Jesus and Cake Wrecks

Scripture:

Matthew 11:2-11

Preached 12/15/2013

[Note: This sermon started with a PowerPoint using cakes as an illustration of "what they wanted" and "what they got" with "what John wanted" and "what John got" with Jesus. 
For the cake pictures, see: http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/12/6/do-you-copy.html
The Jesus pictures are below, "wanted" first, "got" second]

Much like a customer headed into a bakery, John the Baptist had a picture in his mind of what he wanted Jesus to be.  He wanted a warrior.  He wanted a man of immense powerful who would overthrow the Roman government and bring about a new age of peace and prosperity for John and his fellow Jews.  Just a few chapters earlier, John baptized Jesus.  And it was miraculous.  Depending on the Gospel version you read, there’s a dove and a voice from heaven announcing Jesus as God’s son and telling all to listen to him. 

John is really excited.  He’s been out in the wilderness proclaiming the coming messiah for a while now, and I’m sure he was happy to have this miraculous event seem to fulfill his prophecy.  He proclaims that Jesus is the anointed one, the messiah for whom we were waiting.  This guy just has to be that powerful military king. In other words, John knew just what he wanted his cake to look like.

And now, a few months or years later, John has returned to the bakery, so to speak, and he’s having second thoughts.  The cake he got isn’t the cake he thought was coming.  John is actually in prison, as our reading says, basically waiting for the end of his life.  He’s spent his whole adult life proclaiming the coming of the anointed one who would bring about God’s reign of peace and prosperity.  This Jesus doesn’t look anything like his mental picture.  Things seem pretty much the same for the Jews, and they’ve just gotten worse for John. 

 Jesus isn’t even doing the right stuff.  He’s supposed to have religious influence.  He’s supposed to have political influence.  And to do those things, he’s supposed to be popular, or at least he’s supposed to be hanging out with powerful and popular people.  And what is Jesus actually doing?  He’s hanging out with all the outcast and marginalized people.  The sick—blind, lame, even people with leprosy.  He’s hanging out with women.  With children.  With tax collectors.  With prostitutes.  Seriously, Jesus is even hanging out with dead people! This can’t be right!  This isn’t what a messiah is supposed to look like!  It seems like John and the baker weren’t working from the same picture.

John doesn’t ask for a refund though.  Instead, he sends some of his followers to go ask Jesus if maybe John just got his order wrong.  If perhaps John had been a little rash thinking he knew exactly what the messiah “cake” would look like. 

To be fair to John, though, his image of a messiah as a powerful, victorious, warrior ushering in a new age where everything was awesome wasn’t exactly new.  There have always been apocalyptic schools of thought in Jewish thinking and religion.  And, to honest it’s not just an old Jewish image either.  It’s still one we cling to today.

Think about this.  I’m guessing most of us have heard of the prosperity gospel.  It’s the idea that God will give us material blessings for believing in Jesus.  If you’ve heard of Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar—those are all prosperity gospel preachers.  And the message is a lot what John the Baptist wanted to hear—follow Jesus and good things will happen to you.  Follow Jesus well enough, and nothing but good things will happen to you and you’ll be rich and fulfilled and everything will go your way.  The problem here is that that just isn’t true.  If this is he cake you order, it’s not going to end up looking anything like Jesus.  That order is just impossible.

Following Jesus definitely does not mean that life is going to be easy.  Frankly, sometimes it means that life is going to be extra hard.  Our savior lived a hard life.  He died a brutal death.  Anything that follows his example is going to look a little strange, and a little rough. 

John is a prime example of this.  Even though he was a kind of crazy guy living out in the wilderness, he’d had a following.  He’d been popular.  He’d been somewhat powerful.  And now, after proclaiming Jesus the messiah, he’s sitting helpless in prison. He finds himself in complete solidarity with all those outcast and marginalized people he’s unsure about Jesus spending his time with. 

Following Jesus doesn’t make us rich.  It doesn’t make us popular. It doesn’t guarantee success, and it certainly doesn’t make us powerful.  It may well mean that we get kind of beat up.  We might look more like those “what they got” cakes than the “what they wanted” ones.  And that’s okay—because what “they” want and what Jesus asks and wants aren’t the same thing.  And as Christians, our concern is not with “they,” it’s with Jesus. 

