SPECIAL AGENTS OF GOD
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 11, 2011
(John) confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” (John 1:20)
Before I went to seminary, the diocese that sponsored me required that I take a battery of psychological tests. (Let me add, parenthetically, that they required all candidates for ordination to take these tests; it wasn’t just something they thought would be a good idea for me!) One of the tests was called the MMPI, which stands for Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The MMPI consists of 567 highly personal statements that one marks either true or false. If you ever have the pleasure of sitting for the MMPI, you will learn that everything is fair game on this test. I mean everything! Some statements will be about your political views. Some will be about what is going on in your sex life. Some will be about what you perhaps wish were going on in your sex life. Still others will be about what you are very glad is not going on in your sex life.
What the MMPI is most interested in, however, is not sex. Rather than that, dozens of statements seem to be measuring your potential for paranoid delusions. Let me give you a few sample statements to test yourself.
- True or false: I believe I am being plotted against.
- True or false: If people had not had it in for me, I would have been much more successful.
- True or false: I often feel I can read other people’s minds.
- True or false: Someone has control over my mind.
I remember taking the MMPI in a room full of others and trying not to laugh out loud inappropriately, which in itself might have been taken as a sign of mental illness. So I stifled my amusement until one of the questions stopped me cold. True or false: I am a special agent of God. I didn’t know how to answer. If I marked it true, the psychologist might think I was some sort of delusional, religious nut. If I marked it false, I would be denying that I had a calling from God. What then would be the point of going to seminary and studying to be a priest? True or false: I am a special agent of God. How would you answer for yourself?
Today’s reading from the Gospel of John presents us with a special agent of God. We assume that if anyone could claim such a title, certainly John the Baptist would mark true: I am a special agent of God. John was a hermit who lived in the desert. His appearance was unkempt, even shocking. His diet of locusts and wild honey would cause even a vegan to reach for a bag of Chicken McNuggets. John disciplined his spirit, and denied his body all creature comforts in the attempt to purge from his mind anything that would divert his attention away from God. He was so single-minded in his devotion to God, and so vigorous in his preaching that many Jews thought he was the promised Messiah, or Elijah, or at least some great prophet. Surely, if anyone was a special agent of God, it was John the Baptist.
We hear in today’s Gospel how the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to administer a psychological test of their own. Their goal was to measure whether John was a genuine special agent of God, or merely a raving madman. Was he that figure promised of old who would come from God and deliver to the Jews all the heavenly blessings that they believed were rightfully theirs? Was John the Messiah, or was John a deluded person with a messiah complex? It seems that the Jews’ first-century personality inventory consisted of only five open-ended questions, rather than five hundred. Here they are: #1. Who are you, they asked? #2. Are you Elijah? #3. Are you the prophet? #4. Who are you? they asked again, perhaps to see if he answered the same way he did the first time. And then finally, #5. What do you say about yourself? In answer to all of these questions, John proved with a series of increasingly terse replies that he held no delusions about himself. He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” Are you Elijah, they asked? I am not, said John. Are you the prophet, they asked? And John answered, NO!
I am not the Christ. I am not. NO! But wait. I thought John was a special agent of God. As we will see in a moment, John embraced a positive role for himself in relation to the Messiah. But before he went so far as to call himself a special agent of God, John wanted to be quite clear about who he wasn’t. When the crowds who hungered for a hero wanted to anoint John as their spiritual guru, John had the courage to say NO. It’s likely that they would have believed whatever John said, but John said “No, I am not the Christ.” No, I am not God. No, I am not the reincarnation of Elijah. No, I am not the prophet. No, I am not divine. No, I am not your savior.
Who are you? Who are we? What do we say about ourselves? Let me tell you what I hear about us, implied in what John said about himself. We are not divine. We are not God. We don’t have the potential within us to become God. We are not reincarnations of people from the past. These are nothing more than popular delusions of self-deification. I happen to take John’s confession as good news. You see, if we aren’t divine, if we are not the Christ, then we have permission to stop acting as if we were. You have permission to confess that you are not anyone’s savior, not even your own. Can you be held ultimately responsible for someone else’s happiness? NO. Can you be expected to be three different places at the same time? NO. Does the rising of the sun depend on your actions? NO. Are you responsible for getting yourself into heaven? NO. Will you add one cubit to the span of your life by worrying? NO. John confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” Neither are you. Neither am I.
“Let us have an answer then,” said the Jews to John. “Who are you?” Finally, John was ready to affirm his positive role in relation to Christ. John said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” John’s role was not to be the Lord, but to make straight the way of the Lord. Our role is not to be the Lord, but to make straight the way of the Lord. So the correct response on the MMPI is TRUE. Yes, we are indeed special agents of God. John was a special agent of God. We are God’s representatives, we are Christ’s ambassadors in every place and situation.
I am a special agent of God. If you remove the language of paranoia from the statement, what it asks is this: Do you believe that God is using you for any purpose right where you are? Are you an instrument of God’s will in any way? Are you making straight the Lord’s way, or are you impeding the Lord’s way? When I was in high school I worked weekends in a large, incredibly busy, suburban supermarket. I was the lowest of the low in the pecking order of who was who in that place. It was not a job I enjoyed, although I needed it. I had an attitude, and I spent most of the days watching the clock and wishing that the time would go faster. But I remember going to work one day with a small idea building in my mind: why not throw yourself into this job just for a while and try to enjoy it? Why not really learn where things are stored on the shelves, rather than just sending all customers to aisle five when they asked where something was? Why not serve the people there, and treat them all as if they were Jesus? At the time I wouldn’t have phrased things with the theological language of John’s Gospel, but in essence the opportunity before me was this: why not make straight the way of the Lord, rather than impeding the way of the Lord? Why not be a special agent of God right there in that place? Why not? When I began to understand my role in this new light, that which was previously meaningless to me took on a profound new meaning. I learned a lesson there that I’ve never forgotten: that God’s gift of meaning and purpose in life comes to us anytime and anywhere we take on the role of being God’s special agents.
I am a special agent of God. True or false? John the Baptist said, true: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” But have you answered yet for yourself? If you’re thinking about saying, true, remember this: you don’t have to be like John the Baptist. You don’t have to be a religious fanatic, or a desert hermit subsisting on locusts and wild honey. You don’t have to worry that you’re losing control of your mind. In fact, you can be a special agent of God and never even think about the ordained ministry. Instead, you can leave a gift today for our Advent offering. You can stand up for a friend this week who needs your help. You can let words of gossip end with you. You can pray for a sick friend or loved one. You can mend a quarrel. You can find the time. You can welcome the stranger.
Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist of the 19th century, wrote a short story about a cobbler named Martin who discovered what it meant to be a special agent of God. Martin lived and worked in a basement room in the center of a bustling city. One night, while engrossed in reading the New Testament, he nodded off and dreamed he heard Christ himself saying, “Martin, oh Martin! Look out onto the street tomorrow. I will come.” The dream was so vivid that Martin could hardly take his eyes off the window and focus on his work the next day. Watching and waiting for Christ, Martin spied an old man freezing in the snow. He invited him in for warmth and tea. Later in the day he saw a young woman in tattered clothes, unable to protect her baby from the winter wind. He invited her in for food, and played with the baby while the woman rested and ate. Finally he saw an old woman beating a hungry boy who had stolen an apple from her. He rushed outside, intervened, rescued the boy, and even reconciled him to the woman.
Apparently, the commotion of the day caused Martin to forget all about the promise that Christ was to appear. That evening, alone again with his thoughts, he suddenly remembered the dream. And just as he did, he heard Christ calling to him again, “Martin, oh Martin, did you not recognize me? I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Then Martin saw visions of the old man, the young woman with the baby, and the old woman with the boy appear before his eyes. Martin realized that Christ had visited him no less than three times. Martin realized that every minute of every day is charged with possibility and purpose and opportunity to greet the One who comes in glory.
Indeed, to be a special agent of God can be as uncomplicated as some words we heard in today’s reading from Isaiah: Bring good news to the oppressed. Bind up the brokenhearted. Comfort all who mourn. Repair the ruined cities. Love justice.
Cast away the works of darkness. Make straight the way of the Lord. Mark it true. Be a special agent of God.
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