Homily for the Third
Sunday of Advent 11 December 2016
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait
for another?” Matthew 11:3
“Snap out of it!” The line that caps one of the
greatest moments ever on the silver screen.
The movie? Moonstruck,
the Oscar-winning 1987 romantic comedy starring Cher and Nicholas Cage.
Not to make a virtue of sleeping with your
future-brother-in-law two weeks before your wedding, but in the famous scene,
Loretta Castorini (Cher) has just slept with her future-brother-in-law, Ronny
Cammareri (Nicholas Cage).
As day breaks on Brooklyn Heights, Loretta has buyer’s
remorse and swears to Ronny, “Last night never happened and we’re gonna take
this to our coffins.”
Ronny protests, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Loretta asks.
Ronny’s answer? “I’m in love with you!”
And not to make a virtue of domestic violence, but Loretta
hauls off and smacks him in the face once … twice. And then the immortal line:
“Snap out of it!”
In other words, “Ronny! Reality!”
Same sort of thing happens to John the Baptist when he’s
expecting the Terminator, and he gets Jesus.
John’s reaction? “Jesus, are you the one who is to come ─ are you the Messiah? ─ or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus’ response? “Johnny! Snap out of it!”
That’s because, right up until the political tide turned against John, he had been riding
high. Just about everybody was checking out his in-your-face message: “The Messiah
is here! The End is near!”
But, for John, that was then, this is now. Where is
John today?
The wilderness … the River Jordan. Gone.
Reality? A prison cell.
The crowds, the baptisms, the paparazzi. Gone.
Reality? Only a handful of disciples left. And
they’re set to walk.
John’s expectation that Jesus — pronto! — would usher in “The End” not
with a whimper, but with a bang. Gone.
Reality? Fizzle where John smelled sizzle.
That is, John has put all his chips on Jesus. For example, “I preach repentance,” John argues. “Jesus
will bring judgment!
“I warn, ‘The ax is poised at the root of the trees.’
Jesus will level the whole forest!
“I baptize with water. He will baptize with the
Holy Spirit and fire!
“I breathe the cracking, dry air of the desert. Jesus
will be all blast-furnace!”
These are John’s expectations.
Problem is, given what Jesus delivers, are these expectations reasonable?
To find out, John sends a
delegation to confront Jesus. “You’ve got the ball now,” they charge, “but you
haven’t run with it. Jesus, are you the one we’ve been waiting for?”
Jesus’ answer? “Yes, I’m the one. But your
expectations are out of whack.”
That’s because Jesus isn’t in the business of meeting
others’ expectations. He’s in the business of creating God’s reality.
And that’s a reality that’s equal parts results, hope,
and challenge.
Jesus tackles first the results and the hope.
“Snap out of it,” Jesus says. “I get results: The
blind receive their sight, the lame walk. I cleanse lepers and the deaf hear. But,
it’s obvious, not all the blind, the lame, lepers, and the deaf … just yet. But
there’s reason to hope.
“Snap out of it! I raise the dead. But not all the
dead … just yet. Hope.
“Snap out of it! I preach good news to the poor, but
have you noticed? Not all the poor experience good news … just yet. Hope.”
In other words, it may not be what John — or we —
were expecting, but God’s Kingdom is here. And it’s still coming, not ─ as hyped ─ in an
Apocalypse of famine, fire, and smoke. But more often than not in quite
unspectacular ways, in mini-decisions and minute actions.
One ostensibly unspectacular example: Awhile back, Bill
and I were watching acerbic pundit Keith Olbermann. One of his guests was
Maysoon Zayid, a 39 year-old Palestinian Muslim. She’s an activist, an actress
… and a comedian. A funny, iconoclastic, skewer-Arabs-and-non-Arabs-alike,
equal-opportunity comic now from New Jersey, no less. A female Muslim Jon
Stewart. On American TV.
But there’s more. Ms. Zayid has cerebral palsy. And
it’s very clear from her jerky movements on camera and her occasional facial
distortions that she does.
So, here, the way it played out — no hoopla, no Gabriel’s
Horn Blows at Midnight fanfare
— in a highly image-based industry, just another in the line-up of
political analysts that night on a fairly mainstream news show: a pundit, who
happened to be a Muslim female comedian, who happened to have cerebral palsy.
The point? Barriers broken in high def. Expected or
not, that’s what God’s Kingdom looks like. Here and now.
Consequently, Jesus’ message to John is: “Snap out of it! No pyrotechnics.
Violence is always the easy way out. And in its place? The one-step-in-front-of-the-other
slog of justice.” And that's the challenge.
What, then, of our
expectations? For example:
Why are so many American families still forced to spend
the holidays separated from their loved ones serving in Afghanistan and other
war zones? The expectation? “Peace on earth.” Or so the angels billed Jesus’ birth.
Why ─ even
with unemployment at an astonishing low of 4.6 percent ─ are 7.4 million of our neighbors suffering the
effects of unemployment? The expectation? Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who
labor.”
Why will so many millions of children in our
communities — and exponentially more around the globe — go to bed hungry
tonight? The expectation? Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come to
me.”
Why is a packing crate over a heat vent the only
“affordable housing” available to so many homeless as bitter winter advances? The expectation?
Jesus said, “In my father’s house are many dwelling-places.”
And your needs — career, health, relationships,
home ─ your
expectations? “Whatever you ask the Father in my name,” Jesus said, “God will
grant it.”
Expectation vs. reality … a disconnect. What are we
to do with that?
Rabbi Abraham Heschel offered an answer. “God,” Heschel
wrote, “is waiting for us to redeem the world.”
In other words, if you’re waiting around for God to
fix things, “snap out of it!”
What does that look like? Using Jesus’ categories,
people need no longer be blind. God is waiting for us to redistribute the money, the technology, and the human
resources we already have to eradicate blindness once and for all.
Children — no one — need ever be crippled by street
crime and drive-by shootings. God is waiting for us to eliminate the root causes of crime and poverty.
The deaf ─ all
deaf persons ─ will be able to hear. We’ve made
extraordinary strides, but God is waiting for us to perfect current technology — including stem-cell technology —
to make deafness history.
The lepers of our day — those living with HIV, especially
in Africa — can be treated … or
at the very least be treated with compassion. God is waiting for us.
And the poor can
experience good news. The numbers don’t lie: We have in hand ─ today! ─ what
it takes to feed, clothe, and provide housing for absolutely everyone on the
planet. God is waiting for us.
The point:
Leaving all the heavy lifting to God?
Never tried roaming free in God’s imagination to
discover what is humanly possible?
Think the isolated results Jesus got can’t ever be
the norm?
Snap out of it! Because if we don’t, is the world supposed to go on waiting … and waiting and
waiting … waiting … for another?
Amen.
