Psalm 89:1-16, Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-38, Mark 1:7-11
The Unexpected Messiah
In the May 29, 2005 edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a story ran concerning a courthouse puzzle. The story in that paper begins like this:
“In the Milwaukee County Courthouse, where plaintiffs, defendants, lawyers and ex-spouses line up every day to bicker about money, nobody knows quite what to make of the man who won’t take home his $617,000. By a judge’s order, that sum sits quietly in an interest-bearing account at Tri City National Bank, waiting for Gene A. Sehrt to walk into the clerk of court’s office, show an ID and ask for what’s his. The ownership of the money couldn’t be clearer - the sum came … Milwaukee commercial properties [that] a court-appointed receiver administered at Sehrt’s family’s request, after he wasn’t heard from for several years. … And so it happens that Gene Sehrt - or a man who the clerk of circuit court and his staff believe is Gene Sehrt - shows up frequently in the very office where he could easily claim that $617,000 but leaves every time without even asking for it.‘ [http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may05/329830.asp]
Most of the story in the Milwaukee paper is devoted to showing that the man who owns the money really exists, that he is very likely the same man who comes frequently into the courthouse, and that he never claims the money, even though it is just sitting there waiting for him to claim it. And, then, the newspaper quotes the speculations of many people as to why this man would behave so very strangely. Most folks think he is just plain crazy.
If there were anything stranger than this, it must be Jesus Christ himself, and the Scripture readings assigned for today show us why. A great many people thought Jesus was crazy too, including his own mother at one point. And, what seems to have confused everyone about Jesus is two things.
First of all, there are a few things in Jesus life which indicate that he is in fact the Messiah promised in the Old Testament Psalms and many prophecies of Old Testament prophets. Alongside the things that indicate that Jesus is the Messiah, however, there is this stunning fact – Jesus does not DO the things that everyone expects the Messiah to do. He does not act in the ways that Israel is expecting Messiah to act when he appears in history. Like this odd fellow in Milwaukee, who is the rightful owner of a huge chunk of money but who will not touch it, Jesus is the promised Son of David, the anointed one, whom all Israel was expecting to throw off the yoke of Imperial Rome and to re-establish the Davidic Kingdom on earth. But, Jesus doesn’t do anything remotely connected with re-establishing a kingdom.
This oddness was, for Jesus’ disciples, and for the crowds and the religious leadership of the Israel, one of the greatest stumbling blocks to their acknowledgment of Jesus’ identity and mission. Were their expectations of the coming Messiah so wrong? Or was Jesus’ behavior at his first advent just too, too bizarre? Or, perhaps, did Israel have a kind of selective hearing of what their prophets had been telling them for centuries?
The readings assigned for this first Sunday after the Epiphany show us that how Jesus acted when he began his ministry was completely in accord with what the Old Testament prophets foretold.
Consider, for example, the Psalm appointed for today, or, at least, the portions of it we sang together. It is a Psalm that rejoices in the covenant God made with David. And, like many Psalms in the Old Testament Psalter, it anticipates a day when a Son of David will conquer God’s enemies, who are, of course, Israel’s enemies as well.
In verses of Psalm 89 which we did not sing, we find statements like these concerning the coming Son of David: Beginning in verse 22: 22The enemy shall not outwit him, Nor the son of wickedness afflict him. 23I will beat down his foes before his face, And plague those who hate him. Or beginning in verse 25: 25Also I will set his hand over the sea, And his right hand over the rivers. … 27Also I will make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth.
This Psalm is only one of many we might sing that contain ideas such as these. The picture of a conquering Messiah, who would break Rahab’s teeth in pieces – we did sing that verse, you remember – these kinds of ideas are quite abundant in the Old Testament Psalms and in the Prophets as well.
So, let’s assume that all these kinds of ideas about a conquering, mighty Son of David are what you think of when you’re a first century Jew, or one of Jesus’ disciples, and you witness the scene described for us in today’s Gospel lesson from Mark – Jesus’ baptism. At the moment it occurs, Mark tells us that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, and that God the Father spoke from heaven: “This is my son, in whom I am well-pleased.” If you’re one of Jesus’ disciples who saw this, what are you going to think? And if that’s what you think, what do you expect Jesus will do, sooner or later?
Why, you expect that sooner or later, he is going to rise up and smite the Romans until they are as fine as talcum powder, and that he is going to set up a new Kingdom, and restore the fortunes of Israel. Like that odd fellow in Milwaukee, the kingdom is his, he is the heir of David, God has declared that Jesus is his own Son. So, now all that remains is for those Old Testament prophecies to come to pass – the ones about Jesus conquering the Gentile Nations and setting up the David throne again.
Well, you and I both know that this is not what happened. Jesus behaved very differently than these kinds of expectations. So, what was out of whack? Jesus’ behavior? Or the expectations?
Well, the Old Testament lesson appointed for today shows us that it was the Jewish expectations that were out of whack. Isaiah 42, verses 1-7, is the first of several poems in the latter chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy which have gotten the name “Servant Songs,” because they speak about a person who is referred to as the Servant of the Lord. In this first servant song, the one in which the Servant of the Lord is introduced to us for the first time in Isaiah’s prophecy, what do we read?
1 “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.”
Well, no problem here, if you’re looking for a conquering Messiah. Especially that last statement: “He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.” Yeah, man! Justice for those Gentiles. SMACK! He’ll give them what’s coming to them. Right?
And, then, we read the next verses:
2 He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. 3 A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth. 4 He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands shall wait for His law.”
