Signs
of Revolution
Isaiah 35.1-10; Luke 1.47-55; Matthew 11.2-11
For Matthew’s gospel, John the Baptist has a special place amongst the
prophets of Yahweh. He is the one who goes before the Christ of
Israel, to announce his coming and prepare the way. Yet even
John, when he is imprisoned by King Herod for criticizing his regime,
is capable of doubt about Jesus’ true identity. He sends his
disciples to ask Jesus a question: ‘Are you the one who is to
come, or should we wait for another?’ The answer John receives
from Jesus recalls the prophecy of Isaiah that we read just now, a
prophecy that imagines how things might change when God’s salvation has
arrived in the world. Let me quote:
Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the
feeble knees.
Say to those who are fearful of heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God! . . .”
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears
of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a
deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and
streams in the desert wastes.
(Is 35.5-6)
Hear, then, the parallels in Jesus’ answer to John in Matthew’s gospel:
Go and tell John what you hear
and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have
good news brought to them. Blessed is anyone who takes no offence
at me.
We may conclude, then, that for both Isaiah and Matthew the advent of
the messiah is attended by graphic and visible signs. The blind
see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead are raised, the outcasts
are brought into the community once more, and the poor hear good news.
It is important, however, that we understand these signs in their
theological as well as their literal sense. There can be no doubt
that Jesus was a faith healer. He did cure specific medical
ailments, and he did raise the dead to life. Even the most
sceptical historians have found it difficult to explain away the sheer
abundance of the evidence on this point. Still, if we are
Christians, we must understand that the healings are not just healings,
and the raisings are not just raisings. They are not, in other
words, to be understood simply as facts amongst other facts; they are
not to be read simply as history. For the miracles of Jesus have
a theological meaning as well. Theologically, they are to be read
as advance announcements or signs of a religious, social, and political
revolution, a revolution initiated by God in the words and deeds of
Jesus of Nazareth, but not yet completed in its fullness.
I talk of revolution because the coming of Jesus has changed, indeed
transformed, far more than the medical fortunes of those individuals he
happened to meet in Galilee more than two thousand years ago. The
coming of Jesus has changed everything, from the way we imagine God, to
the way we value our fellow human beings, to the way we construct our
law and government. We Westerners so easily forget how deeply our
values and our whole way of life have been influenced by Christ and the
Judaeo-Christian tradition. We forget that the discourse of human
rights is grounded in the narratives of Christ’s hospitality towards
the excluded and marginalised members of this own society. We
forget that feminism found its genesis in the way that Christ formed
relationships with women. We forget that the greatest books and
poems of the Western tradition may be read as conversations with the
Bible. We forget that liberation movements, from the abolition of
slavery in the Americas to the more recent revolutions in South
America, have looked to Jesus for inspiration and encouragement.
We forget that many of the modern medical miracles we take for granted
are grounded in the research of Christian doctors working in missionary
situations. If there were time, we could talk, also, about the
theological origins of the Rule of Law, the Welfare State, the
University, the School and the Hospital. In these, and in a
thousand other ways, the coming of Jesus has changed the world.
In these, and a thousand other ways, the love of God in Christ has so
changed our humanity that we have been enabled to change the world
after Christ’s example. In so many ways, Christ’s people have
been salt and light for a dark and sterile world.
Let us not be content with all of this, however. For Christ’s
revolution is far from complete. The messianic kingdom has
clearly not yet arrived in its fullness. If you don’t believe me,
just look around this country we’re making. The Hotham Mission of
the Uniting Church looks after several hundred Asylum Seekers who have
been released into the community on Bridging Visas while their claims
are being investigated. The conditions under which they Visas are
issued would surely make Christ weep, I believe. Having been
released from detention, holders of Bringing Visa “E” are not allowed
to work, or to receive Centrelink payments or Medicare services.
Now. How well would you survive if the government decreed that it
was illegal for you to work, to receive Centrelink payments, or to hold
a Medicare card? Pretty difficult, hey? And how would you
go if you had no family here and spoke very little English? If it
wasn’t for Christian people who donate time, money and loving care,
these most vulnerable people would simply not survive. The Spirit
of Christ is alive at Hotham Mission, but it has not yet affected
government policy. Not even those members of the government who
call themselves Christians: Howard, Costello, Anderson and
Ruddock.
I could speak of other national tragedies this morning—like the
concentration camps we call ‘detention centres’, like the appalling
conditions in which many Aboriginal people live, like the
slow-but-deliberate drift towards a regime in which even the most basic
services are offered only to those with money to pay. But I shall
not. Instead I would simply remind you that Advent faith is not
only about remembering the way in which Christ came to us the first
time around. It is about looking for the signs of that arrival in
our own place and time. Most of all, it is about making ourselves
available to God as the church, the body of Christ, so that Christ’s
revolution might again become present to the world through our faithful
deeds of hope and love.
I know that many of us care for others deeply. We work as
volunteers with the sick, the disabled, the despairing and the
voiceless. Or we work with the poor and the helpless in our paid
employment. Many of us are generous with our surplus money and
goods, living simply so that others may simply live. But others
of us are like so many other Australians. We look only to feather
our own nests, and those of our families. If that is so, then
Christ would confront us this morning with the call to
revolution. “Be converted,” he would say, “be really
converted. Let my Spirit into your cold heart so that the seeds
of love may be sown.” For that is what God’s revolution is
essentially about: love. God’s love for a lost and broken
world. The touchability of that love in the life, suffering and
death of Christ. And the power of love to change things, one
small corner of the world at a time, through the power of Christ’s
resurrection. If Christ is raised, you see, then the powers of
evil and decay shall not have the last word. The last word will
be love. This I believe, and for this I pray daily. So God
help me. God help all of us.
Blessed by God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so now,
and forever. Amen.
Garry
J. Deverell
3rd Sunday of Advent, 2004
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