“Hey, Watch This!”

I bet you know the phrase “famous last words,” yes? But, have you ever scrolled through a list of them? Some are fitting and some are funny. At least that is what I found with the famous last words spoken by famous people.

 

Nostradamus the seer and sage, on the night before he died said, “Tomorrow, at sun rise I shall no longer be here.” He may not have gotten all his other predictions correct, but he nailed that one. 

Before Marie Antoinette was famously beheaded, she said not “let them eat cake,” but after stepping on her executioner’s foot she said, “Excuse me sir.” She was courteous, but perhaps oblivious to the end.

There are a bunch of sweet, sappy things that other famous people said right before they died, but I prefer Winston Churchill’s “I’m bored with it all.” Of course, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom had a mastery of the English language that few will be able to approach. Whereas the previous phrases were spoken by famous people the following are words that were uttered by less popular figures:

“This glass looks fine to lean on.” 

“Yes, it’s fire proof.” 

“I think it has airbags.” or “I’m sure the brakes work.”

“Of course it’s not poisonous.” 

“Here honey taste this.” (Well, that one are famously last heard words). 

One day during college I thought I heard someone shouting another fitting last phrase when I was out hiking. At a beautiful state park up in Tennessee I walked down a pathway to a majestic waterfall. I have an affinity for jumping off of cliffs into water, a hobby that my family continues to dislike. Still, the distance between this particular path to the water at the bottom of this particular waterfall made it seem more than a danger to jump. Almost out of nowhere a man with a wife-beater t-shirt and cutoff jeans almost bowled me over as he screamed at his friends, “Hey y’all! Watch this!” Over the cliff-face he went and wouldn’t you know it? He landed gracefully in the pool’s deep spot. 

“Hey y’all watch this!” I would have sworn these would be this Tennessean’s last words. Sometimes though we cannot believe something until we see it. There are times in life when we just cannot comprehend the possibility of an event occurring until it happens. It is not just confined to a redneck jumping off a cliff. It is Leceister City winning the Premier League at 1000-1 odds. It is coffin looking boxes on our parish grounds turning into a vibrant community garden. It is the supposedly infertile couple getting pregnant or the allegedly incurable disease being overcome by a new treatment. Somethings are too strange or far-fetched to believe, until they actually happen.

The Messiah, who is God Incarnate or the hope of all humanity, coming to earth falls squarely into this category. For thousands of years the people of Israel had been waiting. They had been groaning to God. They had been hoping with one another that the Messiah would come to set them free and to fulfill their hopes and dreams. John the Baptist announced in last week’s gospel lesson that this person was on the way. In today’s Gospel lesson we hear John question with some trepidation could this be happening?

From prison John desired to know if this thousands-year-old hope and everything for which he had worked was pointing to Jesus’ own ministry. “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait?” Instead of answering John’s question in a direct manner Jesus in his typical fashion decided to take it in another direction. I’m paraphrasing here, but Jesus said, “Hey y’all! Watch this!”

“Go tell John what you hear and what you see, the blind have sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, [and] the dead are raised.” Boom! Walk-off! Drop the mic! Jesus says, look around and see what we are doing. I could tell you, but you might not believe it unless you saw it with your own eyes and heard it with your own ears. However, this is not all. It’s amazing and unbelievable to give a blind person sight or to raise the dead from the grave! And yet, this is not where we end. Jesus said one more thing, “The poor have good news brought to them.” Why not end with the dead being raised?

“The poor will always be with you,” Jesus later in Matthew. The poor here are an overarching group, not like lazy good-for-nothings, but a people impoverished because of a broken system—a system not unlike the one that keeps down the poor today. For Jesus to say that the poor have good news brought to them is to say that he is not some phony prophet who promises peace but brings none, like Jeremiah warns (6:14) in his prophecy. No, Jesus is the one who brings real and lasting peace even to those who everyone else in society forgets.

Yet, Jesus was right. The poor are still with us. And, I wonder how we might bring good news to them. Not just a moment of help and not just a temporary fix, although that can be helpful when things are bleak and dire. Rather, in this season when we remember Jesus’ first coming and look ahead to Christ’s fulfilling of all things at the End of Time, we must challenge ourselves to see that Christ comes to us disguised as those poor and lowly who are no different than us. The poor are not different human beings they are just like you and me!

I get overwhelmed thinking, “How can I solve homelessness or end poverty?” I do not believe I can say, “Hey y’all! Watch this!” and magically change everything. Yet, our hope, our very purpose as Christians is to yearn so passionately for Christ’s coming, like the people of Israel did for so long, like John the Baptist did for his life. And, as we yearn for Christ’s coming we know that when we come together we re-member the Body of Christ and we have the ability to share good news with the poor and to bring real hope to those most in need! 

We must first start though by watching and waiting, which this season of Advent calls us to do already. Watch for Christ coming to us in many different disguises. Watch for the Good News already being proclaimed in this world (and yes, there is good news being shared). How will we care for the Christ that dwells in all? How will we share good news to the poor? Christ still says look around, will we be messengers of his Good News?