Getting it Part Right

Tuesday, May 2, 2006 -- Athanasius of Alexander

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this link -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 961)
Psalms 26, 28 (morning) // 36, 39 (afternoon)
Exodus 19:1-16
Colossians 1:1-14
Matthew 3:7-12

Like most of us, John the Baptist got part of it and missed part of it.

Our gospels honor John as the forerunner of Jesus. He revived the role of the prophet to chastise mere ritual and legalistic religious observance and to recall God's people to the weightier matters of the law: social justice, economic relief for the poor, care for the suffering. Like so many of the prophets, he attacked the privileges and abuses of the powerful, and he mocked the professional religiosity of the pious. He called for the entire society of first century Judaism to a radical reformation. Without such a reform, he predicted catastrophe for their people.

The gospels say that John pointed to Jesus as the promised Messiah. And when Jesus began his public ministry, he picked up many of John's themes, preaching the same language of reform, calling the people to repent -- to turn back from their unjust directions. But Jesus predicted a different kind of catastrophe.

John imagined a Messiah of war and violence. Like many earlier voices of the Hebrew scriptures, he longed for the Anointed of God to come and kick butt and take names. He yearned for the kind of justice that is administered with strength and temporal power. He called for a new set of Exodus plagues upon the oppressors of God's people and for their liberation from the tyranny of Rome and Rome's collaborators.

Even though John identified Jesus as God's chosen One, he missed out on the methods that Jesus would use. There was no cutting down with axes and throwing into the fire. There was no winnowing fork that cleared the threshing floor, separating the good wheat from the evil chaff and destroying the chaff with unquenchable fire. That's not the kind of Messiah Jesus would be. John got that part of it wrong. John wasn't unfaithful. He knew his scriptures. That stuff is in the Bible too. It's just that Jesus is not that way. And we believe that Jesus reveals how God is.

Later, languishing in prison, John heard of Jesus' activities and sent to ask, "Are you the one?" Jesus wasn't living up to John's expectations. The return message was an ambiguous one. Tell John what you see. They described the healing and reconciling work that Jesus was accomplishing. It was Messianic work. But there was no ax and winnowing and no unquenchable fire of punishment for the chaff. Would John be able to give up that part of his desired expectation for God's victory?

The church gets presented the same question today. There are Christians today -- good, faithful, moral, courageous people -- who still long for the return of the kick-butt-take-names Messiah. They look to the same passages that John did, and add to them some enigmatic material from the later apocalypse of the Revelation. Some of them are quick to name the chaff and announce the particular judgment of unquenchable fire. Some of them have told me that's my fate.

But what if the Jesus who returns is the same Jesus who left? Seems pretty likely to me. From our various prisons, will we be able to give up our attachment to the entertaining violence of ax and winnowing and the unquenchable fire of punishment for the chaff? The fire that Jesus brings is still unquenchable. But the fire of Pentecost is the fire of the Spirit. It is the unquenchable fire of love. Love burns; it pierces and destroys; it winnows and gathers. But love does so in such a different way than John expected.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas