Good News 'Heard and Seen' at the Margins
- Chris Brewster
- Aug 2, 2009
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Good News Heard and Seen
Introduction:
This is a celebration service for the Urban Project. I hope my message today will provide a lens through which to understand the Urban Project as an expression of what God is up to in our world. However, many will miss out on God’s work because, just like when he walked the earth, he works among people and in places, that seem either too insignificant in a world of “movers and shakers”, or that seem too broken to be fixed.
Others will miss out because they count themselves as ones too broken, or too insignificant to matter to God, and so fail to cry out for his healing touch.
1Now when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities. 2When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
What is Jesus’ message? The central message of Jesus is the Good News of the Kingdom; it is the foundational core of Jesus’ life and ministry.
Don Kraybill describes the Kingdom as… “God’s intentions, authority, and ruling power… [That points us not to] the place of God, but to God’s ruling activities. It is not a kingdom in heaven, but from heaven—one that thrives here and now…
Jesus is proclaiming that God is at work, here, now, in his life and ministry, inaugurating a Kingdom that seeks wholeness, healing, rescue, restoration, putting everything right, within the creation, now.
The hopes for this Kingdom come to earth is wrapped up in Israel’s expectation of a Messiah, a Deliverer, who would lead
This homecoming would come about after a defeat of Israel’s enemies and establishing a Messianic Kingdom that ruled the world from a renewed seat of power in Jerusalem, bring about lasting justice and peace to the all the nations of the world, after all enemies where either destroyed or subjected.
Israel believed herself to be the linchpin of what the creator god was doing, and would do, for the world as a whole; when
Yet,
Jesus sought to remind
Israel’s enemy lie within their own hearts, and woven into corrupted institutions and systems, both given remarkable power to entice, oppress, deceive, corrupt, accuse, and devour, by the Enemy, the ruler of this age.
The defeat of these enemies, their true enemies, would come about not through…
- “getting her act together,” being more religious, consumed with an outward veneer of piety
- Nor doing some internal house cleaning by rooting out the bad apples
- Nor through following the lead of a Messiah who looked a lot like the emperors of empire who dominated and subjucated them of the centuries.
But it would come through trusting that in some strange upside down way that God’s Kingdom was now being inaugurated by one whom…
- Was down right hostile to the religious practices of the day for being hypocritical, oppressive, exploitive, and love less.
- Rather than surrounding himself societies elite, spent so much time among societies rejects, the bad apples who needed to be tossed.
- Did not secure victory over the world’s true enemies through force and intimidation, but through suffering love demonstrated on the cross as he allowed himself to be crushed by the worst our enemies could do; only to rise again to claiming victory over our enemies, including the enemy of death itself.
This Messiah would invite all “with eyes to see and ears to hear” this resounding victory, to trust that he would continue to work through them towards a victory that has already been won.
But before all of this would unfold, John the Baptist, the one who spent his life preparing the way for the Messiah’s coming, sat in Herod’s prison, wondering…did I get it wrong?
Herod the Tetrarch was the stand in ruler for the
John, like modern day prophets MLK and Nelson Mandela got himself put in jail. As the great prophets always do, John challenged the status quo.
Herod was afraid of imprisoning John for already “disturbing the peace” with radical claims that a Messiah was coming who shake things up, due to his popular following.
John gave Herod a reason to do so as John attempted to fan the flames of outrage, by pointing out how this pagan King with Jewish blood had violated God’s law and God’s heart by swiping his half brothers wife, and making her his own.
“Listen, people, don’t be indifferent to this situation, and don’t settle for it, and certainly don’t sell out your principles and secure you place of privilege within it, are times are crying out for deliverance, if this is the type of King who rules over us!” Look to the true King, who has arrived!
But now, John sat in prison, when the glorious and powerful Messiah comes, shouldn’t his main man be swooped up into some important action, rather than seemingly abandoned to a prison cell?
