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S. Advent 3.25 Is. 35:1-10 Matt. 11:2-15

‘Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, say to those with an anxious heart: be strong, fear not! Behold; your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God, he will come and save you.’

Which is exactly what Jesus says to his 4Runner, John, in prison—again, amazing Toyota product placement, maybe better than Honda’s? I know the Apostles got along fine, tooling around Jerusalem in that one Accord they had forever—because Hondas are so darn reliable (and low-profile 😉 But John lived in the wilderness; and a 4Runner’ll just run over that scheissenstein like, no biggie. I mean; they’re both great; but you’re not conquering Moab’s ‘Hell’s Revenge’ in an Accord, right? 😉

Anyway, it’s not fashionable to see John the Baptist as weak-kneed, feeble, and anxious. Irritable? Maybe; but anxious? C’mon! He’s the 4Runner, for Christ’s sake! So when we hear John sent 2 disciples to ask Jesus are you really The One?, we scratch our heads. Modern commentators struggle with the idea that John is wavering and weak-kneed here, because that’s just not how we see Gods’ own 4Runner 😉

Now, the standard modern take is that John is “asking for a friend” about Jesus and remains a rock, himself, always.

But then, what do you make of Jesus saying that John’s the greatest of all ‘born of women’, but the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he? It sure sounds like John is having ‘a moment’ of weakness, today!

I’ll lay my cards on the table early on this famous theological conundrum. Is John weak-kneed and feeble, or is he great and strong? Lutherans? YES! Modern biblical scholars (who are really dumb as a box of rocks, most of them) can’t get this, because they have no imagination, no capacity for divine mystery or paradox… 🙁

But Luther had both, in spades. And he knew what the scriptures say: that our strength, as Xns, is, as Paul was told and reported, always “made perfect in weakness”, and the weakness of Jesus on the cross is always already our greatest strength.

With this important paradoxical, mystical truth firmly in mind, we can press on to tackle a verse that has befuddled most modern ‘scholars’. Jesus goes on to say the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than John, since from the days of John the Baptist until now…

“The Kingdom of heaven forces forward and the forceful seize it.”

Few modern scribes (and plenty of ancient ones!) fail to make sense of this verse. For the moderns, it doesn’t help that no English translation, including the way over-hyped King James correctly translates this passage, even though the original Greek is not at all difficult which says:

“The Kingdom βιαζεται” in Greek— “forces forward”, a simple Present Middle Indicative 3rd singular that certainly does not mean “suffers violence” because βιαζεται is FORCE, not violence; not passive but middle voice: forcing forward for its own advantage, not suffering violence. And the βιασται are simply the plural noun form of the verb—FULL OF FORCE!

I really tried here, I did; but I cannot think of a better way for modern people to picture this than by analogy to The Force in Star Wars. OK, maybe I didn’t try that hard to avoid talking about Star Wars 😉

Anyway Lucas stole all his best ideas from Joseph Campbell’s “Hero With A Thousand Faces” and Campbell stole his best bits from the bible, as he makes no effort to conceal. My copy of Campbell’s book has a cover with a mosaic of thousands of tiny little faces that together make up an icon of Jesus Christ. It’s a cool cover.

And with the Jedi, as you all well know, the Force is something that flows through them passively when the Jedi knight is not exerting his or her own power or will or energy, but is just still, passive, a conduit for the Force to do what it will do through him or her. It’s like when they are weak and powerless and not trying at all—then the Force is mighty in the Jedi’s passive weakness.

It is in this Star Wars way, I confess, that I hear the passage about the Kingdom of Christ forcing forward as the Force-Full, the ones “Full of the Force”, seize IT (by the Force that has seized them, passively).

I think Luther would have loved the whole Jedi-Force thing in Star Wars. It’s very like how he sees faith—a nothing, pure passiva, a “do-nothing non-rejection” of God’s powerful weakness, that’s also, paradoxically: “a living, busy mighty thing, constantly doing what is good. Before we can ask what is good, faith has already done IT, and is constantly overflowing in good works.”

It is this paradox of faith—pure passiva, a total nothing, that yet is the most living, busy, mighty and active thing in the Universe, fulfilling the law absolutely effortlessly through faith in Christ Jesus’ weakness on the cross, the Greatest Power in the Universe!

Yoda is little, apparently weak, never tries, yet, in his do-nothing passivity, the Force flows through him more powerfully than those who exert their own will and effort like Anakin.

Sorry, but it’s the picture that helps me understand how John can be the greatest of all the prophets, not despite, but precisely BECAUSE he can be weak-kneed, empty, anxious…

The Kingdom forces its way into our hearts through John’s Baptism and then even more Force–fully by Jesus’ baptism which—like the Flood of Noah—sweeps us under the water, drowns and engulfs us by sharing the dying of Jesus with us, crosswise—the great Force that vanquishes sin, death, and hell, precisely by Jesus’ weakness, the Force that flows through us and makes us great precisely when we’re weakest—like Jacob, deeply defeated at the Jabok by Jesus.

John is Elijah, and recall how Elijah was: after vanquishing the 900 prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mt Carmel—not by jumping around, cutting himself and offering sacrifices to get fire to come down, Elijah douses the whole thing with water (after trash-talking the efforts of the pagans 😉 and simply goes: “God!, you alone are God. Do your fire thing, if you feel like it”. Which he does. After executing the prophets of Baal and Asherah, Elijah gets a note from Jezebel saying “you’re a dead man” and he loses his nerve, his knees knock so hard an angel has to strengthen him to scramble out to Mt. Horeb at the back of the Sinai desert…

Where Elijah whines: “Ohhhh! I’m the last faithful one left, and they’re coming to kill me!” So God does his wind, fire, and earthquake thing that devastates the mountain but he’s not in that show of power, but in the still small Voice that slips in through Elijah’s ear and makes him FORCE-FULL in his very weakness…

Just so, our weak hands and feeble knees are strengthened by the Word going in our ears, the broken body and shed blood of Jesus going in our mouths that promises God’s vengeance on all our enemies and, by such passive faith, the Peace, surpassing all understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.