seems to have something to say concerning all the parties involved in preaching when he speaks to the disciples, whose role we’re supposed to be playing today.

First, the obvious: churches today are supposed to make an attempt to minister to those close at home to them, "the lost sheep of the children of Israel" in the disciples’ case, before branching out. That attempt might not be successful, Jesus warns quite explicitly in chapter 10, and we shouldn’t expect ourselves to achieve perfection before trying to attend to the outside world. But apparently we should make an effort. Second, churches today—if we are to go by the example set before them in Jesus’s instructions to the disciples—are to do things that indicate their divine mission. Jesus exhorts his followers to "heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons" all while saying who sent them, which in the disciples’ case meant crying out that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 10 ends with the observation that "whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." This is a ground-plan for ministry that any church can follow.

Next comes, however, the not-so-obvious, the harder advice to follow. "Do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say [to your captors]," Jesus admonishes, "for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." (Matt. 10:19-20) Similarly, "have no fear" of mortal opponents in verse 26. And "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" we read in chapter 10 verse 28, but "rather him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Then in verses 29-32 we find it again: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." Throughout Matthew 10 & 11 we find injunctions not to fear death or have concern about any earthly thing, even our relationships with other human beings: injunctions to be, as one of Chapter 10’s own paradoxical statements puts it, "as wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Being as wise as a serpent but as innocent as a dove means many things, of course, but one thing that it appears to mean in the context of our Gospel today is to have faith, to believe—to simply believe, with the innocence of a dove, what one has watched for with all the keenness of a serpent.

Consider who Jesus often calls "the least of these"—children, the sick who have been healed, the dead who have been raised. These haven’t questioned the reality of God when confronted by the signs forteold in the psalms and in Isaiah—or Jesus’s more mundane ministries—but have placed their trust there squarely. These "least in the kingdom of heaven" are indeed greater than John in faith, greater than the greatest prophet yet because they believe. Note Jesus’s annoyance in today’s Gospel when John sends messengers to question Him: "Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me"—unlike John. John, perhaps like many in this congregation, has been gifted in many ways...yet perhaps because of his gifts lacks the quality Jesus prizes most.

This all sounds like it’s shaping up to be a fairly bitter pill, if we have to preach with unshakeable faith to our neighbors in the world lest Jesus rebuke us; often can’t just get faith that easily. It should be some comfort, then, that Jesus follows his private rebuke of John with a much more public rebuke of those who failed to heed John’s message, and much more exasperated and sarcastic, too. Matthew 11 continues: "from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied unto John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears, let him hear. But to what shall I compare this generation?" Jesus asks, and we can almost hear him sigh in frustration. "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds." In chapter 10, Jesus had said something similar: "Whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay with him until you depart. As you enter the house, salute it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town."

In other words, don’t fret. Again and again, fear not. Some people won’t want to listen, and don’t; they have ears, Jesus might say, but don’t really wish to hear. Questioning what they see even with their own eyes, they also fail to see. Perhaps we can do little for those cases. Even so, we’re still called to do the job that’s been given to us to do (and it’s pretty clear to us, I hope, just what that job entails). We should go out and preach, wise as serpents and innocent as doves: not with a 100% success rate, no, but with a 100% effort rate, however, with the faith to back it up. There will, of course, come hard times. Several of the parts of Matthew 10 and 11 that I’ve avoided quoting so far say terrible things to think about: "Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against their parents and have them put to death," for instance, "and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake." But even these have a promise at the end, with Jesus’s express declaration that "he who endures to the end shall be saved."

It’s this sort of hard-scrabble ministry in the field that follows all good intentions faithfully carried out that should remind us most of our place on the Advent Wreath today. There are times when, after a long struggle in darkness, we find ourselves full of faith and joy, brimming with that power that comes from doing good works—only to be cast down a moment later by time or fate or fortune, bowed down and crippled and powerless. In those dark hours we learn just how similar we are to those to whom we minister, just as John, in prison, learned despite all his greatness of his own reproachable lack of faith. At those dark times it seems hard to believe that we’ll see a greater joy than the one we’ve seen, especially hard to believe that only one dark week remains before an even greater Christmas. Today, then, should be a day for steeling ourselves—not yet rejoicing. If it is true that on the first Sunday of Advent we’ve already put on the armor of light, now we need the resolve to keep that armor on. We need to the strength to finish our battles, fearlessly—even if God has sent us, mortal and fallible sheep, in the midst of powerful wolves.