Surprise!

Matthew 11:2-11

            In my sophomore year in college, an art history survey course introduced me to great masterpieces that were to become part of my soul.  One of those was Picasso’s “Guernica,” his 1937 depiction of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War experienced in the Basque village for which the painting was named.  I think because the professor hinted that it would likely be on the final exam, I memorized the details of “Guernica,” so much so that, had I been asked, I could have created a sketch detailing how the artist had constructed the painting.  What I never paid any attention to was the dimensions of the painting.  Several years later, I was in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  I rounded a corner, entered a room, and, startled, saw before me the “Guernica.”  Instead of something the size of a post card in my art history textbook, I stood in the presence of the majestic gray-and-black-and-white original.  I could hardly believe what I was seeing:  something indescribably more beautiful, more powerful, grander, far bigger than I had imagined. 

            Had I not internalized the image of the “Guernica,” I would not have been arrested by the real thing.  It was exactly because I had a preconception of the painting in my mind that the real painting stunned me completely.  Now by no means did “Guernica” disappoint me.  On the contrary, it was one of the most memorable of many occasions when the great gap between my preconceptions and reality has jolted me.  Sometimes the encounter has gone the other way, as when reality has revealed itself a pathetic chimera of what I had imagined as great and good.  Something about the experience of being shocked by the difference between our imagination and reality can be overwhelming, disconcerting, troubling.

            Can I forget that as a lad just about to enter adolescence I had steadfastly believed in Santa Claus until I heard in the wee hours one Christmas morning Mama inching down the stairs, knowing in my boy mind what she was up to, feeling a kind of sickness that the Santa Claus I had kept alive in my head didn’t exist?  I wanted my myth to be right, to be factual, to be dependable, to be true.   And it turned out to be Mama, not the jolly old elf himself, a fact which I found irritating.  It did not help that I had known it all along, so to say.  Is nothing what it seems?  Is nothing what they say it is?

            And that is not far from the dilemma of John the Baptist who sends a delegation from his prison to address to Jesus to check out, “Are you the one who was to come, or shall we look for another?”  John, like everyone else in his generation, knew perfectly well what to expect of Messiah.  The script was plain, public, and predictable.  Messiah was supposed to come and clean house.  Drive the Romans from the block.  Inaugurate a new age.  Take the reins of the House of David.  Separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, knock heads.  Was John wrong about the one about whom he had said, “One is coming who is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry”? Jesus was not acting too much like a Messiah.  Something was wrong.  And yet—and yet. “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 preached to them.”  This was the Messianic Age outside the preconceived contours.  This was something more powerful, much larger, more magnificent than anything that had been dreamed by Israel’s most audacious prophets. 

            I doubt that many of us are terribly interested in the narrative about John the Baptist and Jesus.  But we are interested in the way that our expectations do or don’t get met.  And it just might be that we can be interested in the way that God continually surprises us with startling disconnects between what we think we know or want or believe and what God turns out to be. 

            Some years ago I learned a song that Harry Pritchett, an Episcopal priest, wrote, that goes like this:

Well, surprise, surprise,
God is a surprise, right before your eyes. 
It’s baffling to the wise.
Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise.
Open up your eyes and see.

Moses tended sheep upon a mountaintop.
He hardly noticed when a burning bush said: “Stop! 
Set my people free and take them to my land.
“That couldn’t be my God,” he said, “He’d have a better plan.”

Well, surprise, surprise,
God is a surprise, right before your eyes. 
It’s baffling to the wise.
Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise.
Open up your eyes and see.

People of Israel were looking for a king.
If God could save that way, then freedom bells would ring. 
Along came Jesus, a man who’s poor and weak.
“He couldn’t be our God,” they said. “He’s nothing but a fake.”

Well, surprise, surprise,
God is a surprise, right before your eyes. 
It’s baffling to the wise.
Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise.
Open up your eyes and see.

Peter and the rest of that straggly little band,
they all ran away when darkness hit the land.
Whoever heard of a humble, fumbling boss? 
“He couldn’t be our God,” they said. “He’s hanging on a cross.”