Doesn’t sound very much like rockum-sockum conquering, does it? The manner and style is not that of a warrior, or a conquering king. Indeed, John the Baptist seems to have made more noise than Jesus did, literally. The prophecy in Isaiah which speaks of John the Baptist mentions that he is a voice crying out in the wilderness. But, here, the Servant of the Lord will not raise his voice, nor will you hear what he says above the ordinary background noise of a street.
And, when it comes to the Gentiles, this description of the Servant of the Lord makes them out to be the recipients of his salvation, not the object of his judgment. Listen again to these verses:
“I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, 7 To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.”
What we have here is a prophecy, by one of the greatest of the Old Testament Prophets, that the coming Messiah would be the salvation not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. And, this is confirmed by what we find in the New Testament lesson appointed for today, in which we have the opening words of the Apostle Peter’s words to the house of Cornelius.
Cornelius was a Roman centurion who had learned about God from the Jews he had come in contact with, and who had believed that the God of the Jews was the true and only God. And, insofar as he was able, he worshiped and served the God of the Jews, mostly by offering his prayers to the God of the Jews and by giving alms to the Jewish poor. As you can read in Acts chapter 10, God sent angels to both Cornelius, and to Peter, to arrange a meeting between them. And, God prepared Peter himself to acknowledge what we find in the New Testament lesson appointed for today.
“In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. 35 But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him. 36 The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all— 37 that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached:
And Peter went on to say this to Cornelius and everyone Cornelius had gathered to his house to listen to Peter: 42 And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. 43 To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins.”
We do not have time today to examine all the places in the Old Testament which Peter refers to here. Clearly, after the resurrection, Jesus had succeeded in preparing his disciples in ways he had not succeeded before he was crucified. Perhaps it had a lot to do with the capacity of the disciples themselves to hear and understand what Jesus was telling them. For, before his crucifixion, Jesus’ most common term for them was “O ye of little faith, and slow to believe all the prophets have spoken.”
For, you see, the Prophets had indeed spoken of a Son of David who would come to re-establish David’s throne, and to judge the nations, and to exalt Israel above them all. But, God had also spoken to Israel about how His salvation would extended from one end of the earth to the other, that the Gentiles too would find blessing through the Seed of Abraham. When God promised to Abraham that all of the nations of the earth would be blessed in him, I don’t suppose Abraham understood completely what God was intending. And, the Jews of Jesus’ day most certainly did not either.
But, if they misunderstood, if they found Jesus’ quiet, calm, gentle, and almost obscure approach to ministry to be inexplicable – it was inexplicable ONLY because they had listened to some of the Old Testament prophets and not to EVERYTHING they had to say about the coming Messiah.
What, then, does this all mean for us? Well, interestingly, the Church of Jesus Christ seems to have made many of the same mistakes as the Jews made during Jesus’ ministry. They have heard what they wanted to hear in the Scriptures, AND they have failed to hear all that the Apostles and Prophets have foretold about God’s people Israel.
In Peter’s day, the big hurdle the first Christians had to overcome was simply this: that God was going to show grace, mercy, and salvation to the Gentiles. The first Christians were all of the Jewish. It was a huge breakthrough for Peter to come to terms with the salvation of Cornelius’ household. And, some years later, Peter is still struggling with this, when he and the Apostle Paul knock heads over attempts at Galatia to make the Gentiles into Jews first, before they could be acknowledged as bona fide believers.
But, with the passage of time, as century after century has rolled past, the sheer number of Gentiles in the Body of Christ has swollen, and the sheer number of Jews who put their trust in Jesus has dwindled to a tiny, tiny minority. And, what has the attitude of Gentile Christians been toward the Jews over the past 2000 years – well, pretty much what the Jewish attitude toward the Gentiles was before there were many Gentiles in the Church. Christians in many eras of the Church have viewed the Jews evil, Christ-hating, enemies of the gospel. But, they do this only insofar as they ignore things the Apostles taught us about the Jews, just as the Jews had ignored things the Old Testament Prophets taught them about the future of the Gentiles.
Today we cannot go into a thorough exposition of the eschatology of the Jews in history. But, I would mention just one passage from the Apostle Paul, who when writing to the Gentile Christians in Rome, said this in Romans chapter 11:
25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “ The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; 27 For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.”
God is today taking away the sins of Gentiles and Jews alike, through the proclamation of the Gospel. And, when, as Paul puts it, the fullness of the Gentiles has come into history, then will come the time when all Israel will be saved, not just a tiny minority of them as it is today.
Finally, I would leave with you this thought about how you and I go about advancing the Kingdom of God. We do so as Jesus himself did when he was on the earth. The Church, whether Roman, or Orthodox, or Protestant, all of them alike at various times in history have supposed that the Kingdom of Christ is advanced with the power of the sword. This will indeed be how Christ sets up his Kingdom when he returns to the earth, as many gory passages in the Old Testament and in John’s Apocalypse make clear. But, that time is not yet. And until it comes, we are to be, as Jesus taught us, shrewd as serpents – for we live in a world filled with the sons of the devil, and we are also to be harmless as doves, for this is the example which Jesus our Savior left for us to mimic.
God grant us patience to await the return of our Lord from heaven, and until that time to do his work in the way he showed us. And, may we not fail as the Jews failed in Jesus’ day, or as Christians have failed so often in the past 20 centuries, to hear in the Word of God ONLY what pleases us. Instead, may we find grace to hear the whole counsel of God, and to trust in it, and in the God who spoke it, until he sends his Son from heaven a second time, to glorify all those – Jews and Gentiles – who have fastened their trust on him.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
