Matthew 11.2-11 The forerunner of Christ

Sometimes I read through a passage of scripture, and something jumps out at me that just says, “This is the focus of the message for today.” I’m not normal, and I am very proud of that. Normal people are the cogs of the world; they are what keep everything functioning at the status quo. They are vital to the survival of creation. Human beings love consistency. Our brains thrive on it. Our bodies need it to regulate all of their internal systems properly. It is also what makes us fat and lazy. So sometimes, we need to shake things up a bit; sometimes we need to be offended. That time is now.

² When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³ and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴ Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵ the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶ And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Why do you think Jesus would declare, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me?”

Because Jesus was going around offending people left and right! Even his own disciples were offended by his behavior and words. He offended Jews, Gentiles, aristocrats, peasants, tax collectors, sinners, and self-declared saints. The only ones who weren’t offended by him are the people who were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

People were offended by John the Baptist. He wore camel hair and ate locusts and honey. His teeth must have been absolutely rotten and had little legs sticking out between them. He wore cheap, smelly fur. Camels don’t smell like lavender fields or fresh dried linen. And to make matters worse, he walked around shouting at people, “Repent and be baptized!” Essentially, he told them all that they were sinners. He was offensive!

One time, while I was working on a psychiatric floor, a woman came in. I had seen her several times; she was not well. She suffered from psychosis and came in whenever she couldn’t get her meds, didn’t take her meds, or just had an unusually stressful time in her life that was too much for her meds to handle. In addition to psychosis, she suffered from some kind of degenerative disease that I do not recall the name of; her little hands were all skinny and curled. She struggled to hold on to things.

And, she had some form of psoriasis. Her skin would flake. This particular visit, she looked like a snowman, leaving a trail of skin flakes everywhere she went because she couldn’t stop itching. In my mind now, this is what someone with severe leprosy probably looked like. Red raw skin covered in a layer of white flakes. I can definitely see why people would stay away from them.

But not Linda, oh no, not nurse Linda. She saw her and immediately went to the drug store to purchase, with her own money, a gentle exfoliating body scrub brush. She went into the shower with her and gently scrubbed her, then applied lotion all over her body, cleaned the shower, and the next day, repeated the process again. Always talking gently and calmly as if this was perfectly normal. No judgment. No offense. And then angrily vented to me how frustrated she was that anyone would let their spouse get this bad without getting them help.

Linda had been through abusive relationships before. She knew what people could be like and were capable of. She knew how hard it would have been for a Filipino woman, who spoke little English, suffered from psychosis, a crippling disease, and other illnesses, to ever leave that relationship, and she was never going to file any charges of abuse or neglect.

The only thing we could do was stabilize her, treat her with kindness and compassion, and try to prevent any bullying from occurring toward her while she was with us. Which was not easy when every time she left her room, she received looks of disgust from most of the other 30 patients on the floor. They were offended by her.

Human beings have a tendency to avoid things they fear. I’m not a big fan of spiders. I can barely coordinate two legs into moving me forward. How a creature with eight legs and no brain can move at such an alarming speed and with such great accuracy startles me. Not a big fan of snakes either. I don’t like how a creature with no appendages can climb trees better than I can. I think humans avoid those who are different because we worry about how they can affect us.

We avoid spiders and snakes because we don’t like the way they make us feel. In general, neither one of them has any intention of harming us without provocation. The amount of venom required to subdue a human being could be lethal to the critter. Not to mention, could you imagine the amount of energy required to spin that much webbing to wrap you up with to give your body time to dissolve so it could actually eat you? Imagine trying to generate enough spit to drown a human being. Even when you had to wear braces and drooled all over the place, that’s still an excessive amount of spit. You’d dehydrate yourself long before you created enough to drown someone.

We avoid people who are different largely because, what if that was you? We see their plight and we want nothing to do with it. Everyone who looked at that little woman, covered in flaking flesh, for the briefest of moments had this image in their head of themselves. “What if I had to live like that?” “What if it’s contagious?” When we see someone who is blind, crippled, or suffering, we think about ourselves, not them. We take offense at their appearance because we don’t want to look or feel that way. And then hopefully, we feel guilt, because we know we’re in the wrong.

We know we shouldn’t look down upon the homeless, wearing ratty, stained clothes, with dirty faces, and rotting teeth. We know we shouldn’t get frustrated when we’re trying to talk to someone who is struggling to hear us. We know we shouldn’t cringe when we see someone who is disfigured or malformed, and yet… we do. When we see someone who is different from what we’re used to seeing, we stare. When we see someone struggling, we watch but don’t intervene. When we see a disaster about to happen, a plane about to crash, a train about to derail, a mugging about to happen, we stand paralyzed or run the other way.

I’m going to stop there for a moment. Could you imagine how much less violence would occur in this world if everyone helped? Seriously, imagine if it were impossible to steal from someone because every human being you came across was willing to tackle you to the ground, take back what you stole, and give it back to the person it belonged to. If there were no bystanders. Anyone who witnessed something would intervene. And not just call the police. They would stop the perpetrator. It would be as if every single other person in the world were your big brother or sister and would protect you from harm.

