Why the Good Is Sometimes Rejected

January 29, 2017         4^th Sunday after Epiphany                   Matthew 11-12

            I like to call Chapter 11 of Matthew, “Who is John the Baptist, and Who is Jesus?”  When you answer who John the Baptist is you also learn a lot about who Jesus is.  We know well that John the Baptist is the one who points to Jesus.  People came to John and he prophesied about the coming of the Messiah.  You’ll remember that John said things like, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  (Matthew 3:11-12)

John expected Jesus to be a firebrand who would whip up a following and take on the Romans in battle.  Jesus shows up and is baptized by John, but then what does Jesus do?  John ends up in prison.  He’s probably not happy about that, but he might be feeling a sense of righteous anger.  He’s in jail for speaking the truth and for standing up for the Messiah. 

But Jesus is falling short for John.  Where is this apocalyptic winnowing fork?  Where is the fire and Holy Spirit?  Where is the violent judgment.  All the miracles are nice and all, but Jesus is not living up to the person John thought he was pointing to.  Was Jesus really the Messiah?  Was Jesus really God’s chosen one to usher in the kingdom of God?

Jesus replies to these questions, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers and cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  (11:4-5)  It appears as if the kingdom of God is not coming as John thought.

The kingdom of God as Jesus brings it into being is about health and wholeness and restoration.  It is about good things.  So why then are the religious leaders so upset when we get into Chapter 12?  Why be so upset about a traveling do-gooder?  Because doing good isn’t always all that great a thing.

Let’s get at it this way.  Let’s say that Jesus comes to this day and age into the Rochester area.  He can heal everyone with just a touch.  It’ll take him about one day to put Strong Hospital completely out of business.  Strong Hospital is the biggest employer in the county.  All the doctors, nurses, support staff all the way to the janitors are suddenly out of jobs.  (Linda Thompson and Suzie Maynard are now unemployed.)  But of course it doesn’t stop with Strong.  Rochester General goes too.  (Beth Schroeder’s now out of a job too.)  Unity Hospital closes.  (There goes Lynne Minkel’s job.)  Highland Hospital, Thompson Hospital, Clifton Springs, they all are out of business.

Pharmaceutical companies are now pointless.  (There goes the School of Pharmacy at St. John’s Fisher, the school Scott Swigart started.  Aaron Swigart just got his white coat.  He’s now completely unemployable with the education he just worked years to receive.)  With all the hospitals closing goes all the construction work that is always going on in hospitals.  (Jeff Hall is now out of a job too.)  Of course there’s no need for nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and all sorts of senior housing.  So much of new construction around here is for senior housing.  The local construction market would collapse.  (There goes Mike Ross’s job and Jeremy Brown’s.)  The medical imaging work that companies like Kodak and Xerox do is now pointless.

Do you really want Jesus around healing everybody?  Sometimes when I’m in a hospital room and people are asking me to pray for a miraculous healing I wonder if they really know what they’re asking!

Let’s return to 1^st Century Judea.  Jesus forgives the sins of people.  That seems innocent to us, but it was a massive threat.  If Jesus could forgive sins then the temple no longer has a role to play.  There go the jobs of probably hundreds of priests.  About a quarter of the real estate in Jerusalem is for the temple.  That’s now pointless.  Merchants, money changers and all sorts of support staff suddenly have no place.

Shut down the temple and you shut down the tourist and pilgrim industry.  That ripples across the whole economy. 

Plus with Jesus offering forgiveness the whole religious authority system is decentralized.  Who’s to tell what is right and what it wrong?  Where’s judicial authority?  What about police, armies and protection?

We Americans make a mistake when we say separation of church and state.  We think that religion and government and business and arts are all separate, but they are not.  They are all interconnected.  Where one goes so goes all the others.

From our perspective Jesus was doing great things.  From the powers that be in Jesus’ day, he was a serious threat that had to be dealt with.  They were afraid of him.  Their whole lives were built around things he challenged.  When someone does something that threatens the value of your house or your retirement account or your standard of living you’ll react against it pretty quickly.

The message of Matthew’s gospel was radical then, and it is radical today.  Jesus preached many times that the kingdom of heaven had come near.  When we live that out life looks very different.

So what do we do with Chapters 11 and 12?  While we don’t have Jesus’ miraculous healing powers we do have power and strength to do good.  Jesus said, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure.”

When we see good things at work let us not be like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and oppose them.  Instead we will support them.  And when we see evil things we will oppose them.  Though we cannot perfectly bring God’s kingdom to life here on earth we always work for the good, whatever the cost.