Well, surprise, surprise,
God is a surprise, right before your eyes. 
It’s baffling to the wise.
Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise.
Open up your eyes and see.

Seek our God in hope, moving as he goes
with justice, grace and love in anything that grows,
In anything at all he suddenly may be,
‘cause everything is his, you know, especially you and me. 

Well, surprise, surprise,
God is a surprise, right before your eyes. 
It’s baffling to the wise.
Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise.
Open up your eyes and see.[1]

            Jesus does not upbraid John or shoot John’s messengers.  Instead he has some complimentary things to say of John.  “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at,” he asked, “when you went to see John the Baptist?”  A prophet?  Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.  This is the one about whom it is written, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you.”  That is a kind of surprise, too.  It had become commonplace to think that Elijah the Prophet would return to usher in the Messianic Age.  People were reluctant to identify John the Baptist as Elijah.  People always have a hard time loosening their grip on whatever they have come to believe.  But, surprise, surprise.  “Elijah” was the prototype, John the real forerunner. 

            But surprises don’t end there.  Jesus goes on to say, after praising John, that no one born of woman had arisen to be greater than John, but that “the least in the Kingdom of Heaven” is greater than he.  What on earth does he mean by that?  The Kingdom of Heaven is the gospel writer Matthew’s term for the new age inaugurated by Jesus, an age characterized by a radically new ethic, a redefined relationship of people with God and each other, and most of all by the kingship of Jesus who defines kingship anew.  Matthew is an interpreter of Jesus’ ministry.  As such, he sees that John the Baptist is the last and greatest figure of what we might call the “old age.”  Everyone who follows Jesus, who becomes a disciple, and who lives a life empowered by the Resurrection is living in this Kingdom of Heaven.  And to do so is infinitely better than being the best of the best of the old age. 

            In our own time, the question is not so much “old age” versus “new age,” but one of simply whether we follow Jesus or not.  And here is the trick.  Following Jesus is not, in fact, to have every question answered, one’s vocation all neatly laid out, the GPS running smoothly to take you to where God has already ordained that you go. Following Jesus is not to live in a predictable, ordered, way any more than it is to live uncentered, undisciplined, and untethered to the Wisdom of the past.  Following Jesus is to be on the path where only a few things are certain, where faithfulness demands great flexibility and openness, and where God is constantly a surprise.  The advent of Jesus is not a discrete event that happened once upon a time long ago, but one that continually occurs every hour of every day.  And that advent happens in all sorts of places and under all sorts of conditions: in mangers, in tax season, in arguments and fights, in wars and at peace tables, in vestry meetings and at choir practice, in supermarkets and bars, in traffic and in hospitals, and on crosses.  Christ shows up in unlikely places, and even sometimes pops up in church. 

            Some of you know that for the last several years I have picked a theme to serve all year long as the interpretative lens through which I view scripture, inviting you do the same.  This year’s lens is—surprise!—Surprise.  Life among even the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is surprisingly challenging, surprisingly joyful, surprisingly painful, surprisingly wonderful.  It leaves us not infrequently asking ourselves, if not Jesus himself, “Are you the one?  Or shall I look for another?”  Don’t be afraid to ask that question.  Just be aware that as long as you follow Jesus you are on the road to the land of rare beasts and unique adventures, as W. H. Auden put it.[2]  You’ll see and hear about the lame walking, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the incurable being cured, the dead being raised, and the poor jumping for joy over the good news preached to them.  And blessed are you if, instead of taking offense, you simply hum to yourself, “Surprise, surprise, God is a surprise...”

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2013

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[1] Harry Pritchett, “Surprise, surprise, God is a Surprise,” online at http://en.allexperts.com/q/Christian-Music-2785/f/Hymn-lyrics.htm, accessed December 13, 2013.

[2] “For the Time Being:  A Christmas Oratorio,” in W. H. Auden: Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York:  Vintage Books, 1991), 400.