Not Jesus

The scriptures referred to are Luke 1:57-80.

One of the running gags on the Jim Henson show Dinosaurs was that the baby consistently called its father “Not-the-Mama,” often while hitting him with a saucepan or other object. This phrase is the one thing that stands out in what was, other than the very convincing full body puppets, a rather standard sitcom. It is is memorable precisely because it distills the essence of most family sitcoms: the dad is not as essential to his family as his wife is. Aside from the old Father Knows Best, most sitcoms could be called Father Knows the Least. The laughs come from the dad's pitiful attempts to do what his wife does better. That is the basis of a lot of the humor in The Incredibles 2. Mr. Incredible may be a powerful superhero but his parenting skills are subpar.

In our minds, our life is a movie and we are the hero or heroine of that movie. That is, by the way, why suffering a trauma or a disaster is so devastating. Suddenly things are out of our control. But the hero is always in control; he or she always knows what to do. When James Bond's family home is destroyed in Skyfall, it is partly due to enemy action and partly due to the booby traps Bond sets up. You would not expect to see 007 hunkered down in his bathroom with bottles of water and canned goods while a hurricane tore his house apart. I watched the recent documentary on Elizabeth Smart, the 14 year old girl, abducted by a self-proclaimed prophet who held her captive and repeatedly raped her for 9 months. Occasionally her captor and his “wife” would leave their hidden campsite and go into town with Elizabeth in tow and veiled. Smart has had many people wonder why she didn't try to escape and draw attention to herself. Even when the police finally caught up with them, Elizabeth was afraid to admit to the police who she was at first. Why? She was not a movie hero, calm and clever even under duress. She was a frightened, mentally and sexually abused 14 year old who truly believed her captor's threats to kill her family should she disobey him. After all, he had gotten away with kidnapping Elizabeth right out of the bed she shared with her sister, hadn't he? She didn't feel she was in control of her life anymore.

Not being in control is at the root of all fears. Losing your sense of agency, that you can make a real impact on your immediate world, is demoralizing. Yet the opposite, believing you are or can control everything, is a delusion. The actions of arrogant people to try to control everything, or at least manipulate the lives of those around them, causes a lot the pain in this world. Wisdom is realizing that you probably can affect the world more than you think but less than you desire. Humility is realizing you are not the center of the universe.

The focus of today's lectionary readings is a man who grew up with that wisdom and that humble realization. John the Baptist was not the Messiah. He was the herald to the Christ. He knew that from day one. And yet he didn't let that distract him from his mission.

And his mission was to be Jesus' advance man. He was called to set the stage for and to introduce the world to God's Anointed Prophet, Priest and King. It doesn't have the glamour of being the more important person. But John was cool with that. He is not an egotistical person. He accepts his role without qualms.

Part of that role is spotlighting why people needed a Messiah. As his father, Zechariah, says, John is “to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.” The people of Judah knew something was wrong. A lot of them blamed external causes, like the Roman occupation of their country. John was to direct their attention to the root cause: their disregard for God's law and their subsequent mistreatment of each other. The primary problem is internal. It's what the Bible calls sin.

Mental illness is not sin but the way we look at sin is kinda like the way we look at mental illness. We think the sickness is the skewed perception of reality, the abnormal speech and behavior, the hyperactivity of mania or the emotional numbness of depression. But those are just the symptoms of a brain illness, the way fever is a symptom of infection. Of course we want to give the patient relief from their symptoms but we also need to find and fix what causes the symptoms. Only now are we really getting close to understanding what causes cognitive and mood disorders, like structural abnormalities, chemical imbalances, infection, injury or inflammation. Mental illnesses are physical illnesses of the brain. Just like we mistake the outward signs for the illness itself, we tend to look at sinful actions as the difficulty and not the deeper problem of sin that causes it.

Learning what's really wrong is vital. I have had patients whose families, sometime because of their culture, did not want to give them bad news. They didn't want us nurses to let their aged parent or relative know that they had cancer or congestive heart failure. But that only added to the patient's suffering. They knew something was very wrong and in the absence of receiving the truth, they got more anxious. God knows what horrible diseases they thought they had. As one man said about receiving a diagnosis, even though it was bad, “At least now I know what I am fighting!”

The people of Judea and Galilee knew something was very wrong. John gave them the diagnosis they needed. The problem was having a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26) which manifested itself in their lack of love for God and for those made in his image. They needed to repent, that is, have a change of heart. They needed to change the way they thought and acted and turn to God for healing and forgiveness.

Of course, anyone can say they are right with God. John challenged them to show it. Just as disease, while internal, manifests itself in external symptoms so good health can be assessed by vital signs and functional abilities. People can tell if I am having a good day or not by my gait, my posture, how tired I look. Doctors and therapists look for qualities that show the patient is getting better. So John tells the people to share their food and clothing with the poor; he is looking for generosity. He tells the tax collectors not to take more money than they are assigned to collect; he is looking for kindness and self-control. He tells the soldiers not to use violence; he is looking for gentleness. He tells them not to extort people or falsely accuse them; he is looking for justice. He tells them to be content with their pay; he is looking for peace and for faith in God to provide for one's needs. (Luke 3:7-14) Notice that most of what he is looking for are what Paul lists as fruit of the Spirit. John calls them the fruit of repentance.

