Pastor Dan Scott Sermon Notes for February 17, 2013 The Question John The Baptist Asked Jesus Luke 7: 19 -28 We tend not to think about John the Baptist very much. He is in the New Testament and we realize that he is closely akin to the Lord somehow, but beyond that he seems rather peripheral to the gospel. Our view of him differs though from that of the New Testament writers for whom John the Baptist is a pivotal character, likened in one place to the best man in a wedding. Luke begins his gospel with the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist and mentions him several times, not only in the gospel but also in the Book of Acts. Early Christian leaders had to distinguish the words and work of John the Baptist from that of Jesus in ways that did not dishonor him, but which nonetheless reserved the highest honor for the Lord. In that light, Eastern Orthodox Christians do not always refer to John with the title familiar to us but rather refer to him as John the Forerunner. In the West we think of him mostly for the sacrament he introduced, while in the east they think more of the historic role he carried out. However we imagine John the Baptist, the Forerunner, he is obviously very important, not only to the early disciples but to the Lord himself. It is no small thing, after all, for the Lord to have said of John, “no one born of women is greater than John.” His message was about repentance and preparation. He preached that people who professed a covenant with God should act accordingly. Being an Israelite didn’t impress him if the Israelite in question didn’t live in a different way than the heathen. His ministry was successful for a season. Many of the Jewish leaders walked from Jerusalem to the Jordan to be baptized by him. That was no small thing; it’s a long and arduous walk for one thing. What’s more, baptism had been an incitation rite for women who wanted to convert to Judaism. By accepting baptism, the Jewish leaders were demonstrating their acceptance of John’s charge that they had not been living like children of covenant. All of this attention came to an abrupt end though when Herod had John arrested for speaking out against the king’s immorality.

John remained in prison until that faithful evening when Herod was hosting a wild party and asked the daughter of the woman he had been living with to dance. Salome’s dance has become famous in history because the old king was so smitten by it he blurted out that she could have anything she wanted, which makes us know that it was not a square dance she performed. Square dances can be very nice but they rarely provoke this sort of reaction! Well, Salome was already prepared for this. Her mother knew how the old lecherous monarch would react and was out for revenge. John the Baptist’s days had been numbered ever since he had called her out. So Salome responded that all she wanted was John’s head on a platter. That’s how the mighty man of God, the greatest man born of women, died; beheaded by an old man intoxicated by a young girl’s dance. Not a very glorious way to go. We would expect something a bit more dignified than this for the Forerunner, the one who came in the spirit of Elijah, the one who so humbly said, “I must decrease and he must increase.” But there is it, the pin that bursts the bubble of heresies like the prosperity gospel. As it turns out, even God’s choice vessels often go through great suffering and indignity. May I add doubt? John the Baptist had some doubt in those final weeks. Sitting in prison, the nasty rat infested feces covered hell holes that the ancient world thought as normal treatment for criminals, John had doubts. We know this because of the question he asked Jesus, the most important question of his life and, just perhaps, the most important question ever for anyone: “are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” Behind that question are many other questions. If I am the Lord’s servant, why am I in this mess? If Jesus is good and powerful and I am doing his work, why doesn’t he come and deliver me? Why is Herod winning; this selfish, power-hungry, lecherous traitor? Why is he calling the shots while I wallow in this filthy hole? Am I wrong about the God we serve or have I made some sort of mistake that has made him terribly unhappy with me? So he sends some of his followers to ask Jesus the question that summed all of these things up: are you the Messiah or not?