You would never have to worry about having something too big for you to handle or your arms too full to open the door. You would never have to be concerned about a stranger helping you get those things into your house. A world with no violence, no crime, no jealousy, no greed. A world with no… free will.

As beautiful as that utopian world of safety sounds, it is only possible in a world where everyone believes the same. Everyone has the same moral code. Everyone has the same value system. Everyone engages in the same behavior patterns. If everyone is the same.

I was reading an article called “Contextulising Sin for Cross-Cultural Evangelism” written by Robert Yates Hibert.[1] In it, the author discusses the difficult idea of walking around in the wilderness shouting, “Repent!” Not everyone thinks of sin the same way. For some people, drinking alcohol is a sin because they suffer from a mental condition called addiction, which doesn’t let their body stop at just one drink. For many cultures worldwide, not to take a drink that is offered to you is considered sinful, for they consume alcohol socially and as part of their regular everyday lives. Hibbert goes so far as to share research that there are many African groups who only consider an action wrong if it negatively affects their own community. Stealing from other communities is fine. In many indigenous warm-weather climate cultures across the world, neither male nor female tribal members wear upper-body coverings. When the missionaries or prudish Protestants came along, they were offended and demanded that they cover themselves up. Sin was not in the indigenous people’s minds, but in those of the foreigners who blamed others for their thoughts and actions.   

While it seems like having values that benefit being a productive member of society is a simple thing, if that were true, the church wouldn’t be in the state it is in today. If you were to hear about an incredible prophet and you went to see them, what do you think they would look like? Flowing blonde hair, bright blue eyes? A bald head and an orange robe? What if you get there and they have dark, matted lice lice-infested hair and haven’t bathed in possibly a year? Would you still listen and absorb all that they had to say? Or, would you respond with skepticism and derision? Would you be offended and say, “I’ll just wait for another…”?

Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

Do you know why only those who do not take offense are blessed? Because they are seeing people for who they really are, not for who they think they should be. They see the soul of every human, every gift from God, and they long to be closer to it, to understand it, to embrace it, and to love what God loves about them. They see the matted hair, the smelly fur, and the bug legs in their teeth and think to themselves, “Now there is someone who truly knows God.”

So, how do we get there from here? How do we, the prudish Protestants, get there from here? We get offended. We acknowledge when someone makes us uncomfortable, and instead of shying away, we take a step closer. We push down that bodily desire to vomit at their body odor, like we would if they were our own child and we were hugging them after a soccer goal, and we love them. We stop being offended by that which is different, and we instead respond with curiosity and faith.

If we are truly Christian, the messenger who was sent ahead to prepare the way has already come. We, the ones who claim to believe, who are responsible for the colonialization of the world, the perpetuation of patriarchy, the enforcement of military dominance, we the ones who are offended by bare-breasted women and rotten teeth, we the ones who say that all are children of God yet try to create rules and regulations that keep those children out of our country and out of our churches, we the offended, work to stop feeling offended.

We invite the offensive into our churches, and we listen to what they have to say. We make them our leaders, our preachers, our teachers, our guides. We hear the Word of God as they hear it through their ears and speak it through their lips. We don’t wait for their hearing to be restored, their skin to be cleansed, or their hearts to be purified and for them to start behaving in ways we deem acceptable; we listen now. We invite them now. We place no limits upon them. We stop waiting for another who is more like us.

That little Filipino woman who came into my life covered in scaly flesh, spouting absolute nonsense and gibberish, was one of the most devout, loving Christians I have ever met. I never would have known that if I let my offense at her condition and lifestyle determine my response. If I had only seen her as pathetic and weak, I never would have been able to experience the quiet prayers she offered when she thought no one was listening. And you know what they said?

Thank you, God, for giving me this life. She didn’t pray for healing. She didn’t pray for her circumstances to be changed. She didn’t pray for any of the things you would have thought she should pray for. She prayed prayers of thanks. And she asked for her sins to be forgiven. She was a messenger sent ahead, preparing the way for others, and so few were willing to get close enough to listen.

How many prophets have you missed? How many messages have you not heard? How many people did you take offense at and walk away instead of getting closer and listening? How many times did you try to “fix them” instead of finding out why they are the way they are?

That little woman wasn’t being abused by her husband in the ways we thought. She was the one who was refusing medical care. She was refusing to accept help out of gratitude to God for releasing her from the situation in the Philippines that was even worse than what we imagined her life to be like here. As a staff, we never would have learned that if we had just taken offense and not pushed to get closer. Once we got her talking, we found out her husband was not doing well himself, and we were able to get them some assistance. But, you cannot learn these things if you choose instead to live in offense and believe what you think instead of finding out what is real.

Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

Are you ready? Can you do it? Can we as a church, as God’s people start acting like God’s people and stop being offended by those who are different? Those who are pure? Those who are lowly? Those who are the least of these? Can we start seeing people as God sees them instead of how we think they should be?

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s worth a try.

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[1] Hibbert, Richard Yates, and Evelyn Hibbert. “Contextualising Sin for Cross-Cultural Evangelism.” Missiology 42, no. 3 (2014): 309–21. https://doi-org.ms.opal-libraries.org/10.1177/0091829613510439.