IS THIS A CURVE BALL?
Text: Matthew 11:2-11
I read about someone’s recollection of a performance that he (Tom Wright) had been rehearsing for on stage at an earlier time in his life. He mentions that all had been going according to plan most of the time. “We had all rehearsed the show for weeks, and reckoned we had it pretty well sorted out. We were a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs, but we were quiet pleased with our singing, acting and dancing. The show was going to be good, funny and exciting. People would love it. And they did.
“But in the last performance, the star of the show had a new idea. He didn’t tell anyone. He simply, at a crucial moment, did the opposite of what we had rehearsed. He realized that we were in danger of getting stale, and he knew that if he shocked us on stage our reactions would be all the better. He was right. We all jumped like startled rabbits, just as we had been practicing the move for ages. The audience loved it. We all responded, and the performance became electric. It wasn’t what we head expected, but it was better than we’d dared to hope.” (Tom Wright. Matthew For Everyone. Part 1. Great Britain. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002, pp. 124 – 125). The author of this story talks about an episode his life relates it to the anticipation that John the Baptizer must have had about Jesus. He relates how John the Baptizer must have felt surprised about the direction that Jesus had begun to take.
This story describes things that come unexpectedly. Like in the game of baseball, it is like a batter expecting a straight pitch only to be surprised by a curve ball. Life is like that with us sometimes, it throws a curve ball when we were expecting a pitch straight across the plate.
THE ANTICIPATION
John the Baptizer had confident expectations of who the Messiah should be. In his mind, it seems that John the Baptizer---Jesus’ cousin, had an idea of how things ought to play out. John the Baptizer knew that Jesus is the Messiah. So why then does he send others to ask Jesus if He is the Messiah? Some have speculated about why John the Baptizer sent others to ask Jesus if He was the One---the Messiah who was to come.
(1) Some have claimed that John the Baptizer asked this question for his own benefit.
(2) Still, others have speculated that John the Baptizer asked this question for the benefit of his disciples.
(3) Perhaps, John had faith that was tinged with a little bit of doubt. After all, Abraham believed and yet desired a sign as did Gideon. (Matthew Henry. A Commentary On The Whole Bible. Volume 5. Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers, n.d., p. 148).
(4) John’s Gospel records Jesus getting Baptized by John the Baptizer who sees definite sign that Jesus is Son of God when the Spirit descends and rests upon Him (John 1:33). After all, it seems that this was a fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy in Isaiah 11: 2: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on [H]im …” (NRSV). It seems that John still needed some sort of confirmation once again about who Jesus is.
It is possible that John’s environment of being in prison might have strained his belief---his faith. If that is the case, then we are not any different than John the Baptizer at this point. We find ourselves questioning our faith when we have difficult times. When we have difficult times we become prisoners of whatever the circumstances are that makes us prisoners. We all have expectations of the ways that we think that things ought to be. We are like batters at the plate expecting a fast ball to be pitched straight across the plate only to find that we got a curve ball instead. Life is like that, it throws us many curve balls. This was quiet a curve ball for John the Baptizer. As someone (William Barclay) has noted, “For any man that would have been a terrible fate, but for John the Baptist it was worse than for most. He was a child of the desert; all his life he had lived in the wide open spaces, with the clean wind on his face and the spacious vault of the sky for his roof. … For a man like John, [the Baptist] who had perhaps never lived in a house, this must have been agony”. (William Barclay. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel Of Matthew. Volume 2. Revised Edition. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, p. 2). Like John the Baptist, we have all had times in life when were prisoners of agonizing circumstances that made us confined and strained our faith.
Imagine what it must have felt like for John the Baptist while he was in prison. There is the story of a prisoner who must have shared some of the emotions that John must have had while he was in prison. “In Carlisle Castle there is a little cell. Once long ago they put a border chieftain in that cell and left him there for years. In that cell there is one little window, which is placed too high for a man to look out of when he is standing on the floor. On the ledge of the window there are two depressions worn away in the stone. They are the marks of that border chieftain, the places where day after day, he lifted himself up by his hands to look out on the green dales across which he would never ride again”.
John the Baptizer seems to have gotten impatient. How was it that John was getting impatient?
There are two possible conclusions for his impatience----(1) John’s possible desire to be rescued from prison and (2) John’s seeming desire to get Jesus to make a public declaration of who He is---the Messiah. John was in prison at the time not because he did anything wrong that deserved a prison sentence in an enclosed prison cell. No. John was now in prison because he spoke out openly about what Herod did in marrying his brother’s wife. In fact, John the Baptizer did not sugar-coat his criticism of Herod’s morals. He was to the point: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18 NRSV).
THE INAUGURATION
John the Baptist was part of the ushering in of a new era. John the Baptizer was the prophet who prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah. He did his job well in preparing for the coming of the Messiah. One of the last things that we read in the Bible about John the Baptizer’s activity was when He baptized Jesus in the Jordan river prior to his arrest.
It had been prophesied that Messiah would be know by certain things that only He could do.
(1) John the Baptizer had anticipated that one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah would be in the way that he dealt with injustice. After all, this was one of the prophecies that had been foretold about the Messiah that He would “… establish and uphold the kingdom that He came to establish with justice and righteousness forevermore” (Isaiah 9:6 paraphrased).
(2) Someone (Daryl Bock, W. Hall Harris, David K. Lowery, & Joel F. Williams) has said that John the Baptizer saw Jesus as One who would “… vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked …” while anticipating his own vindication”. (Daryl Bock. ed. The Bible Knowledge Key Word Study: The Gospels. Colorado: Cook Communication Ministries, 2002, pp. 71 –72).
(3) It was prophesied that the Messiah would preach to the meek and the poor who had often been overlooked and thought of as unimportant. This ideal explains how Jesus began his ministry when He proclaimed “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV). As someone has noted, “Jesus is actually one jump ahead, in the story-line of where John thinks he should be. John wants him to bring judgement---and so, in a sense he will. But already the mercy which comes after judgement, the healing that comes after the time of sorrow, is breaking in, and it’s Jesus’ job to bring it. …. Just as wicked people don’t like the message of judgement, because they think (rightly) that it is aimed at them, so sometimes good people don’t like the message of mercy, because they think (wrongly) that people are going to get away with wickedness” (p. 126, 127).
So what does all this have to do with the season of Advent any way? The answer to this question is that God is the God of second chances. Therefore, through Jesus Christ we are given the chance to get it right with God because Jesus came to reconcile us. And having been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, God will give to us the strength that we need for times of those curve balls that life throws at us. Jesus is our Emanuel---our God with us! He came to identify with us in our humanity----our pains, our struggles. He came to save us from our sins----to justify us and sanctify us. He came to heal us and forgive us. He came to give us salvation and the joy that goes along with it. He came to give us an abundant life here on earth so that we could be fruitful in Him and through Him. He came to give us eternal life so that when our life on earth reaches its end, we can go to be with Him forever in Heaven with our loved ones who have preceded us there. He came to give us all of these things. If someone were offered a million dollars as a gift and turned it down, we would ask them what is wrong with them. The gift that God gives us through Jesus Christ is priceless and yet there are some that turn it down. But, unless they come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior the curve balls that life will throw to them will overcome them because they will grieve as those who have no hope and peace---and the joy that comes from having a relationship with the Savior!
