A New New Testament?

            A guy named Hal Taussig has taken the books of the New Testament, added 10 more early Christian writings chosen by an invited “council,” rearranged them all thematically, added introductions and prefaces, and had the whole collection published as a book called A New New Testament.  He bills it as a way to bring to light some otherwise little-known writings that help us understand that the early Christian movement was much broader in scope than the traditional New Testament would have us believe.

            Of course, there have always been early Christian texts that the church accepted, cherished, learned from, and disseminated, that were nevertheless not included in the New Testament.  Non-inclusion did not necessarily mean rejection.  It did mean that these texts were secondary and not as authoritative as the canonized texts.  For instance, the Infancy Gospel of James was the source for a lot of traditional background material about Jesus’ birth and family.  A letter called1 Clement and a book called The Shepherd were even included in some early collections of New Testament writings.  But, for good reasons, the people did not find them to meet the lofty criteria for final inclusion in the New Testament itself.

            The purpose of the New Testament is to provide as direct a witness as possible to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, it includes texts that most credibly do this.  Books written later may be valuable, even indispensable.  But if they don’t witness to the event of Jesus Christ, they are not included in the New Testament.  Its purpose is not to give a historical reflection on Christ over the ages, as worthwhile as that is.  It is to give us as immediate a view as we can get of Jesus Christ, by recording testimonies of those who knew him, or knew people who knew him. 

            This may not be strictly true of all of the books included in the New Testament.  Some appear to be a generation or two removed from Jesus’ ministry.  But all are from the first century, or at the latest, the first decades of the second.  They were all likely completed between the years 50 and around 110. 

            There are dominant scholarly views as to the dating of these writings.  Marcus Borg has recently written a book, Evolution of the Word, in which he comments on the writings of the New Testament in chronological order, stretching from 50 to 120.  I find his dating of New Testament books to be somewhat on the later side, but it is still in the range accepted by most scholars.  We may find hypotheses about the dating of the New Testament in various introductions, like those on Wikipedia, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, or in good study Bibles.  (Conservative ones tend to like early dates; in more academic editions, like The Oxford Annotated Bible, the dates tend to be later.)

            The general consensus is that the earliest of all Christian documents are seven of Paul’s letters; almost no one doubts this.  Most scholars believe that some letters attributed to Paul are likely to have been written by others much later.  But even the later books are still older than almost any non-canonical texts from any part of the Christian movement. 

            No responsible scholar disputes that the four canonical gospels are the earliest such documents available to us.  Some argue that Thomas, or portions of it, are as old.  And there is an ongoing argument about the order in which they were written, and their sources.  But the priority of the four is not in question. 

            So far I haven’t found anyone (not even Borg) claiming, for instance, as Taussig does, that Luke was written after 140.  At best, Taussig is being disingenuous and misleading about dating in an attempt to get his new books onto the same chronological playing field with the New Testament.  He pretends that scholars are all over the map, postulating that some New Testament books “could have been” written well into the 2^nd century.  Sure, you can find a professor somewhere who will say anything you want.  But that is not mainstream scholarship.           

            Of the writings added to the New Testament in Taussig’s book, all ten of them derive from the 2^nd, or even the early 3^rd, century.  This dating is according to the introductions to these writings in the seminal collection, The Nag Hammadi Library, which is where Taussig got them.  So, in order to include these books in anything close to the same time-frame with the canonicals, one has to argue for the latest possible dates for the books of the New Testament, and the earliest probable dates for the ten.  Can this be done without a bias towards a particular outcome?  And even then, the canonicals are still mostly earlier, sometimes by decades. 

            In short, what Taussig and his compatriots have done is take a 1^st century collection and added to it a bunch of books from the 2^nd century.  Presenting them mixed and rearranged thematically together in one volume certainly makes it seem like they all come from the same time period.  But they do not.  If these ten writings were included in Borg’s book, all would have to be tacked on the end.

            So it becomes clear that these books were not originally included in the New Testament because the people of the time didn’t find them to be a credible witness to Jesus’ life.  They were not old enough.  I suspect that the canon was effectively closed simply because no more books were emerging from the first century.