John also diagnoses a sickness in the royal house. Herod Antipas and his sister-in-law, Herodias, fell in love, divorced their spouses and married each other. Herodias was also her new husband's niece. So this is both incest and adultery and John calls Herod out. And gets thrown in prison. But John is not afraid to speak truth to power, as did the prophets of old.

In a sense, John the Baptist is the last of the prophets of the Old Testament, or Old Covenant. Which explains one additional incident in his life before his death. In Matthew 11:2 we are told, “When John heard in prison what Christ was doing he sent his disciples to ask him, 'Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?'” Why did John ask that?

John's message sounds very Old Testament. It was mostly about judgment. And while Jesus was not afraid to tell people uncomfortable truths, he was more about love. John spoke about fleeing the wrath to come; Jesus told a story about a loving father who welcomes back a son who spent his inheritance on wild living. (Luke 15:11-31) John spoke of how God could create more children of Abraham from stones; Jesus spoke of a shepherd who searches everywhere till he finds one lost sheep. (Luke 15:3-7) John spoke of the ax being at the root of the tree and of unproductive trees being thrown into unquenchable fire; Jesus spoke of how showing mercy on the unfortunate is repaid by divine mercy at the last judgment (Matthew 25: 31-40) John talked about the consequences of not turning to God; Jesus talked of the benefits of returning God's love.

And Jesus shows God's love by healing those who came to him and trusted him. In terms of specific individuals reported on, Jesus heals more people than all those healed by the Old Testament prophets combined. And then there are blanket statements of the crowds of people that Jesus healed of various diseases. That is ample evidence that God is at work in Jesus and his ministry. So Jesus says to John's disciples, “Go back and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matthew 11:4-6) In other words, “I got this. Don't worry.”

John continued to preach to the powerful, even in prison. Mark tells us that Herod liked to listen to John, though he didn't always understand him. He feared John and protected him, we are told. And so Herodias had to use her daughter to trick a besotted Antipas into beheading John. His mission was over.

John is a good example for us today. He not only fearlessly diagnosed what was wrong with society, he prescribed treatments in the form of things people could do to show that they had put his message to use, turned from their sins to God and were being kind, peaceful, and faithful and treating other people justly, gently, generously.

But chiefly John knew that he was not the focus of the message. It was not about him. It was about Jesus. There are a lot of ministries out there that are named after the televangelist who started them: Oral Roberts, John Hagee, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen. They are like brand names. There are megachurches that are built not so much on Jesus as on a charismatic preacher. And what happens when he or she retires, or dies, or gets caught in a scandal? Remember Jimmy Swaggart? And Jim Bakker? I think they forgot who they were and whom they were supposed to be serving. Maybe they needed a baby on their shoulders, hitting them with a saucepan and saying, “Not-the-Messiah! Not-the-Messiah!”

At Wheaton College I once heard Corrie Ten Boom, author of the The Hiding Place, speak. This old Dutch lady told us in heavily accented English how she, her sister and father hid Jews from the Nazis during World War 2. When they were found out, the family got thrown into a concentration camp and only Corrie survived. (The Jews they were hiding too.) The Ten Booms did it because that is what they felt Jesus would want them to do. At the end of her talk, she sat down and the whole student body erupted into applause. Corrie shot up, rushed to the microphone and said, “No! Not Corrie! Only Jesus! Only Jesus!” And there was a chastened silence.

It's not all about us. And thank God for that! We needn't try to shoulder the weight of the world. Jesus has done that for us. And we don't need bigger heads. Arrogance is the chief of the 7 deadly sins, precisely because you don't think you need anyone else...not other people and certainly not God. An arrogant Christian is a contradiction in terms. He is either a hypocrite or he worships a god made in his own image, who always agrees with and approves of him. If God doesn't push you outside of your comfort zone on certain issues, you are probably worshiping an idol. You are worshiping you.

The point of Christianity, however, is to become Christlike. To do that you need to keep your eyes on him and follow him. You need to make him your top priority and put him in the center of your life. And oddly enough, when you do that, you will become truly yourself. Because we were created in God's image. You can't see it very well because that divine image has been marred and distorted by our sin. But Jesus came to restore that image in us. But we can see that image of our loving God quite clearly in Jesus. And if we let him into our life, and let him change us, we will become day by day more like him.

In 1 John we are told, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) You are not Jesus. But Jesus is in you. And if you let him, he will be there more and more until one day you and he will be one in Spirit. And you will see this world as he does and you will see all people as he does and you will even see yourself as Jesus sees you. With love.