Judgment and Trouble in the World
**The opening illustration is based on pages 299-321 from the book Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides.
In the fall of 1849, a fur trapper named James White became frustrated with the slow moving pace of his wagon train along the Santa Fe trail. White, his young wife, Ann, their infant daughter and a few other pioneers set out ahead of the wagon train; hoping to make better time on their own. White and the others felt certain that they had moved through the most dangerous Indian territory while traveling in the company of the larger wagon train.
Earlier in 1849, a writer named Charles Averill had published a book called Kit Carson: The Prince of the Gold Hunters. The book was based on the legend that had grown from the real life adventures of Kit Carson, a fur-trapper whose abilities as a “tracker” had brought him into employment with the United States Army. Averill’s book presented Carson as a “super-human” hero who wrestled bears, finds treasure in caves, kills multitudes of Indians – and, at the predictable climax of the book, rescues a young girl who had been kidnapped by the savage Indians. The real-life Carson was an accomplished cowboy, fur trapper, and tracker, but he was not the Superhuman that Averill’s best-selling novel made him out to be.
Just a few days after breaking from the wagon train, James White and his cohorts were attacked by a band of Jicarilla Apaches. An army investigation of the attack site accounted for the bodies of everyone but Ann White, her infant daughter and Mexican servant. Ann, the baby and the servant had likely been abducted by the Jicarilla. Kit Carson was assigned as the scout to the cavalry regiment that would track down the Jicarilla and rescue Ann White, the baby and the servant.
Carson was an excellent tracker and within days, the cavalry troop had come within striking distance of the Jicarilla that had abducted Ann, the baby and the servant. A disagreement between Carson and the Major leading the Cavalry regiment resulted in the delay of an attack. Aware of the presence of the US cavalry, the Jicarilla broke camp and escaped during the night.
As Carson and the Cavalry surveyed the abandoned camp in the early hours of the morning, they found the body of Ann White. She had likely been murdered during the night; just before the Jicarilla’s made their escape. Amongst Ann White’s belongings, Carson and the Calvary troops discovered a well-worn copy of Charle’s Averill’s Kit Carson: The Prince of the Gold Hunters.
Around the camp fire that evening, one of the members of the Cavalry troop began reading the book to the illiterate Kit Carson. This was the first time Carson had encountered his own myth. The stories from Averill’s novel came to haunt Carson. Nearly 10 years after the incident, he once confided in a friend that “he came to imagine Ann White reading it during her captivity.” He feared that the book had given her a false hope. He said, “Knowing that I lived near, I have often thought that as Mrs. White read the book, she prayed for my appearance and that she would be saved.” Carson felt a deep sense of failure. The bodies of the baby and the servant were never found.
As we look back 150 years at the true story of Ann White and Kit Carson we catch a glimpse of the great tragedy of their encounter. Kit Carson struggling to live up to the mythology of his own legend. Ann White, hopefully awaiting a hero who will not arrive on time.
Many people looking back over 2000 years of Christianity; watching we Jesus-followers hope and repent and prepare ourselves for the second coming of Jesus might sense that they are also watching a great tragedy unfold. Christianity confronts the world with a group of people who are faithfully hoping for and awaiting the arrival of a hero who sometimes seems to be woefully late to the rescue.
Judgment and Trouble in the Text
In Matthew 11, we find John the Baptist – much like Kit Carson pondering the death of Ann White – wondering if his own encounters with Jesus were going to turn out to be a tragedy of epoch proportions.
The desert-dwelling, hide-wearing, bug-eating, fire-breathing preacher of repentance who we found last week out by the Jordan River baptizing hundreds of people and proclaiming that God was going to send the Messiah is now in prison. His preaching has offended the political leadership of the day and they have taken him into captivity. John – alone in a deep, dark cell, knowing that his own death is probably quite immanent – begins to question what is going on. He wonders if Jesus is going to overthrow the political regimes of the Herodian Kings and the Roman government and bring the Kingdom of God? And – more practically – would Jesus overthrow the government and bring the Kingdom before he (John the Baptist) was put to death by the political leaders that had thrown him in prison.
And, much like Kit Carson, John may have been wondering if he had actually lived up to his own myth and legend. Afterall, hundreds of people – including Jesus himself – had affirmed that John was fulfilling Old Testament prophesy. They believed that John was the one, like the Great Prophet Elijah, who had appeared to proclaim the coming of the Messiah; to let everyone know that the Kingdom was coming. John, who had acknowledged that Jesus was the coming Messiah, was now wondering if he had made a huge mistake; if he had failed the people of Israel by pointing them to the wrong man.
Matthew does not fill in the details this vividly, but perhaps we can imagine John the Baptist peering through the bars of a prison window; perhaps a basement window talking to his own disciples; on the outside of those bars. Jesus is the topic of the conversation. They were telling John that Jesus had been sending out his own disciples all over the region to proclaim the very same message that John and his disciples had been proclaiming: “repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” To John the Baptist and his disciples, it may have appeared that Jesus was trying to take over John’s ministry. They are confused. “Is Jesus the one?” And the fact that Jesus had yet to lay the groundwork for a military coup against the Herodian Kings and the Roman government had done nothing to alleviate their doubt.
John wants an answer so he sends his disciples with a question.
They find Jesus and they ask him: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” They could have put it this way: “Are you the Messiah or have we been wasting our time on you?”
When the world seems to spin out of control; when the people that we love die; when children with bombs strapped to their chests blow themselves up in crowded market places; when friends are placed in prison because of their drug addictions; when the Kit Carson heroes of the world show up too late to save the day; the question often arises: is Jesus going to come again to make things right or has following Jesus just been a waste of our time? Like John the Baptist, we need an answer to that question.