As followers of Jesus, we are asked to do the same things that Jesus did.  Really—just a few chapters earlier Jesus sends out his disciples to do exactly those things he lists off to John—healing the sick, raising the dead, and bringing good news to the poor.  Following Jesus means our load is heavier, not lighter.  And our wallets are emptier, not fuller.  Following Jesus means that we are called to give all that we can to help all those in need around us, because if we call ourselves disciples, or followers, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Maybe you remember that this Sunday we light the candle of joy.  And maybe you’re also wondering what all this has to do with joy.  In our scripture reading John was, if anything, not joyful, but disappointed.  Maybe you are too at this point, thinking about all the work that there is to do if we really are supposed to follow Jesus’ example to heal and raise and bring good news.  And, contrary to the prosperity position, you know that the work isn’t going to be easy.  And we aren’t necessarily going to succeed in all that we want to do.  But really, I’m sure that there is joy here.  This scripture passage offers us a deep kind of joy, much more than a pretty cake, or a pretty savior who perfectly matches what we think we want.

Instead of that messiah we think we want, we get the one we need.  He reaches into the darkest places and offers light.  He goes to the loneliest places and offers companionship and compassion.  He goes to the most broken places and gives healing and forgiveness.  He goes to the places of despair and offers joy.  And he gets beat up in the process.  And he looks strange doing what he does.  And he’s surrounded by people, like us, who are also beat up and a little strange.

And he asks us to do the same things he does, to go the same places and bring the same light.  And there’s definitely joy in that mission.  First, there’s they joy that in this community, we’re already doing some of the work that Jesus asks us to do.  Our women’s fellowship has been bringing joy to some of our members who can no longer make it to church through notes and cookies.  You all have been bringing Christmas gifts for families in need, who you don’t even know.   You’ve been hard at work through New Beginnings figuring out who the sick are who need healing and the poor are who need good news in this community, and how we can bring that to them.  You’ve been giving your time by serving on session, on committees, or volunteering to decorate or drive or serve at fellowship time or just help out in any way you can. 

But Jesus isn’t telling us to stop yet.  He’s asking us to keep doing, to keep following, just like John, wherever following Jesus will lead us, to the very end.  So, as much as we can find joy in what we’ve already done, let’s not let that joy be all we experience.  Let’s keep going, and keep spreading that healing, that compassion, and that good news.

There’s an old saying that goes something like “happiness isn’t having what you want, but wanting what you have.”  And I think that’s where the other piece of our joy comes in.  For us, joy isn’t in having Jesus be who we want him to but in loving and following who he really is.  It’s realizing that he isn’t a wrecked cake—he’s our perfect savior, and it’s just that our expectations can be a little wonky.  We don’t need to order a new messiah.  We need a new perspective.  This is the part in the scripture reading where Jesus says “and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  God has fulfilled humanity’s request for a messiah, and didn't make any mistakes in making him.  Our task is simply to rejoice in him, to accept him, and to accept that challenge he offers his followers to imitate his example, as it really looks, not as we might want it to be different. 

And to imitate his example, and to not end up as wrecked versions of Jesus imitators ourselves, we are called to show compassion to the same kinds of people that Jesus did—the poor, the outcast, and everyone who society pushes out to the margins.  And in showing compassion, in offering healing and liberation and good news, we have to push past those boundaries that society insists we have to keep up.  We will perhaps have to go new places and do new things that and feel a little unsure of ourselves, and a little uncomfortable.  We’ll encounter new people and new ideas that will change us, and unsettle us.  We’ll probably look a bit different than we expected, too.

But blessed are we if we are able to do this, because this is what following Jesus is all about. Who did we expect?  Who do we expect?  As we prepare ourselves for his coming once again, let us remember just who this is who is going to fill that manger.  And let us open our hearts to receive him, not how we might design him, nut as God actually made him.  Not a wreck, but a savior far better and far beyond anyone we could have ever imagined.  Come, Lord Jesus, as you truly are.  Amen.