When Jesus heard the question he didn’t say, “Who does he think he is?” He didn’t rail against John the Baptist or prepare some strong defense. He merely said, tell John what you see. Tell him that the deaf hear, the blind see and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” For some reason, Jesus thought that John would understand and be comforted. We must assume therefore that Jesus was giving John an answer he would understand, that the things he had mentioned would be sufficient signs of the Kingdom of God: the deaf hear, the blind see, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Is that it? Jesus doesn’t say, “Tell John that my theology is solid and dependably orthodox.” He didn’t say, “tell John that we have 5,000 in attendance every week.” He didn’t say, “Tell John that we are electing our people to serve in the Sanhedrin and will soon have enough of a majority to make people behave.” No, the answer is that “the deaf hear, the blind see and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” This being the signs of the kingdom of God according to Jesus, what are we to say about modern churches and denominations. When we look into these religious organizations do we see these same signs of healing and compassion? As the disciples of John walked away, Jesus added these words “tell him, ‘blessed is he who is not offended in me.” Jesus said in another place that from all the prophets until John the Baptist that the Kingdom of God had suffered violence. How many messengers of peace have ended their lives at the hands of violent people? John the Baptist is not an anomaly. All through history, in every culture, peaceful men and women have often suffered for the words they preach and for the life they live. We are not different from all of them. We too often fall for the powerful people of the world who grab and conquer, and who can invite us into the corridors of power. Who wants to side with the poor, or the sick, or the addicted when one knows if he plays his cards right he may get invited to Herod’s house. Who would not rather drink fine wine with Herod than sit in mud and feces with a loser like John the Baptist? Sometimes, not even John the Baptist wants to be in his role. That seems evident by his question.

He is not unlike Jeremiah who once promised that he would not preach anymore if the king would just pull him out of the hole he was in. In Jeremiah’s case it was a hole that had once been under an outhouse and he had been lowered into the gunk up to his armpits. That got old real quick! He was ready to promise anything to get out. Nonetheless, when he was released, he could not keep his promise because, as he said, “It was like fire shut up in my bones.” That’s where John the Baptist is when he asks the question of Jesus, “are you the One who is to come or should we look for another?” Jesus follows up his words to John the Baptist with a warning to be careful of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of the Sadducees. These are powerful religious people – legalists on one hand and rationalists on the other. One group wants to control you with rules and other wants to sneer at your piety. One denies the power of God and the other denies the love of God. “Beware,” Jesus says. Why does he tell us to beware? Because each of them equally obscure, distort and alter the message we are called to preach. Both of them rob the gospel of its power. But if not rules, how can we be holy? Without the favor of important people in society, how can we do our work? How in God’s name does it make sense to “heal the sick and preach the gospel to the poor?” Let’s be reasonable. How can the poor financially support the work of God? What do the sick have to offer anyone? We need famous athletes and celebrities to draw people in. We need to shape our appeal to those with the power and resources required to do God’s work. That is the model for ministry for most successful churches in our country. But just ask yourself, “What are the kingdom effects of this approach?” In this wonderful area in which we live, the gospel has been preached for two hundred years. We are proud to refer to our nation as a Christian country. And yet, we glorify violence as a form of entertainment and hardly bad an eye to hear that we have murder rates that would shame most other nations. In this state, where perhaps as many people go to church each Sunday as anywhere in the world, huge percentages of the population can barely read. Addictions of all kind, legal and illegal oppress great numbers. The gap between haves and have not’s seems to not bother us, and we even create theological justification for maintaining the status quo.

Can we not ask of our churches – are you the representatives of Jesus or should we look elsewhere? And, if they represent Jesus, we cannot accept the answer, “we have great facilities, or we have excellent music, or we have the best programs in town. We want to hear someone say, “See for yourself! The deaf hear, the blind see, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” One might think it unreasonable to think that these are meant to be enduring signs of the Kingdom of God, except that we have historical records of times and places where these very signs erupted. I could mention many such times and places but allow me to use the example I recently gave at a retreat for economists. *** A few centuries ago, the English aristocracy trembled at the news from France. Dukes were being decapitated and the wealthy despoiled of their goods. The poor were rioting. France was wallowing in anarchy. What would keep the same things from occurring in England, where the conditions were similar? In England too, the poor shivered in the cold as ladies danced at balls and bishops discussed philosophy at Oxford. In England, as in France, the class divide had become unsustainable. The wealthy didn’t have enough money to hire enough soldiers or build high enough walls to keep out people who were hungry and desperate. Catastrophe was coming. The aristocrats knew it; they just didn’t know when. Then, something unexpected happened. An Oxford doctor of theology went to a prayer meeting where he experienced the presence of God. Gradually, he embraced a call to preach the gospel to England’s poor. In time, coal miners and farmers, street vendors and orphans were crowding to hear John Wesley preach and to sing Charles Wesley’s songs. In a few years, twenty percent of England’s population would become Methodists. They too would experience the presence of God, the social lift that comes with understanding the gospel, and the intellectually transforming energy that comes from wrestling with Holy Scripture. Wesley preached a gospel of hope. It encouraged poor people not to remain where they were. He gave them a ramp upon which they could walk out of poverty and ignorance and into dignity and productivity. He loved them as they were but loved them too much to leave them where they were. We need to pay attention to this history.