            My guess is that documents were received, accepted, and considered authoritative on their merits by local communities.  Books were expensive, rare, and took a lot of time and energy to copy.  If a community obtained a book a decision would have to be made whether it was worth making copies to keep and pass around.  Our current New Testament is the collection of books the people decided were worth retaining, reproducing, and sharing. 

            This would have been an organic, decentralized, and populist process.  Some books were copied extensively and started showing up everywhere.  Other books were not finding wide use.  They were probably kept on the shelf, and eventually boxed up and put in storage… like the collection discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.

            It is not an uncommon procedure in some circles to pretend that, by the 4^th century, the church had all these books to choose from, and some venal and oppressive church hierarchy chose only a few that suited their agenda and imposed them on the people, brutally suppressing the rest.  I suppose framing it that way satisfies some modern fantasies, but it is not true.  And the thing that gets me is that these scholars know this, yet for whatever reasons – probably having to do with book marketing and a hatred of fundamentalism – they continue to go on NPR and the Discovery Channel, and willfully leave the wrong impression with an unsuspecting general public.

            We see from the current canon that the church was not afraid of wide theological diversity.  The books of the New Testament are remarkably broad in their perspectives on the event to which they witness.  Any text for which a good case could be made that it came from the first century, would certainly have been too valuable not to be preserved, copied, shared, and included in the canon.       

            The question about A New New Testament is: Why?  Taussig has taken it upon himself to decide that “the spiritual thirsts of our day need more nourishment,” as he says in his Preface.  Leaving aside the hubris and presumption of that statement (and his whole project), the New Testament was not compiled to quench the spiritual thirst of anyone’s day.  It was just to tell us about the revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ.    

            He also worries about “churches’ strangleholds on what they deem to be unarguable truth about a certain kind of Jesus.”  Thus, Taussig first betrays his disgust with “churches.”  As suggested earlier, the New Testament was formed by the church, that is, by people of faith gathered for worship and teaching.  The New Testament was shaped by the community to which it belongs.           

            Taussig’s apparent mistrust of faith communities is further revealed in his use of the rather negative term “stranglehold” to describe the way churches keep their images of Jesus.  I guess he is referring to stereotypical conservative and evangelical churches who might maintain images of Jesus he doesn’t like.  I get that.  I too am disgusted by the false depiction of Jesus as an armed, white, middle-class American.  However, I find it more fruitful to point out how such images of Jesus contradict the Jesus we see in the four gospels we already have.

            In short, I fully intend to maintain my own “stranglehold” on what I deem to be “unarguable truth” about Jesus.  For the Jesus presented in the canonical gospels is all about liberation, forgiveness, inclusion, welcoming, equality, healing, non-violence, economic justice, and walking lightly on the earth.  In short, he embodies the shalom and agape of God.  He proclaims God’s Kingdom over-against the empires of his day, and establishes alternative communities based on blessing and sharing.  We do not have to dig up some obscure and tattered “new” papyrus from the desert someplace to find this Jesus.  He is right there in the New Testament.

            My concern is that adding this later, eccentric material to the New Testament only serves to dilute its inherent and essential anti-imperialism.  Frankly, some of the books added by Taussig’s council show a bias towards a Gnostic, anti-creation, spiritual escapism that deflates the pointed political character of the New Testament, which has an anti-imperialist apocalypticism at its core.

            For instance, Taussig includes The Secret Revelation of John, (more commonly called The Apocryphon of John) a late 2^nd century text full of metaphysical and, well, bizarre, mythology.  Contrast this exercise in esoteric symbolism with the canonical book of Revelation, a highly symbolic, yet thoroughly political, description of the collapse of Imperial Rome as an indication of the fate of all empires, culminating in Christ’s reign of peace.

            Then there is a book called The Gospel of Truth, written in the second half of the 2^nd century.  This is another highly mythologized take on Jesus, in which he comes into the world with true knowledge, but gets crucified by a personified feminine figure called Error.  Once again, it is a depoliticized version of the gospel.

            So, while the much-maligned orthodox were following the Jesus of the New Testament in building communities of peace and serving needy people, and often being harassed (or worse) by Roman authorities for it, there were also these other people claiming to be Christians who had a depoliticized, collaborationist, gnostic (that is, focused on the personal acquisition of spiritual knowledge) application of the faith that would not have bothered Rome at all.  I imagine that if the Roman government was paying attention, they might even be inclined to support and encourage this harmless, irrelevant, distracting version of this increasingly bothersome Jesus movement. 

