Are You the One? (6th Sunday after Epiphany; Luke 7:15-38; February 12, 2017)

Are You the One?

6th Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 7:15-38

February 12, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD

First United Methodist Church

Decorah, Iowa

"Are you the one?" John wanted to know. He was in prison, waiting for the disposition of his case. He had preached a message of repentance and he had the audacity to think that a general call to repentance should apply to all of the Torah's children, even the king. The king disagreed. So John was in prison, waiting for the disposition of his case. Forced to do nothing, his mind wandered. Maybe he wondered if his ministry had amounted to anything, if it had done any good, if any part of it would survive or bear fruit. Maybe he thought that if Jesus were the one John and his disciples had been waiting for he would be able to face his own future knowing that his life and work had mattered. We can imagine these things even if the text doesn't tell us.

So John sent two of his disciples to put the question to Jesus: "Are you the one?" For John, a lot rode on the answer to that question. We make that question carry a lot of weight, too.

How many times have we heard some variation of the question in a movie or television romance? In the wake of a relationship disaster, someone says through tears, "I thought she was the one." People buy self-help books to find out why they haven't met "the one" and to change the odds in their favor. They join match-making websites hoping that an algorithm and a database will find “the one” for them.

We cherish this notion that each of us has a "one" for whom we are "the one" and that the universe will unfold in such a way that events will bring us together. Falling in love feels so big, so overwhelming, that we find it easy to believe that there is something cosmic at work, that our love is written in the stars. No wonder then, that people read their horoscopes only half in jest to test whether their current lover qualifies as "the one."

We bring this notion with us into our national political life. It doesn't seem to be enough to examine candidates, weigh their proposals, and decide who has the better ideas and the better chance of putting them into practice. We expect to fall in love with a candidate. We expect a candidate to be "the one," the one who can arrest a slide into some abyss, the one who will turn our national story into a fairy tale, the one with whom we can live happily ever after.

This isn't a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats alike look for someone to be "the one" and turn their own candidate into a messiah and the candidate of the other party into an anti-Christ. And how disappointed some are to discover after one is elected and the other is not, that upon taking office the candidate turns out to be merely human! Disillusionment sets in and we cast our longing eyes about in search of someone else who could be "the one." It seldom occurs to us that we have been projecting our own hopes and fears onto the political screen and that our thoughts and feelings about the figures on the screen are less about them than they are about us.

Anyway, Jesus did something interesting when the messengers from John arrived and they asked him John's question: "Are you the one?" Or, rather, he didn't do something and that is interesting. He didn't answer the question. Instead, he launched into a frenzy of ministerial activity. He healed many people from "their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits." Then he told John's disciples to tell John what they had witnessed, that is, what they had seen and heard. And, just in case they had missed that, Jesus told them what they have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, people with skin diseases have been cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have heard good news.

The one thing John's messengers did not see or hear was Jesus giving them an answer to John's question. "Are you the one?" Jesus doesn't say.

We could say, "Well, fine! He didn't say it in so many words, but he did act it out." Fair enough, but before I yield the point let me say that Jesus' description of what John's disciples had seen and heard sounds a little familiar. It's not an exact quotation, but it seems clear enough that Jesus has referred us back to his inaugural address just three chapters ago:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

and has sent me to preach good news to the poor,

to proclaim release to the prisoners

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to liberate the oppressed...

First he said it; then he did it. The blind see again. The poor have good news announced to them. And, true enough, it is because the Spirit of the Lord is on him, but even more because it is time. God has declared a Jubilee, "the year of the Lord's favor": Debts are canceled, slaves are freed, exiles come home, prisoners are set free, the blind see, the lame walk, the poor hear the announcement of freedom. It is nothing less than the Jubilee in the service of which Martin Luther King, Jr., preached and lived and died and proclaimed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when he repeated the lyrics of the old spiritual: "Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

Was this an answer to the question, "Are you the one?"? Maybe. But to me it sounds as if Jesus is saying, "That's the wrong question. The question is not about who. The question is about when. And the answer to the question is, 'Now!' God's dream is come and it's here and it's there and it's everywhere. A blind woman sees and that's God's dream. A lame man walks and that's God's dream. A sick child gets out of bed and that's God's dream. A refugee far from home hears the ringing of a far off bell and knows that it's time to go home and that's God's dream. A man cut off from human touch because of a skin disease brought about by the malnutrition and stress of oppression has the skin of a baby and may give and get the hugs that we all need each day to live and that's God's dream. A woman whose mind broke under the weight of the burden the Empire had placed on her is now in her right mind and her children no longer fear her and that's God's dream. God's dream is busting out all over; there is no stopping it; its time is come; it's everywhere. It's even in your prison cell, John. Am I the one? Does it matter?" To me it sounds as if that is what Jesus is saying.

We keep looking for "the one." And we keep getting disappointed. The ones who seem to be "the one" turn out not to be "the one." And so our search goes on. Like Neil Young we're still searching for a heart of gold. And again, like him, we are getting old.

"Are you the one who is coming, or should we look for someone else?" John asked. A voice from our own time answers, "We are the ones we have been waiting for."¹ But really that's another answer that says that "who?" is the wrong question. The question is "when?" and the answer is, "Now." We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the ones who are coming. There is no need to wait for anyone else. God's dream is bursting forth like a germinating seed. God's dream is breaking in like a Russian computer hacker.

When people with homes stand up for those who have fled their homes in terror, that's God's dream. When people with clean water to drink stand up for those whose faucets yield poison, that's God's dream. When people with good food on the table and more in the refrigerator stand up for those who live in the food deserts of our cities, that's God's dream. When people who speak English stand up for those who speak Spanish or Arabic or Norwegian, that's God's dream. When straight people stand up for LGBTQ people, that's God's dream. When white people stand up for people of color who live with and die from the everyday racism that slips below the radar, that's God's dream. When men stand up for the women who face indignities and worse each day, that's God's dream. And, maybe most of all, when white folks and straight folks and menfolk and able-bodied folks stand up and cheer when folks of color and LGBTQ folks and womenfolk and folks with handicapping conditions speak up for themselves to claim their dignity as God's children, that's God's dream. God’s dream is here and it's there and it's everywhere. God's dream is come. It's chanting in the street. It’s singing on the courthouse steps. It's knocking at the door. God's dream is come. Here is the place. Now is the time. We are the ones.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. June Jordan, "Poem for South African Women", Passion, 1980

1 June Jordan, "Poem for South African Women", Passion, 1980