It’s Not a Small World After All!
Matthew 11:1-19

I.  Introduction
John had started so well, so successful.  Hundreds were streaming into the desert to hear his fiery sermons, to undergo his baptism of repentance.  Many chose to be his disciples.  His message stirred up the hopes of the powerless and oppressed because he promised that the long awaited Messiah was soon coming.  At last, God was going to deliver the nation of Israel from these pagan Gentile Romans.  At last, God was going to return the Jews to their rightful place as top dog over all the nations.  

Now John was in prison.  Expectations crushed.  Hopes dashed.  Dreams shattered.  A once successful ministry reduced to a few faithful disciples.

Life is full of expectations.  And when these expectations are not fulfilled, when life, and others, and God let us down, fail to live up to our dreams, our demands, to conform to our plans, we may respond in rage, bitterness, doubt, or depression.  

Or, we may resolve even harder to make life work, to force ourselves, life, even God to be more predictable, more controllable, more immediately satisfying. There is something about being human that most of us just cannot bear too much mystery and uncertainty.  

Many insist on squeezing life and god into a nice, neat, little room.  We may invite a few others to join us in our little rooms who share our proper understandings of life and God.  We’re rather comfortable in our little rooms where everything is quite familiar.  Sure, our little rooms are as barren as a prison cell, but at least our beliefs, our lifestyle, our relationships, our hearts are safe.

 But the Christian life is meant to be one of paradox and tension.  “The first shall be last, the last shall be first.”  “If you want to be great, become a servant.”  “The least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist, the greatest of all prophets.”  
 
The problem is our controllable, predictable, and to-small images of God always come up short.  You see, John the Baptist’s too small understanding of Christ and the kingdom of God had come up impotent, unable to sustain him in a time of trial.  

The images and beliefs we hold of who Christ is, and what the kingdom of God is, and what the Church is, are so foundational.  They drive how we worship, how we pursue discipleship, how we live out our faith.  

Yet I suggest that for most of us, at least I find this continually true of me, that because Christ and the kingdom are so much bigger than any of our too- small images, that for us to keep growing in our faith, and in intimacy with God, we must continually have our images and our beliefs reevaluated, reshaped, expanded.  

This is exactly what we discover Christ doing to John, to the following crowds, and to His disciples in our study passage from Matthew.

Our text invites us to allow the Holy Spirit to shatter our inadequate images of Christ, and to expand our images of God and the kingdom of God so that our worship is grander, our participation in the kingdom is broader, our fellowship richer.


II. So John the Baptist in his confusion and disenchantment sends his disciples to Christ and queries, “Are you the Expected One or should we look for someone else?”  

Most of us know the context of John the Baptist’s, and the other participant’s, misplaced expectations.  Zealous and well-studied Jews of his day lived in eager anticipation of a Messiah who would fulfill the prophesies of deliverance for Israel and judgment for the Gentile nations.  
Prophesies like those of Malachi who foretold of the coming day of the Lord that would burn like a furnace, when all the arrogant and the evildoer will be stubble.  

John was surely familiar which such prophesies, after all these same passages described his ministry.  He was the one to prepare the way for this day of the Lord that no one can endure.  But the Messiah had come, or so John had initially thought.  John thought he understood Christ Jesus to be the Messiah.  But where was the fire?  Where was the judgment, the deliverance?  

So Christ sent the disciples back to John saying, “Dear John, you are blessed if you expand your understanding of the kingdom, if you let me meet you in your disappointment and widen your images of the Messiah!”  Christ exposed and expanded John’s too-small view of Christ and kingdom.  

With both tact and tenderness, both confrontation and comfort, Christ responded to John. Christ knew that John was limiting his understanding by only focusing on the apocalyptic prophesies of Christ and the kingdom.  So Christ responded and drew John’s attention to prophesies that foretold of the grace and healing signs of the kingdom.  Prophecies like Is 35 that spoke of God’s kingdom coming with a power that will “open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, where sorrow and sighing would flee away.”  

Christ had the disciples report to John, “Hear and see, I am bringing judgment and deliverance right to the very roots of evil, not in overthrowing the political powers, but in ministering the gospel to the ones considered insignificant by those in such power: the blind see, the lame walk, the diseased are cleansed, the dead rise, and best of all, the poor are hearing the good news of the gospel.  