All the while Jesus and his rag-tag group of followers traveled around, hardly looking like a force to be reckoned with.
His miracles while amazing and touching perhaps seemed like silly distractions to the more pressing matters of securing
4Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the 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.
Jesus’ Kingdom ministry would not be only some inward, what we would call “spiritual” reality. The good news that Jesus brought was not some higher knowledge one needed to escape from this terrible world, into heaven.
Rather, Kingdom ministry consists of real physical transformation in this world, something that you can see. Throughout the gospel the “spiritual change” is often interconnected with physical change.
We should note that we see Jesus heal the blind, because he has compassion on them, he loves them, with sometimes no evidence of their spiritual blindness being healed. Yet, he does not withhold his healing touch. Why?
Because Jesus loves the world, he wants to restore the “whole creation,” he wants to make “all things new.” His works of healing now are simply signs that point to the victory that he has already won.
Ex. Through our camp this summer we brought kids to a safe place, where they had fun, where they were loved, where they were fed, where they heard about Jesus.
This point’s to the day when all will enjoy complete safety, experience child like joy that isn’t stamped out by abuse and neglect, where stomachs will not ache with hunger because their parents two jobs force them to ration the food, where all will see and hear Jesus up close and personal.
As proof of his identity, Jesus offers John a Messiah check-list, that if John was paying attention his classes on the Prophets, demonstrates Jesus as the Messiah, the King of a radically inclusive Kingdom…
The Blind, the leper, crippled, mute people healed, were all people designated as ritually unclean, whose condition was thought to be deserved punishment for their, or their families disobedience of some sort. Their condition has defined them as those who don’t belong, those forced to the margins of society, forgotten and left to fend for themselves.
For them healing, removing their shameful condition, had the double meaning and affect of both healing and belonging. To remove that which kept them on the outside of the community of faith, to make them clean, is to make them ones who could now enjoy the privileges of being a community member, with all the benefits of belonging…companionship, a social safety net, identity
Now, the shamed and left out were brought into the welcoming center of what God is doing in the world.
Jesus’s ministry demonstrates…For Israel to be made right with God, to be made whole,, the most broken, rejected, desperate, vulnerable, must be at the center of their priorities.
For the church to be made right with God, to be made whole, the most broken, vulnerable, must move to the center of our priorities, our compassionate service.
But, we also must recognize that Jesus healing doesn’t just fix peoples problems, and then gives them a patronizing pat on the head, but invites them as welcomed and honored guest to his banquet table of friends. Friends with whom, and through whom, he wants to change the world.
I think of the teens in our group some of whom carry the shame of being a “bad student” in a ghetto school, or perhaps an “illegal immigrant,” who have stepped up into leadership this summer and offering love and service to children’s whose suffering reflects in some ways their own. I think of how I experience community and belonging working with them that reminds me that both our healing and belonging our bound up together.
6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
Conclusion:
The King of this Kingdom is an offense to many. Do we delight in this Kingdom, does it sound like good news, or do we take offense?
Jesus offended many in Israel, does he offend us just as he offended them…
Will we miss his work, because he is inviting us to turn to him, and allow him to work through us among people our culture or religious nature has taught us to reject, or see as unimportant?
Will me miss his work because we feel that our condition makes us unacceptable and beyond hope?
The good news for all of us is that if Jesus brings the most rejected, condemned, and broken into the healing center of his work, what does that mean for you?
For those who might miss Jesus, shamed and rejected by our unacceptable condition, we should take great hope in a Jesus who says, in a sense to John, “This is who I am, a Messiah, a Deliver, for the most rejected.”
There are some of us who prop ourselves up with religious games, seeking rituals that will make us clean, posturing ourselves before God for acceptance.
We should rejoice in a Jesus who is turned off by are strivings, and seek his healing touch among the most rejected and broken.
In them, we will see, what he wants us to see, our true condition before him. From this place, we can cry out for his healing touch that will make us whole.
From this place, he invites us as his friends, to join him in his healing work in the world.