Grace and Solution in the Text
Jesus would have been an excellent lawyer. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus has the most amazing way of answering the questions or statements that are put to him with questions or statements that force people to answer their own questions. Jesus did not want a body of mindless, robotic followers. He was far more interested in creating a body of men, women, youth and children who had made a willful decision to become his disciples.
Thus, Jesus does not give John’s disciples a direct answer to their question. Instead he gives them some evidence; evidence that they can use to draw their own conclusions about who Jesus really is.
Somewhat like a lawyer in a courtroom, Jesus lays out the evidentiary exhibits for the disciples of John the Baptist and the crowds that have gathered.
He begins with exhibit A. Jesus says, “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. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
If I were to say to you, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” many of you would know that I was quoting Shakespeare. If I were to say to you, “that depends on what the definition of “is” is” some of you would know that I was quoting Bill Clinton. If I were to say to you, “These three nations and their rogue leaders constitute and axis of evil” some of you would know that I was quoting President Bush. When Jesus makes this statement to John’s disciples they would have immediately known that he was making reference to several passages in the book of Isaiah that foretold the coming of the Messiah. And so, with Exhibit A, Jesus is saying, “don’t you see me doing the very things that the prophets said the Messiah was going to do.” Based upon that, disciples of John the Baptist, who would you say that I am?
Exhibit B. As the disciples of John the Baptist are walking away, Jesus begins asking a question to the crowds. In fact, he repeats this question three times. “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?” After asking this question for the third time, Jesus affirms what they all knew to be the truth. They had all gone into the wilderness to see John the Baptist because they believed John to be a prophet. And then Jesus goes onto clarify that John the Baptist was not just any prophet. He says to them, “and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come!” And so, with exhibit B, Jesus is saying, “John the Baptist is the one who has come to make way for the Messiah.” Based upon that, who would you say that I am?
As Jesus is laying exhibit B – dealing with the identity of John the Baptist – out before the jury, he gives them a warning. Specifically he says this, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” Jesus is letting the crowds know that they must look carefully at the evidence because, quite often, it is going to look like the violence of the world is stronger and more powerful than the coming Kingdom of God, but even when it seems that violence and evil will win the day, the disciples and the crowds must still look at the evidence and answer the question: who do you say that Jesus is? With John in prison and facing a soon-coming execution and with a cross looming as the seeming end to Jesus’ career as Messiah, it will be incredibly important for anyone who encounters Jesus to look very carefully at the evidence so that they can truthfully answer the question: “is Jesus the Messiah who is coming to make things right?”
Jesus gives them the evidence and a word of caution. As any good jury would do, they must now consider the evidence and come to their own conclusions.
Grace and Solution in the World
Do you see the evidence? 2000 years of repenting and preparing; waiting and hoping for the promised return of Jesus. 2000 years since the first Christmas. Nearly 2000 years since the cross. Nearly 2000 years since his ascension into heaven. Do we still the evidence?
At the beginning of the Gospel of John (which was not written by John the Baptist), we find the following comment: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” The evidence is not hidden in the darkness. It is still possible for us to see the evidence and answer the question: “is Jesus the one who is coming to bring truth and justice and set things right in God’s creation?”
Jesus is still giving us evidences of who he is. The light is still shining in the darkness. The light has never been; nor will it ever be extinguished in darkness.
A word of caution before I tell this story. Neither of these stories appeared – nor would they probably ever have appeared – at GoogleNews or YahooNews. They would never grace the front pages of the Lexington Herald Leader. Neither FoxNews or CNN would touch these stories with a ten-foot pole. It is important to remember that in these simple, but I think quite profound stories, the evidences of the light of Jesus Christ would simply shine too brightly in the midst of the darkness that is the “official” news of the world. And so, these stories – which offer the evidence we are looking for – become relegated to devotional books and Sunday sermons.
In the first, a young Catholic Priest is assigned to a dying parish in an inner city. The young priest embodies the best of the Catholic faith. He believes that it is his task to love God, love the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus to the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the homeless and the poor in his parish. With no lack of excitement he prepares for his first Mass; Sunday at 10am. He stands in the doors of the old church awaiting the crowds. The crowds never come. He repeats this for several more Sundays. Finally he decides that if the crowds will not come to Jesus that he will take Jesus to the crowds. Across the street from the old church is a Laundromat. It is a busy place; 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The young priest loads a table cover, a chalice, a plate, a loaf of bread and a container of wine into a duffle bag. He places a card table under his arm. Dressed in his cassock, he walks across the street and into the Laundromat. He sets up the table in the middle of the Laundromat. He covers it. He places the bread on the plate. He fills the chalice with wine. He begins the Mass. Drug addicts and alcoholics and prostitutes and poor, single mothers hear and see this Priest recount the good news of Jesus. Week after week he continues to do this. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. The ones who are not offended by this action receive the blessings of Jesus.
The light is shining in the darkness. Do you see the evidence? Is Jesus, the Messiah, coming – in truth and justice – to make all things right?
I see the light shining in the darkness. A Community Group delivers Thanksgiving boxes to families who need a helping hand at this time of the year. Another group works hard to make sure that the financial needs of all of its members are being met. Another group explores and works through the hidden bigotries that sometimes inhabit the human heart. A group of GCF men and women gather to help another member of our body – unable to do so on her own – pack up her belongings and move into a better future in a new home. A group of GCF men frequent a local Nicholaville bar; playing pool with the regular customers and offering to drive people home when they are too drunk to drive home on their own.
This is the evidence. But the question that the disciples of John the Baptist asked remains: “Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
