A fellow pastor told my wife about a cartoon from The New
Yorker. I can’t reproduce the
cartoon here because that would cost money, but you can find it here. A pack of wolves is standing on a cliff baying
at the moon. One wolf says: “My question is: Are we making an impact?” I suspect this question hung behind John the
Baptist’s question to Jesus in Matthew 11.
John is languishing in prison because he had spoken truth to power; John
told Herod that he should not “have” his brother’s wife. It appears John thought that Jesus was
bringing the final chapter of the Kingdom of God on his coattails; this was going
to be the end of the powers and principalities that Paul later will write about. Now John sits in a jail cell. Herod still dines lavishly in his palace, and
Jesus does not appear to have Caesar, Herod, or even the Sadducees on the
ropes. Small farmers still lose their
land under crushing debt. The Romans still tax the life out of the
peasantry. Cynical and self-serving
religious leaders still manipulate the faithful for power and gain. Perhaps John is asking himself: Have I just been baying at the moon? He has paid a great price for his
faithfulness, and perhaps he senses that he soon will pay with his very head. That kind of thing can make one weigh the
benefit and costs of a chosen course of action.
John sends his disciples to Jesus to find out if he was
mistaken; the disciples give voice to John’s doubts. They ask: “Are you the one who was to come, or should
we expect someone else?” Jesus does not answer their question directly, rather
he replies:
Go back and tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf they hear, the dead are raised, and the Good News is preached to the poor.
If you know your Hebrew Bible, that means “no, you need not
look for someone else.” The coming of
the Kingdom looks different than what John expected. He cannot see the deep undercurrents moving
across the land as Jesus teaches and heals. He cannot know of the passion and
the resurrection to come. He has no way of imagining that Pentecost
celebration in Jerusalem. I suspect,
however, that he is satisfied when his disciples bring back their report. I suspect he dies in peace, knowing that he
was not just baying at the moon when he announced:
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' "
John was making an impact.
One day a young man knocked on the thick wooden door of the
church. The thud echoed through the
empty halls. I answered that thud as I
always did. The young man at the door
extended to me his hand; it was red and swollen—deeply infected. He was in obvious pain. I offered to take him to the emergency
room. He refused, saying he had no money
to pay. I assured him that they had to
see him whether he could pay or not; it was the law. He replied that they would send him bill
after bill after bill, and he would never be able to pay it. It was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. I began looking for a clinic who would see
him for free. I found one 12 blocks
away. They closed at 5:00, and he had to
be through their door before they closed.
We raced to the clinic, and I pulled up on the sidewalk to deposit him
at the door. It was 4:55. He went inside, and I never saw him
again. Not long after that I moved to
Ohio.
Four years later I was back at the church, and a woman there
came up to me and said that some guy was by the other day looking for me. He asked about that bald white guy who used
to be the pastor. She told him I had
moved away. He replied:
Well if you ever see him tell him this. I came here one day with a messed up hand. He helped me find a doctor—took me there himself. Tell him that I’m off drugs; my mother is off drugs too. I’m married, got two sons; and I’m a deacon in a church now. I got right with God, and God got my life right.
Like John, we have no idea what God is doing through us and
around us and, sometimes, in spite of us.
We cannot know the things we set in motion through acts of
faithfulness. We are not just baying at
the moon, whether we ever know it or not.
So keep howling and trust the rest to God.
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches
of New York State
