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Sermon - November26th, 2006
The Gift of Disillusionment
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: John 18:33-38; Matt. 11:2-6
Call to Awareness: Recall a time when you were disillusioned. That’s easy. I can think of many. Here’s one. Since the first time I saw a rodeo princess race her horse around the Morrow County Rodeo Grounds and ride in a parade I wanted to be a rodeo princess. The neighbor girl, Michelle and I practiced and practiced riding and waving. So when I was a junior in high school I applied. I remember the day well. It was raining. I had gotten up early, decided to take my skittish quarter horse instead of my lazy appaloosa. Loaded him up by myself because my mother wasn’t a horse person and my Dad had been gone for a couple of years. I was getting used to doing things on my own. First, we had to give a speech. There were five of us trying out--four would be chosen. I had decided that instead of boring people with all the things I had accomplished so far in my life which I had already listed on my application, I told the story about the challenge of getting my first horse. After the speeches, we moved to the arena for the riding part. My horse acted up as usual. He was a spirited one. But I thought I had done as well if not better than most of the girls there. We waited for the announcement I was shocked and absolutely crushed when I wasn’t selected. What was going through my mind at that moment was: if only I had told them about all my accomplishments, if only I had brought my lazy, dependable appaloosa, if only my Dad was alive! I remembered fighting the tears back as I loaded my horse in the rain. One really good friend of my Dad’s spoke to me before I left to tell me that I was by far the best rider of the group. And as the next few days unfolded, I slowly learned that I had had no chance at all. It was a regional contest and my region had two girls competing--me and the daughter of the chair of the rodeo board. I was so disillusioned with the whole process, with my hometown, with my belief in fairness.
Now, as you think of a time when you were disillusioned by someone, even God...think how it has been a gift. That’s harder. A lot harder! What’s the gift you have received? Because there’s always a gift. It is holy work to find the gift.
Sermon: “Are you the one?” That is a haunting question in Scripture. Haunting at anytime. But haunting at this time because John the Baptist was asking it. John the Baptist who had devoted his whole life to preparing the way of the Lord, making the paths straight. John who had stood in the Jordan River, saw Jesus coming, and tried to trade places with him. ”I need to be baptized by you,” he said, “and you come to me???” John had seen the heavens open up, and the voice proclaim, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What in the world has happened to John for him to ask such a question? What had made him question the identity of the one person for whom he had waited all his life?
For one thing, he was in jail. Herod had thrown him there. Not for preaching like a wild man--which he did, but for voicing his disapproval of Herod’s marriage. Nothing was going the way that John thought it would.
The Messiah was suppose to change things. He was supposed to burn up all the human trash and deadwood of the world. He was supposed to come with a sharp ax, a gleaming pitchfork, and separate the good guys from the bad once and for all. He was supposed to clean up the world, so the people like Herod were no longer in power and people like John were no longer in prison. Jesus had utterly failed to meet John the Baptist’s expectations.
Jesus talks more about peace and love that he does about sin and hell. He spends most of his time with the lost and misfits, and he wasn’t chopping up the rotten wood that John had selected for the fiery furnace. Jesus seems more interested in poking around the dead stumps looking for new growth and throwing parties for the new shoots when he finds them, and all in all it is more that John can bear.
“Are you the ONE? THE one?” This is John’s Calvary, his moment of wondering what his life has been about and fearing that there has been a terrible mistake. It is his moment of wondering if he has been forsaken, if the one for whom he has waited all this time has turned out to be an impostor--not the Messiah at all, but an idealistic dreamer whom the world will swat down as easily as a gnat.
Remember that controversial film titled, The Last Temptation of Christ? In the book, the author paints a unforgettable picture of Jesus and John. It is sunrise. They are sitting high above the Jordan in the hollow of a rock, where they have been arguing all night long about what to do with the world. John’s face is hard and decisive; from time to time his arms go up and down as though he were actually chopping something apart. Jesus’ face, by contrast, is tame and hesitant. His eyes are full of compassion.