            Hence, I fail to understand the value of adding these books to our New Testament.  They come from a different historical era, and they contradict, or at least disregard, the most important counter-cultural strands of the New Testament.  In an era dominated by our own version of imperialism in the form of globalized capitalism, how are we helped by watering-down the New Testament with documents that preach a non-political, otherworldly message?

            Maybe the reason why these writings did not make the cut in the first place is that they had little to say to ordinary people living under the domination of Empire, but appealed instead to a wealthy, privileged class who were content to feed on Empire’s spoils, and who thought of themselves as a spiritual elite.

            All of these writings and more have been available in many formats for decades.  You can get several different editions on Amazon today.  (Search “Gnostic gospels.”  Some of these books have an even more sensationalistic titles than A New New Testament.  They’re all about “secret,” “lost,” “forbidden,” “hidden,” and so forth.)  These books do shed some light on the development of Christianity in the 2^nd through the 4^th centuries.  They show different roads not traveled, and it helps to be aware of them.  Christianity certainly did not always take the right path historically, especially after the 4^th century.  We have not been very faithful to Jesus.  But the Jesus we have failed is the Jesus we see in the New Testament.

            And that’s the point.  In our time, following Jesus, in the sense of living according to his example of non-violence, justice, healing, inclusion, forgiveness, peace, and love, is really important.  Attempting to mix in elements of other far less political and more spiritually escapist versions of Jesus doesn’t help us fight today’s empire.  Just the opposite.  It distracts from discipleship and its cost.

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Good Soil.

Luke 8.1-21

I.

            Jesus continues his journeying from town to town in Galilee.  Luke tells us that he is accompanied by the twelve disciples.  But now we also hear that there are some women in the inner circle as well.  These are people whom Jesus has healed of various maladies, mainly demon possession. 

            (And by the way, when we read about demon possession in the gospels, don’t think The Exorcist, though there are some cases sort of like that.  Think more of conditions we would identify today as depression, anxiety, oppositional-defiant disorders, Tourette’s syndrome, alcoholism, schizophrenia, or even menopause.  These are people who seem driven to anti-social behavior because something comes over them making them seem not to be themselves.  There are societies on this planet today that think a young woman “possessed,” when all she wants is an education.)

            Luke names three women here, and indicates that there are others.  Then he says that “they provided for him out of their resources.”  In other words, Jesus’ ministry was financially underwritten by some women who had access to money.

            This picture, of Jesus and a group of twelve men, depending on wealthy women for financial support, may not sit well with all of us.  But we should remember that women have always been, and remain, the backbone of the church.  Whether they are officially the visible leaders or not, the women do the bulk of the work.  It’s not like the men do nothing; and the men are actually pretty good contributors in this congregation, not to bruise any egos or anything.  I mean, the men could disappear from many congregations and it would barely be noticed; but most congregations would fold without the women.  I’m just saying.       

            It is significant that Luke says this right after the story of the woman anointing him at the Pharisee’s dinner, which is right after that statement he makes about Wisdom being known by all her children.  People of that time would have understood Wisdom personified as a female figure.  Luke then proceeds to tell us about these women welcoming Jesus and supporting his ministry.

            Jesus may be illustrating the characteristics of “good soil” that he talks about in the parable he tells next.  The good soil is the kind of receptivity, gratitude, devotion, and generosity we see in these various women, and the other disciples, who gave up everything to follow him.  The good soil is a heart that knows it has been healed, saved, released, and delivered.  It knows death and decay, hurt and shame.  Think of the kind of  waste that goes into compost.  The heart that is good soil welcomes and feeds the good news in the same way that these women welcome and provide for Jesus.  To be good soil is to be Jesus’ family, those who hear the Word of God and do it.  They receive the Word, and it bears fruit in good actions. 

II.

            So in one town a large crowd gathered, Jesus sits down and tells a parable.  It is a familiar parable to Christians, and one of Jesus’ most important.  Jesus uses the image of a sower, that is, someone sowing in a plowed field seeds, probably of wheat or barley.  Basically, they would take a bag of seeds strapped over their shoulders, and reach into it and scatter the seeds on the ground by the handful, like we would spread grass seed today.