And here’s the paradox, John, this will ultimately overthrow the unjust powers of the world and bring deliverance to all the nations, but not threw the power of human might, but through the power of humble service, not through the power of human force, but divine love!”  

The words of Christ to John invaded John’s prison cell and shattered and reshaped his misunderstandings of the Messiah and the kingdom.  If we allow it, our text today can invade our comfortable little world, and calls us to live larger lives of faith, hope, and love.  

But of course, not all of us enjoy having our nice comfortable little worlds invaded and shaken up.  Many would rather cling to their precious little viewpoints of about who God is and how God acts, and how life and Christianity are suppose to work.  Even if such images are small, perhaps wrong, at best inadequate, but at least we understand them.  

At least these images are controllable, predictable, and safe.  And we can always find enough people who share our views, who worship the same small images of Christ, who cling to the same small beliefs, who battle the same battles.  


III.    But this Christ, this Holy Spirit person keeps trying to mess things up!  Keeps trying to shatter our too small images and expand our inadequate views of the kingdom.  

Indeed, Christ continually goes from room to room, making a mess of the place, overturning all our organized files, turning upside-down all our pictures of landscapes and icons, drawing back the curtains, opening the window, letting all that irritating light shock our eyes, and uncomfortable wind blow upon us.

Christ keeps whispering, or screaming,  in our ears, “Blessed are you if you keep from stumbling over me, from falling away out of disappointment or living small lives because you insist on clinging to your predictable gods and your well manicured little kingdom.”   Our text today shows us two possible responses to hearing these words of Christ.  

One way to respond to Christ’s attempts at shattering our inadequate images and too small understanding of God is to resist and cling even tighter to our small but precious viewpoints.  

Whenever we are confronted with alternative views of Christ or Christianity or doctrine or what the Church is suppose to be and do, we can cover our ears and retreat back into our safe, predictable, controllable little worlds. We can throw Christ out of our rooms, lock the door, shut the window, straighten our pictures, and once again all is right with out world.  


The disciples of John seem to be doing this.  The disciples of John can serve as an example of ignoring Christ’s invitation to rethink and expand our understanding of God and the kingdom.  

After all, as soon as Jesus showed up on the scene John began dismissing his disciples to go follow Christ.  Why did some choose not to do so?  Perhaps they didn’t care for this new liberal preacher who ate and drank with sinners.  They preferred good ol’ fundamentalist John!

So what are the too-small images of Christ that you cling to: Is your image of Christ that of the conservative preacher, radical liberator, liberal social justice defender, the evangelist, the sentimental precious moment figurine, the kind friend, the victorious warrior?  

What is your image of God’s kingdom:  A Christianized society, a coming apocalyptic event, a social club, a small group of folk who look and think and act just like you?   Do you try to reduce your faith to controllable little categories like liberal or conservative?

None of our labels can possible capture the height, and breadth and depth of Christ and the kingdom.  There was a time when my view of who was saved and who was not was not just small, but tiny!   

When I first came to faith in an independent, charismatic church, I thought only those who could point to a moment of saying the sinner’s prayer, and who avoided all the major sins, and didn’t listen to secular music, and who understood the Bible from an extreme, fundamentalist, dispensationalist viewpoint where the only true Christians. And those mainliners: Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, well there might be a few actual Christians in those churches, but not many.  Thanks be to our patient and relentless God who has and still is continually shattering, reshaping, and expanding my so very small understanding of grace, and Christ, and kingdom!  

I suggest that one major mark of spiritual, emotional, and relational maturity is an ability to continually rethink what you believe about life and God.  To continually consider other viewpoints about every area of life, and let them challenge your own beliefs.  In doing so your belief are refined, changed, or strengthened.  

I would be very suspicious about someone’s growth in Christ if he or she could look back over a ten year period, and not point to any area where he or she had changed, perhaps even radically so, some understanding or belief in some area related to faith.  

To hold deep, willing-to-die-for convictions should not mean that we remain stagnant in every area of doctrine.  In my journey, as the years pass, I find that the number of convictions that I hold with absolute certainty, that I am willing to die for, become much smaller in number, yet are more deeply held.

If we are to be the true Church of Jesus Christ in Dubuque, we must embrace a wide view of grace, and live large lives of graciousness toward all our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith no matter where they fall on the poorly labeled spectrum of liberal or conservative.  

