A Year (a life) In Review

Scripture Focus, Matthew 11:2-11
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2011:2-11;&version=31;

We may be at the beginning of the Christian year (it started at the beginning of December, Advent is the start of the Christian calendar) but we are at the end of the calendar year. List after list is being published along the lines of, “The top 10 (insert topic here) of the year.” TIME magazine will soon let us know who is the “person of the year.” Life magazine will give us a year in pictures. Many of us will look over our own lives this past year, highlights and low points. It is a natural process, this review. Often people facing crisis or illness will do this as well. Just think of the phrase, “my whole life flashed before my eyes.”

The reading from Matthew is, in the words of a friend of mine, poignant. Here’s a man, John the Baptist, who is in prison who knows that he is likely going to die reviewing his life and wondering…

He is trying to figure out if it has all been worth it.

The passage reads,
“When John heard in prison
what the Messiah was doing,
he sent word by his disciples
and said to Jesus,
"Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?"

Keep in mind that John has been watching Jesus for some time. John baptised Jesus. John saw Jesus heal people.
John heard the reports of what he was doing. And yet he still worried, he still has questions.

So he sends his followers to Jesus
“Are you the one?”
“Did I finish my work?”
“Was I right to put my faith in you?”

Jesus answered them,
"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.
And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

Jesus says
“Look at what is happening. Believe your eyes, believe your ears, and believe your hearts.”

John was someone who thought that society was too corrupt, too lost, and/or too hopeless to save. He, and his community, cut themselves off from the rest of the country. They retreated to the desert.

But Jesus explicitly rejects this. He showed a new way. He deliberately walks among diseased people. He deliberately engages rude people. He eats and drinks with people who are outcasts. Jesus didn’t just come for the last, the lost and the least. He ate with them, he laughed with them, he loved them. Jesus was not a motivational speaker who simply inspired crowds. Jesus showed us God. God talks to us. But God also acts in our lives.

Jesus talked to people. But he mostly just acted among people. As followers in the way of Jesus we are told to do likewise,

"Let your light shine before people,
so that they may see your good works
and give glory to your Father in heaven" (5:11)

Every day as people of faith we have to think like John the Baptist, “Are we doing the right thing? Is Jesus the one?”
Questioning faith isn’t, to use a church word, sinful.
Accepting without question is the problem.
Blindly following, not learning, and studying, and growing, is the problem.

We know of many people of faith who question.
It is those times of questioning, those reviews, that allow us to see things, to know things, that we didn’t know before.

When all else fails we continue. Even continue with our questions to follow God. During this time of reviews when we are looking back over the last year we may learn new things, see things in a new way because we have taken this time to look and question what happened.

But we keep going, the calendar doesn’t stop.

I visited a Jewish synagogue as part of a course I took and the Rabbi there explained that many rules and prayers are proscribed, not to show belief (because ultimately it is irrelevant, God is God, whatever we believe) but because acting in these ways reminds us of God and maybe we will learn something new about God by doing these things.

Action is the key.

We know now that Mother Theresa, a woman who lived out her faith working with the poor and praying every day, started her work as a result of a profound experience of God. However, there were long times when she felt disconnected and separated from God and kept acting anyway.

Jesus answer to us is the same as it was for John the Baptist. Jesus says, “look at what is happening: believe your eyes, believe your ears, and believe your hearts.

People began to follow Jesus because Jesus healed people,
forgave people, and just loved them.

There is a story of a woman forgiven by Jesus. We don’t really know what she did but we know a little of what happened after.

It started when Jesus was eating lunch.
Can you imagine the scene?….
A group of men are lying in a room sharing a meal
(people usually lay down to eat
heads together so they could talk easily
feet to the outside)
servants keep coming in with food and drink
all of a sudden this woman enters
a woman who had lived a sinful life
she brought an alabaster jar of perfume,
and hesitates
looking at Jesus
waiting for her chance
she opens the jar
the musky sweet scent of perfume
begins to mingle with the smells of the food
the woman still waits
standing at his feet weeping,
and then
she begins to wet his feet with her tears.
she wipes them with her hair,
kisses them and poured perfume on them.

And this doesn’t go unnoticed.
How could it?

“When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.’

Jesus answered him, ‘Simon, I have something to tell you.’
‘Tell me, teacher,’ he said.

‘Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?’

Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.’
‘You have judged correctly,’ Jesus said.

Jesus turned toward the woman and said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.’

Then Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’

The other guests began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’

Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

Jesus came for the least and the last and the lost and he didn’t just talk to them, he healed them, he loved them, and
he brought such joy into their lives that all they could do was cry.

Jesus comes for each of us too. He comes to bring us joy. We feel that joy in many ways. Christmas is a time when we talk about joy, but we know that joy is actually a very difficult thing. Joy is deeper than happiness, it can be overwhelming, and can make us cry. We can’t speak properly of joy. We can only know when we have experienced it.

So let us go and act in joy. Let us be led by our eyes and our ears and our hearts to God, who inspires in us joy so that we know where and how to go and spread that joy.

Let us bring all our questions to God, and learn from the answers. Let us bring all that we have to God, so that we can act in joy. It is wonderful that our children’s program is called JOY. JOY stands for Jesus Others You. It implies relationship, action, and celebration. I can’t think of a better description of faith.

We are at the end of the calendar year, as a church we are approaching our annual meeting. It is time to look back. It is time to question. It is time to listen to the still small voice of God that sometimes gets lost in the noise of our lives. It is time to look for God, in others, in our world, and in ourselves. It is time to feel the beating of our own hearts, and experience the deep and profound joy that Christ brings. And it is time to act as Jesus did. Eating with and drinking with all. Loving all of humanity. Loving ourselves. Loving God.

Amen