George Barna recently noted that the poor are the most un-churched group in American society, and that this is particularly true of poor English-speaking Whites. His research shows that White poor people are actually falling away from the church in great numbers. In the younger generations, the statistics become even more alarming. A recent edition of Time magazine focused on the accelerating pace at which American culture is shrinking its middle class. There are many factors to blame, not the least of which is a native working force that is now largely uneducated and unskilled compared to that of other industrialized nations. In other words, too large a proportion of our middle class young adults don’t know the basics of Western Civilization. They can’t read at adequate levels. They don’t know geography. They can’t speak a language other than their own and may not do even that well. They have inadequate math skills. They are not aware of the basic scientific discoveries of the last many decades. For all these reasons, American workers are having an increasingly difficult time competing with their Polish, English, Spanish, Russian, Indian, Korean, and Brazilian counterparts in a globalized economy. Corporations can often get more for their money elsewhere. America’s poor need a ramp to climb out of these challenging circumstances. The solution is a spiritual one, although at present few of our churches are offering it because too many of them are too focused on lesser things. This was true in Wesley’s day as well. The Church of England was about doing well rather than about becoming good. The rabble was staying away from church because there was nothing there for them.The English church had become a bastion of the status quo. The only alternative visible to the English church leaders was a French-style revolution, which many were prepared to fight to the death. Then came a God size solution, and with it, a massive economic rebirth for Great Britain, in which all classes of society ultimately participated and from which they all ultimately benefited. Wesley’s message was good news to the poor. For the first time in their lives they had no hurdle to jump. They could get into the club simply because they breathed air. Each generation of Methodists could walk up another rung of Wesley’s ramp to ever-higher levels of virtue, knowledge and skill. That’s why the French revolution never reached England. Jesus got there first. He arrived through committed and informed believers who dedicated themselves to serving others in his name.

The aristocracy sneered at the Methodists. They kept enjoying their port and their cigars, as their humble neighbors became citizens of another world. But their poor neighbors no longer cared. They had forgotten how to view themselves as poor. They also did not view their neighbors as rich. They saw them as lost. They no longer hated their lost wealthy neighbors. They had pity for them and preached to the upper classes that same gospel that had liberated them. The Methodists won the class war by simply ignoring it. They were too busy flourishing to give it much thought. *** The Methodist revival not only saved souls or enflamed emotions. It left deep contributions to the world in the form of hospitals, universities, and orphanages. It gave us the Salvation Army and Pentecostalism. It evangelized this country so that by 1950, there were more Methodist churches in America than post offices. Church growth that lacks the components of transformation and healing fails the Lord’s test for discerning who and what represents the Kingdom of God. This is the message Luke presents both in his gospel and in the Book of Acts: the Kingdom of God is an exorcism, a deliverance of individuals and communities from the power of evil by healing the sick and bringing hope to the poor. It is about coming to those who are bound with power that flows from compassion rather than from a desire to aggrandize either the minister or the institution. It’s about shining light into a dark place even if the guardians of darkness object and react. If we walk this path, there will be hardship and sometimes persecution. We will get weary and sometimes despair. And we may stop from time to time to ask, “is this really the right path? I hear Herod’s party and they seem to be having lots of fun in there? Why can’t I walk that path? And in response, we will hear Jesus say, “Look around you. The deaf hear, the blind see, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. So don’t be offended. The question is a good one. But there is an answer. And the answer is to keep on doing the real thing. Dan Scott Sr. Pastor Christ Church Nashville