            It is an imprecise method, and especially around the edges of the field, some seed might fall in places not particularly conducive to good growth.  Jesus gives several examples of places where the seed could fall, that would not work very well. 

            It could fall on the pathway, which would not only be hard packed, but people would walk on it crushing the seeds or birds would come and pick them off the surface.  The seeds could fall in rocky ground, preventing it from getting enough moisture, and they would wither if they sprouted at all.  Some could fall in the thorn-bushes that often lined fields and separated them.  These plants would be choked by the thorns and not thrive.

            Finally, of course, the whole point of this exercise of sowing is to get the seeds into the good soil.  There they receive nutrients and sunshine and water, and so they grow tall and full, yielding, as Jesus says, “a hundredfold.”  That is, each seed planted produces a stalk with a hundred new grains on it.  I’m no expert in statistics, but I believe that is a return of 1000%.  It is exorbitant, extravagant, spectacular, abundance.  It is one of those miracles that happen every day on this planet, and we tend to take it for granted.

            Jesus always uses parables based on experiences his hearers would have been familiar with.  He relates to their actual life.  Were he walking on the earth here today with us he would probably be telling parables about traffic, or supermarkets, or the internet.

            On face value, when hearing this parable for the first time, nobody seems to get it.  I imagine him telling this story, and people looking around in puzzlement.  He has just described something so normal and obvious, so everyday and commonplace, that the people are waiting for a punch-line, that never comes.  Even the disciples don’t understand.  They ask him about it later.

            And he tells them that some folks are equipped to know the secrets of the Kingdom of God, and some are not.  In other words, some folks are good soil, and some folks are unreceptive soil.  He speaks in parables in part to sift those who get it from those who don’t. 

III.

            In other words, those who get it and those who don’t are separated by their imagination.  Those who merely take the parable literally understand it as an observation about agriculture, and not a particularly interesting one.  The lesson here is, when you’re sowing seeds, try not to let any fall on the road, on rocks, or among thorns.  Do your best to keep the seeds in the good, plowed land.  From this perspective the story has no meaning beyond this.  If you’re not a farm-worker, it is irrelevant to you.  It is the people who understand Jesus literally he is talking about when he quotes Isaiah about those who, “looking they may not perceive,
and listening they may not understand.”

            Those who don’t take it literally are those who hear the story and realize they don’t understand it.  They know that there is something more than the literal going on here, but they can’t figure out what it is.  It is to these people, who do not comprehend the story, the disciples, who get the explanation.

            Only those who don’t understand receive the meaning.  Those who think they understand, really don’t.  So if you think the Bible is pretty clear to you, if it makes sense literally, if you think you understand it, that’s when you need to worry.  Certainty is the surest sign that you really don’t get it at all.

            Jesus then gives them the key.  The ones who admit they don’t know, get the key.  The ones who think they understand it don’t get the key because they don’t think they need it.

            The Lord explains that “the seed is the word of God.”  And it falls on different kinds of people, individuals of different qualities of receptivity.  Notice two things here.  First, the sower is not identified, but is very generous and profligate with the job.  The sower throws seeds all over the place, into all kinds of soil.  The seed gets thrown everywhere.  No one is excluded.  I get the impression that the supply of seeds is functionally infinite.  The sower is not afraid of running out or wasting it.

            Secondly, the seed remains the same.  There is no idea here that the seed has to be adapted to different environments.  The sower does not modify the seed.  The same seed gets thrown into each context.

            Everyone hears the Word, and it is the same Word that everyone hears.  That’s important because often we tend to try and conserve the Word by only giving it out to ourselves, or to people whom we consider to be receptive.  Or we try to adjust or change the Word to make it more palatable, more convenient, more attractive to its receivers.  That is a very dangerous thing, because then it stops being God’s Word, and becomes something of our own invention.

IV.

            It should be clear by now that the soil in the parable represents people, or human hearts.  In the first case, Jesus is saying that if our hearts are hard, like the pavement of a road, the Word cannot take root in us.  It bounces off us.  It makes no impression on us.  If we have no compassion, no openness, no willingness to be changed or to receive and nurture something new, the Word gets taken away.  We were never really conscious of it anyway.  And the Word will not stay with us forever.

