Saturday, December 8, 2001

BCP - Advent 3 A - 2001

Sermon for Third Sunday of Advent
The Gospel according to Mathew 11:2-11

Now John had heard in prison what Christ was doing and he sent his disciples to ask him, 'Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?' Jesus answered, 'Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, those suffering from virulent skin-disease are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life and the good news is proclaimed to the poor; and blessed is anyone who does not find me a cause of falling.'
As the men were leaving, Jesus began to talk to the people about John, 'What did you go out into the desert to see: A reed swaying in the breeze? No? Then what did you go out to see? A man wearing fine clothes? Look, those who wear fine clothes are to be found in palaces. Then what did you go out for? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet: he is the one of whom scripture says: "Look, I am going to send my messenger in front of you to prepare your way before you."
In truth I tell you, of all the children born to women, there has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.



There was a story some years ago in the Reader's Digest of a woman looking for the perfect birthday card for her husband. She found one that said on the outside: “Sweetheart, you're the answer to my prayers.” On the inside it said, “You're not what I prayed for exactly, but apparently you're the answer.”

The story in the Gospel this morning reflects the same ambivalence. It is familiar to us all. John the Forerunner shared his people's hope of the coming of the Messiah - a hero of David's line who would expel the foreign conquerors and would establish a kingdom of righteousness and peace: a kingdom in which the lion would lie down with the lamb and righteousness would pour down like the dew. The preaching of the Kingdom of God is central to the ministry of both John and Jesus and John had named Jesus as the One during his ministry at the Jordan; but now he was in prison for scolding Herod for taking his brother's wife, time was marching on and Jesus was not doing what was expected. He sends and asks: “Are you the One; or do we look for another.”

Jesus' answer is, as is frequently the case, indirect. He sends back to John the ways in which the prophecies are being fulfilled: the blind receive their sight, the poor have the good news preached to them, etc.” This is a familiar path for us. The Kingdom is not what was expected. It usually ends in a homiletic flourish in holding that John had it wrong and that the Kingdom was more a matter of compassion, mercy, healing, justice (and, usually “within”).

Well, even on this reading, one might still ask John's question. Two thousand years later, and particularly after this last century, we might ask where that Kingdom is too.

The disjunction between the expectation and reality has, over the course of history, been dealt with in one of three ways:

Ignoring the teaching of Jesus, the Church or “Christian” nations have tried to impose their understanding of the Kingdom. Included in this are the Messianic and apocalyptic movements now at work (The End of All Things). What these are about is forcing God's hand and precipitating the “End Times”, although with wildly different scenarios.

Utopian movements which withdraw from the general culture and establish the Kingdom in microcosm. (like the Amish or Mennonites) - but some become cults.

Accepting the “inwardness” of the Kingdom, trying to imitate Jesus while leaving the “external” pretty much on its own. This stresses patience and hope - profoundly important graces and virtues for Christians. But the Kingdom is pushed off into the indefinite future.

The latter, however, leaves untouched “the way things work” and set up deep ambiguities. For example, the criminal justice system, and especially the practice of capital punishment continues a pre-Christian understanding. Instead of being a matter of protecting us from each other, it is mostly about revenge and retribution. And in the months since 9/11, we see how for most of us, security is more important than freedom and fairness. In the last two decades, we have stood by while there has been the most remarkable re-distribution of wealth upwards in history, and the present administration is proposing to accelerate it under the cloak of the War on Terrorism. And many Christians are troubled by the compromises they must make to “get along.”

Let us take as given that : it is beyond our power to establish the Kingdom by our own efforts, that we must wait on the power of God; and that we can't impose it or force it. Let us also take for granted that while this age lasts, we will always have to live with “dissonance” as Bede spoke of a few weeks ago. But we are still left with the question of whether, if I may put it this way, the Kingdom is private or public. Or, rather, is it entirely private now with its public nature to be manifest only in the future; or is there some way we can understand ourselves as living it now to some extent? After all, we pray several times a day “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

It seems to me that the key to this is the Incarnation, the principle feast of which we are preparing to celebrate. The Incarnation is an inherently public event - God becomes a concrete part of the way things are; He enters history. Jesus didn't just deliver a corpus of interior teachings for the enlightenment of souls; but he lived the Kingdom, right then and there. He showed compassion to the wayward; he spoke to truth to those in authority; he made choices against his own self-interest when that was required for fidelity to the God. He wasn't waiting; he was practicing the Kingdom.

This is what the monastic movement was all about. It wasn't meant to be just the venue of interior spiritual development; but a place for the public practice of the Kingdom: justice, compassion, humility, obedience, and so on. That is why Benedict says that the workshop where we practice the tools of the spiritual craft is not our own souls, but the enclosure of the monastery (i.e. among the brothers) and the guesthouse with those who come there.

We are called not just to wait and hope for the Kingdom, but to practice it: in our families, our Churches; but today I want to emphasize the practice of the Kingdom in the public sphere, as citizens, but the way we vote, by how we spend our money and energies. We can't make the Kingdom come; but neither can we practice the Kingdom of this world and expect to see the Kingdom of God.


Br. Douglas Brown

(c)2001 Holy Cross Monastery