Dec. 16, 2007 - What Do You Expect?

It can be very exciting to meet famous people that you have only heard or read about - to encounter in person an author, an actor, a leader in some area - and find yourself swooning for days after being in their presence. They can be bigger than life in person. I was even more impressed than I expected to be when I saw Elie Wiesel speak at the Pasadena Civic Center a few years ago; I was mesmerized when I saw President Clinton at Monticello the morning of his inauguration; I was in awe when I heard Maya Angelo at a clergy conference in New York City; I couldn't move when I saw Lleyton Hewitt play tennis out in the desert a few years ago - TV doesn't begin to capture how amazing these top athletes are. By contrast, have you ever had the experience of someone being built up so much, that when you finally encounter them, you're a bit disappointed?

I have found myself underwhelmed by people I had high expectations about seeing in person: Tom Brokaw seemed more style than substance, and Anne Lamott, one of my all-time favorite writers, was goofy and disorganized in person. She is much more powerful to me on paper.

I had a friend one time who studied in Israel one summer with me. After that program she had arranged to fly to Calcutta to work with Mother Theresa for a few weeks. I couldn't wait to hear what she thought of "Mother Theresa." Was she as powerful in person as she was in your mind?" I asked her. Well, she said, it was the most amazing encounter she had ever imagined - she said the woman was a force of nature with an intensity to back it up. At one point my friend, whose name is also Theresa, said Mother Theresa took her hand, looked her in the eye and told her that she was called to stay permanently and do this work in Calcutta. My friend said, "Do you know how hard it is to say no to Mother Theresa?" It took equal intensity from my friend Theresa to politely disagree with Mother Theresa and tell her that her calling was to fly home to Delaware and resume college.

Part of it is our expectation of what someone will offer us. We get in our minds that someone will deliver something to us and then we have to experience the reality of who they really are like in person. John the Baptist had encountered Jesus earlier in his life. He was so overwhelmed by his presence that when Jesus asked him to baptize him, John initially refused, feeling that he was not worthy. John the Baptist had been preaching about the Messiah who was to come and he believed that Jesus was this long-expected Messiah. A few years later, John the Baptist had been imprisoned by the authorities and was sitting in jail with no hope of being released. He heard occasional reports of what Jesus was saying and doing outside and it just didn't fit with John's expectations of the Messiah. John was a little? disappointed in what he was hearing. He had expected a more political messiah who would provide deliverance on a political, social and economic level. Instead, Jesus was traveling in a small area performing miracles and works of healing (Brian Stofregan, internet exegesis, Dec. 2007) Yes, Jesus was calling people to a new way of living and being in relationship with God and each other, but it just wasn't being delivered with the fervor that John had expected. John the Baptist had preached about the "Coming One (who) would baptize in the Spirit and fire, casting the wicked into a furnace of fire." (Stofregan quoting Keener's A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew). John is sitting in prison, would no doubt die in prison, and Jesus' miracles seemed very far away and unpowerful to him. So John says to his disciples, "Go and ask Jesus if he is the one who we have expected, or if we are to wait for another one?" John wants to know is Jesus the real deal?

The disciples dutifully go to Jesus and ask the question. Are you it? Is this all you have to offer? (I'm not sure what is harder - saying no to Mother Theresa or asking Jesus if that is all he's got!) Jesus doesn't seem to blink in response - "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." Jesus turns the whole conversation around and holds up the vulnerable in society and says that the Messiah's work is to teach others to attend to the needs of the hurting. That is the power of the Messiah. People see, they walk, they are restored to community, they hear, they are brought back to life and given hope. That is the work of the Messiah; and that is enough. Jesus does not apologize for not being more spectacular.

Jesus is subversive in a different way than was expected by some. He challenged the authorities by doing and saying things that were different. He didn't come in like a cowboy with guns blaring. He quietly preached and healed on the Sabbath, he publicly touched the untouchable, he deliberately sat down and broke bread with those who were hated and dejected. He wanted to turn the system upside down just like John, but the way he did it, looked and felt different. And, one of his primary tasks was to train disciples to do this work in his aftermath. Jesus wasn't going to change the world just by himself! It required waves of others to also have the same kind of commitment and focus.

Are we disappointed with God sometimes? When our lives are full of sadness and dashed hopes, do we expect God to reveal God's self in a different way? As we lean toward the birth of Jesus this year, what will this birth bring to us? Maybe we want a more spectacular God or Jesus. I know I would at times - heal this please! Make this better now! God, get in there and transform this hopeless situation, for I can't bear it any longer. I think if we are honest, we are all frustrated with God's timing sometimes. When we witness suffering we want an all-powerful God to sweep in and transform things.

Instead, we are anticipating the birth of a child who grew up to be a man who taught with his words and his deeds how to live differently in this world. Yes, it changed the world, but in a rippling wave rather than a mighty explosion. We are called to enter the wave of transformative living that Jesus modeled.

On NPR this week I heard a story about a woman named Pauleen Ledeen, a Jewish woman who died last month at the age of 97. She spent most of her adult life caring for Jewish prisoners incarcerated at the L.A. County Jail - up until the age of 96! She would go to the jail and scan 20,000 names, looked for people she thought might be Jewish. Then she would submit those names to the social workers and request to visit them. She offered them services like seeing a Rabbi, attending holiday services like Passover and holy days, she offered to visit their families. One former inmate named Carrie Newman said that she was a stark contrast to the attorneys and social workers who visit you in prison. She was like a grandmother, championing your recovery in and beyond jail, urging you to have hope and goals. Carrie Newman is now the Alternative Sentencing Coordinator at the L.A. Jail as a result of her experience with Pauleen Ledeen. She said if Judaism had saints, Pauleen would be a patron saint for them.

Did Pauleen Ledeen change the prison system? Probably not. Did she help every person in jail? No, her calling was to fellow Jewish folks. Did she impact many, many lives with her words and her actions? Most definitely. We are called to do the unglamorous work of living on behalf of others and advocating for wholeness and life. Imagine what the world would be like if we all took that calling seriously, and in our own arenas, we did just that? Or conversely, imagine what the world would be like if we did not reach out to people with compassion - if Mother Theresa had not ministered to all those thousands of dying folks and they just suffered and died alone; if we never fed the poor or housed the homeless and just left them on our streets. Can we live with that image of a world where people do not care for others? Whether we work in business, in education, in our communities, or in our churches, what if we invited people into a higher calling and a different way of being in this world? That is what Jesus modeled for us.

As we celebrate the third Sunday of Advent, we remember what Jesus said and did. We are invited to follow in his footsteps as we reach out to others in faith. Amen.