            The second kind of heart receives the good news of God’s love with joy and enthusiasm!  But it’s all superficial.  And when they are tested by some crisis, their faith crumbles.  If we think that faith is going to exempt us from suffering… boy, do we ever have it wrong.  Faith is not an escape from suffering; it is a way through suffering to new life.

            The third kind of receptivity is where the Word is choked by all our distractions and busyness.  We have so many commitments that we simply don’t give enough time and energy to the Word growing in our hearts.  So, while it may actually grow, it doesn’t get enough juice from us to produce any actual fruit.  The Word is at best an ornament or decoration in our life.  But in the end it is worthless.

            The good soil, of course, is the heart that holds the Word fast in honesty and goodness.  It welcomes and embraces and cherishes the Word.  It nurtures and feeds and makes room for the Word.  It realizes what it has been given, and it overflows with thanksgiving and generosity.  These folks bear fruit a hundredfold.  They receive one Word, and they give away a hundred Words of grace, peace, healing, freedom, and blessing.

            Once again, the example is these women who have been healed and liberated, and who devote themselves to the Word, who in their case is right there with them in Jesus himself.

            What we are given is to be itself given away.  We receive a seed so we can produce more seeds for distribution.  Jesus illustrates this with his mini-parable about the lamp and how it needs to be put on the lampstand.  We receive light not to hoard and keep for ourselves but to give away in shining glory.  God’s intention is disclosure, revealing, openness, sharing, spreading, scattering, glowing, and giving.

V.

            This is what he means when he says that those who have will be given more.  Those who are able to receive the seed of the Word are given even more to give away.  Those who do not have receptivity, who are hard hearted, shallow, or distracted, will lose even what they think they have.

            Jesus paints a picture of participation in the Kingdom of God as one of receiving and welcoming the Word, and then having the Word to give away to others.  The Word, of course, is the good news of God’s love and the peace we receive in Jesus Christ.  This is the shape and character of this new community, this new family Jesus is calling to himself.  It is people who receive the Word of God, and then go out and do the Word of God.

            So when members of Jesus’ biological family show up attempting to reach him, Jesus says that his real family are those who hear the Word of God and do it.  The ones who receive the seed and bear fruit, those are his mother and brothers. 

            These women who embody Wisdom by welcoming and supporting him, and facilitating the spread of the good news, they are Jesus’ actual family.  So are we when we are that good soil, when we have that welcoming and nourishing and receptive heart that is open to and feeds the spirit of forgiveness and healing, justice and love. 

            And remember that Jesus says that this is his family.  The good soil is not just about our individual decisions and responses, but this nurturing and welcoming and receptivity happen in community, as a gathering of people whom Jesus then sends into the world on a mission, which is to spread the good news a hundredfold of God’s redeeming love for the world.

+++++++

Are You the Guy?

Luke 7:18-35

(In which Jesus again mentions the marketplace, allowing me to dive in with yet another anti-market screed.)

I.

            Here is some hope for the doubters among us.  Those who are not sure about Jesus may gain some sympathy from this passage.  If you’re on the fence about him, wondering whether he has really made enough difference in the world to warrant the title of Messiah, or even God, this incident is something to which you should relate.  John the Baptizer, Jesus’ cousin, the one who baptized him and witnessed the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, the one who said, “He must increase and I must decrease,” even he is still not quite sure about Jesus. 

            So he sends a delegation of his own disciples to visit Jesus and check him out.  They are supposed to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  Luke repeats the question twice!  He repeats the question because it is so often our question.  It is a question that disciples of Jesus have had to answer over and over again, throughout history.  Is Jesus really the promised Messiah?  Or is there someone else coming?

            It reminds me of the animated Disney movie The Rescuers.  It’s about a bunch of mice in New York City who get a distress call from a kidnapped girl, so they go all the way to New Orleans to rescue her, and when they get there she is glad that someone got her distress call, but eventually she looks around at these mice and says, “Didn’t you bring anybody big with you?” 

            John the Baptizer predicted and promised somebody big!  But the One who shows up… is only Jesus, an effective healer, to be sure.  But he hangs around with riff-raff, and he sure doesn’t look like the spectacular bringer of the wrath of God and the End Times.