Christianity is a huge umbrella that incorporates a wide, often seemingly conflicting, understanding of Scripture.  We mustn’t be like the disciples that Christ made fun of in our text calling them immature children who couldn’t get along on the playground.  

When Christ is held out as being too liberal in his grace toward sin, they insist on a more legalistic Christianity, and when Christ is seen as being too harsh in His standards, they insist on a more accommodating Christianity.

And we must embrace a deep view of grace toward those still outside the Christian faith believing that the Holy Spirit is already at work in every religion, and in every person’s life, no matter how captive to sin they may be, and that it is God’s job to judge or to save, not ours!  We are called to simply and humbly share the story of Jesus Christ.
 
So one response when Christ breaks into our little rooms, and invites us into a wider life of grace is to resist, as did some of John’s disciples.  Or we can accept the Spirit’s invitation to come out of our little cocoons into a wider, grander, larger life in the ever-expanding kingdom of God.

Christ’s disciples in our study passage can serve as a model of this process, of allowing the Spirit to continually shatter and reshape our images of the person and work of Christ.  The portrait of the disciples throughout Scripture is a group who more often than not were rather dense when it came to understanding Christ and the kingdom.  

Like us, they too kept trying to reduce Christ and the mission of God to something small, self-serving, and controllable.  Yet Christ, in the same limitless patience he extends to us, just kept shattering their idolatrous images and inviting them to embrace an expansive kingdom and an extravagant God.  And the disciples just kept following, always stumbling but never falling away.      

So how can we do likewise?  How can we remain open to this ongoing work of the Spirit? How can we just keep following Christ despite our confusion and disenchantment?  Our text suggests three avenues of such ongoing renewal.


IV.    “John was in prison and he heard about the work of Christ.”

One way, is to allow our lives individually and corporately to be shaped by all the Biblical witness of God and the kingdom work, and not just our favorite texts.       

John and the crowds needed such a broader understanding of Scripture.  John had reduced his understanding of the Messiah to a handful of his favorite verses.  He clung to all the apocalyptic verses about God’s coming judgment and deliverance, and about his own mission of crying out in the wilderness and making every path straight.”

But John overlooked the verses such as those that get quoted about Christ just after our passage, “He will not quarrel or cry out, a bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”  So what are your favorite verses of Christ and kingdom that you cling to to the neglect of others’?

Secondly, John also, like us, needed to continually hear about the wider work of the kingdom, he needed to have more categories for understanding how to discern the work of the Holy Spirit.  Christ had to remind John that the kingdom was advancing in very powerful and disruptive ways, that didn’t necessarily fit John’s preconceived ideas.

In the same manner, our ability to discern the work of the Holy Spirit can be impaired when we cling to too limited categories of what the work of God looks like, so we fail to recognize the constant work of the Spirit that goes on right before our eyes every day!   

Let me make a very boldly and risky statement that should provoke thinning and debate.  We severely restrict our participation in the work of God, and damagingly impede the power of the gospel when we insist on quenching the full power of the Holy Spirit just because our belief system won’t allow for a broader doctrine of what the Sprit still does in our day, or when we cling to a small faith that doesn’t believe that the gospel has the power to set people free from every addiction and to restore even the most broken of relationships, and heal the most horrific of emotional or spiritual woundedness!  

Lastly, I if we really want to have our inadequate views of Christ corrected, our disempowering beliefs of the Spirit’s work broadened, and our too-small  categories of the kingdom expanded, than we need to hang out where Christ is found most readily. Too many want to experience God only in the safety of their private devotions and corporate worship services.  

Yet, our text seems to reveal that Christ is discovered more dynamically out in the streets where Christ is at work bringing sight to the blind, healing the lame and diseased, raising the dead, proclaiming the gospel to the poor.  Perhaps we should join him there more often, to spend more time in front line ministry to those in real need.   
Perhaps then we will discover God’s presence in a manner that delivers from sin, heals hurt, and instills peace and joy.   Where is the power of God seen most on display?  In our sterile, polished American worship services, or on the streets and in the villages of Africa and South America?   

We will discover the powerful, healing, joy-producing, peace-giving, sin-freeing, life-changing, presence of our trine God far more in our humble, costly, risky service and gospel ministry than in our formal avenues of worship and private devotion.    

So what will your response be to Christ today?  When Christ breaks down the door of your little room and disrupts your tidy, safe world, will you throw him out, or follow him out?