“Isn’t love enough?” Jesus asks John.
“No,” John answer angrily. “The tree is rotten. God called me and gave me the ax, which I then placed at the roots of the tree. I did my duty. Now you do yours: Take the ax and strike!”
“If I were fire, I would burn,” Jesus says. ”If I were a woodcutter, I would strike; but I am a heart, and I love.”
It is not hard to understand what John was going through. We have all, at some time or another, looked for a Messiah who did not come the way we wanted him to come. You know what I mean. We want the Messiah and we want him right now. We want clear, helpful answers to our questions. We want to be relieved of the burden of waking up day after day without knowing what we are supposed to do next. We want to put our hand under our pillow and find the answer there like a quarter from the tooth fairy, but morning after morning all we feel is the sheet.
Or, how about this? We want a Messiah who will rescue the innocent and punish the guilty, focusing especially on the guilty. We have this long list of people who do not deserve to go walking around looking and acting like normal people. We want a Messiah who will exposed them for who they are. We have the jury assembled but the judge has not showed up, and we are beginning to wonder if there is any justice at all in this world.
Or, how about this? We want a Messiah who will make us look good. We want a Messiah to take over our mind and body so that we cannot mismanage them anymore. Give me a Lord who will heal us in spite of ourselves and who will not let me make mistakes anymore. And do it for the whole world. One look at the news is enough to convince us that putting human beings in charge of creation was a good idea that did not work. I’ll be glad to exchange a little freedom for some security.
But we do not get any of those kinds of Messiahs. Instead, we got one who waits while we find our own answers. We get one who gives suspended sentences to the guilty. We get one who lets us stew in the consequences of our actions. And we ask, ”Are you the One? Are you really the One, or are we to wait for another?”
This is the story of crashing disillusionment--John’s, yours, mine, everyone’s who looks for a Lord who does not come, or who does not come in the way we expect--but I am here to tell you that disillusionment is not a bad thing Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion--about ourselves, about the world, about God--and while it is almost always a painful thing, it is never a bad thing, to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth
What was the gift of my disillusionment? It took me years to find it--but it was quite simple. I was not born to be a princess! I was born to be much more than that. That was my gift. Michelle was, not me--she was a rodeo princess a few years later and went on to be one for the Pendleton roundup--big time. I don’t know what she’s doing now, but I know she’s not a preacher!
Disillusioned, we find out that God does not conform to our expectations. We glimpse our own relative size in the universe and see that no one can say who God should be or how God should act. We review our requirements of God and recognize them as our own fictions, things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel safe or good or comfortable. Disillusioned, we find out what is not true and we are set free to seek what is--if we dare. If we dare to turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is.
Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I rubbed the lantern? Then perhaps God is not a genie. Who, then, is God? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Then perhaps God is not a circuit court judge. Who, then, is God? Did God fail to make everything run smoothly? Then perhaps God is not a mechanic or an engineer. Who, then, is God?
Over and over, my disappointments draw me deeper into the mystery of God’s being and doing. Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place. No, that is not God. Who, then, is God? It is the question of a lifetime, and the answers are never big enough or finished. Pausing past curtain after curtain, it become clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination.
Jesus told the disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed....” He never says “I.” He never testifies to himself at all. He simply sends John’s disciples back to John to tell their teacher what they have seen and heard--not a lot of wood being chopped, not a lot of fires being lit--but broken people being made whole, sick people being healed, dead people being revived, and poor people given hope.
“And blessed are those who take no offense at me.” Blessed are those who do not let the Messiah they are expecting blind them to the Messiah who is standing right in front of them. Blessed are those who keep a list of what God is doing and not what God is not doing. Blessed are those who are not afraid to revise the hope that is in them, pushing through their disillusionment into a place of new and clearer vision
Is he the ONE? You decide. Look around you, and see.
Amen.