            I mean, if Jesus is the Messiah – if Jesus is even God – then like how come the world is still in such a colossal mess?  Wasn’t the Messiah supposed to end war and injustice and violence?  Wasn’t he supposed to “take away the sin of the world”?  Well, the sin of the world seems to be going strong as far as I can see.  What difference did he make?  I mean, we had conflict, torture, plagues, disease, exploitation, hatred, and natural disaster before Jesus, and we have the same things after him.  Where’s the evidence that this guy is the Messiah who was supposed to change everything?

            It is a set of questions we who follow Jesus have to answer intelligibly now with more urgency, because many people have concluded that Jesus, at least as he is represented by his current church, is not “the way, the truth, and the life,” and they have decided to look elsewhere for their salvation, or enlightenment, or liberation, or healing.

            I mean, John the Baptizer himself anticipated someone baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire!  “His winnowing fork is in his hand” and “he will divide the wheat from the chaff.”  It is understandable that Jesus’ actual ministry doesn’t quite look like what John was expecting.  Jesus appears to be a disappointment to people who were expecting the last judgment and the end of the world.

II.

            So John, who is in prison, sends some of his disciples to go check Jesus out.  And they ask that question.  “Are you the guy?”  Jesus is basically being asked to prove himself.

            As it happens, he is right in the middle of healing a lot of people, which John’s disciples don’t appear to notice.  Luke says that “Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind.”

            So Jesus basically says, “Open your eyes and look at what is going on here.  You may not think that what I am doing is “Messianic” enough.  But it is Messianic enough for, oh, the prophet Isaiah, for instance.”  For, except for healing lepers, all of the things that Jesus talks about doing here are specifically mentioned by the prophet Isaiah as signs of God’s intervention in the world. 

            I envision Jesus walking around the vicinity pointing out and introducing John’s emissaries to people whom Jesus has healed.  In Luke’s Greek each example is a short two-word phrase that Jesus rattles off almost staccato fashion:  “The blind see, the lame walk, lepers cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised, and the poor comforted.”

            Maybe Jesus says to them: “I love John, of course, and he may have his own idea of what the Messiah is supposed to do, and that’s fine.  As for me, I am too busy fulfilling Scripture to worry about it.”

            The activities Jesus highlights expand upon what he announced that he came to do in his sermon in Nazareth back in chapter 4.  That included bringing good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind.  Jesus colors in this vision of emancipation by including all kinds of healings, from lepers to even dead people.

            Jesus points to what he is doing.  It’s not theoretical.  It’s not an argument over the finer details of Scripture.  He doesn’t mention any of that stuff from chapters one and two, like how he was born in Bethlehem to a virgin.  That’s not what validates Jesus as the Messiah.  That’s not what he considers “fulfilling Scripture” to mean. 

            It’s not just that he’s doing good works and healing people either.  Jesus may have cured appendicitis, fixed broken arms, and healed gum disease, for all we know, but the things he points to and the things to which all the gospel writers refer are healings that fulfill the vision of the Old Testament.

III.

            There is our response to those who wonder whether Jesus really is Messiah and God.  We can point to Jesus’ ministry as recounted in the gospels, and that’s fine.  But it’s not enough.  People today have learned not to believe everything they read.  Neither does anyone care these days about something that happened 2000 years ago.  And they shouldn’t. 

            Jesus doesn’t talk about history.  He takes the messengers from John by the hand and introduces them to individuals whom he has healed.  We need to do the same thing.  We need to be able to point to people who have found healing and liberation by meeting Jesus Christ in this gathering of disciples.  We need people to talk about the difference Jesus Christ has made in their lives.

            Now, we might say that this is rather a tall order, since we have no memory of blind people receive their sight, the lame people walking, lepers being cleansed, or deaf people hearing, let alone people being raised from the dead.  We could make a case for our bringing good news to the poor, but that’s about it, we think.

            But think again.  Certainly Jesus healed physically and literally.  And he also healed figuratively and spiritually and morally.  When he talks about “the blind” he sometimes means people who cannot actually process light with their eyes; but other times he means people who cannot “see” the truth.  Maybe if we broadened our understanding as well, we would see that these are redemptions and healings that do happen around us.

            Do the spiritually blind receive their sight in the sense of gaining important new insights into their life?  Do we learn to see things differently and better?  What of people paralyzed by guilt or fear, unable to act or make a move on their own?  We don’t deal with many actual lepers, but we are able to welcome and embrace some of those whom our society deems unclean and impure and so treats like lepers.  Do we help people to hear the truth for the first time?  Can we open the ears of people’s hearts to receive God’s Word of grace and forgiveness?  May we not even be instrumental in bringing dead and shattered souls back to life?  May not people lost in the death of addiction or despair find new life in God’s Spirit here?  Finally, we are fully capable of bringing the good news of relief and release to poor people in our area.

            Jesus Christ gives every gathering of his followers the ability to transform lives in these ways, in addition to the literal healings that can happen.  We may not trust him enough to let the fullness of his power flow through us.  But I am positive that these are the kinds of things we are called to do and we should expect to see happening among us.

IV.

            When John’s delegation departs, Jesus talks to the crowd about him, noting that John himself only claimed to be a forerunner.  And the same people who were attracted to him, that is, the sinners, are finding a home and redemption in Jesus’ circle.

            And, on the other hand, the same leaders who criticized John for being too strict and ascetic, now criticize Jesus for not being strict or ascetic enough!  Indeed, they call him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” With some people it doesn’t matter what you do, they are going to find a reason to hate you if you don’t fit into their organizational flow-chart of the status quo.  If you challenge, or even seem to challenge, their power, they will find some reason to hate you and spread propaganda about you.

            Jesus uses the analogy of “children sitting in the marketplace,” playing games.  And isn’t that mainly what goes on in the marketplace: childish games?  There have been many interpretations of Jesus’ example here, where the children call to each other: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.”   
  

            We could envision petulant children getting angry that others – John and Jesus, perhaps – are not playing along with them.  John wouldn’t dance; Jesus won’t weep.  Neither will play by the rules of the market.

            Jesus and John both reject the market as a place where anything real and true is going to happen, and they avoid the games, rituals, posing, bluster, charades, ruthlessness, and hard-sell tactics of that world.  This earns them the ire of those who pretend to be all about the Torah, the law, the Bible, but who are really consumed and possessed by the values of the market: which are, “buy low, sell high.”  Make a profit.

            Opposed to the market, that childish, silly, theatrical, environment of lies and theft, Jesus and John both advocate values and practices based on sharing, generosity, truthfulness, and giving.  Back in chapter 3, John advised people about this.  And Jesus appears to have an agenda of putting physicians and pharmacists out of business by dispensing free health care.

            In fact, Jesus’ whole ministry appears to be based on the idea of everyone simply giving each other what they need.  It is a model that is finally and fully realized in Acts 2 by the early church.  We have to assume from Jesus’ own practice, that this was how his new, alternative communities were supposed to act all the time.  If someone is hungry, sick, poor, ostracized, possessed, in prison, or even dead, you address the need immediately.  You don’t try and sell them something.

V.

            “Nevertheless,” says Jesus.  “Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”  There are the children in and of the marketplace, and there are the children of Wisdom.  It is the children of Wisdom, that is, those who follow the commandments and values and practices of Wisdom, who show by their actions that Wisdom’s ways are just and true.  In other words, Wisdom works.

            Jesus embodies and demonstrates and reveals the ways of Wisdom, and he does this in his healing and liberating and forgiving, redeeming, and transforming ministry.  This is what he shows to John’s disciples.  He may not be the Messiah some hoped for, anticipated, fantasized about, or expected.  But he is the real one.  He is the One prophesied by Isaiah and others, and he is the One who discloses the children of Wisdom.

            The church may not be what some want either.  If we think that this is where God does whatever we want, gives us the life we desire, makes us comfortable and satisfied, and takes away all pain and confusion, that’s not real.  But if we seek the place where God’s will to heal and free and welcome people – sinners – is enacted, then this could be the place.

            Jesus gives us the power to be this place, where “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.”  He gives us the Holy Spirit so these kinds of things may happen even among us.  And sometimes they do, as you know.

            But when someone asks us, is Jesus the One?  Is he the One who can heal me?  Is he the One who can liberate, redeem, forgive, or empower me?  Or should I look elsewhere?  We need to be able to say, “Look, meet this brother who was healed; meet this sister who has been set free; meet this broken soul who has been restored; meet this person whose life has been turned around.  Then you tell me if Jesus is the One.”

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