The Real McCoy--December 21, 2023

The Real McCoy--December 21, 2023

"Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen." [Romans 16:25-27]

My mother used to say that even when I was a kid, sometimes she would pray for the person I would eventually marry.  I don't know exactly what I thought that meant as a child, other than that certainly my parents cared not only about my present-tense needs of the moment (like clothes, food, and school supplies) but also about my future self and life.

Now, all these years later (more than twenty of which I've now been married to my spouse, Sarah) sometimes I find myself thinking about what it must have been like for my mother and father when we got engaged, or when we were actually married.  And while I don't know precisely what the inner monologue was like, it occurs to me that there had to have been a time at some point, whether at an official milestone moment like an engagement dinner, wedding shower, or the marriage ceremony, or just some flash of realization on an ordinary day, when my mom and dad looked at Sarah and said, "Oh--she is the one we've been praying for all along.  You are the one we have been waiting for."  I imagine that there had to be a moment, whenever it happened, that almost felt like a mystery being solved, or something uncovered, or maybe like watching the moon emerge from behind the clouds to reveal its light had been waiting there in the night sky all along.

It's funny to think how you can get to know someone at one level, and then in a moment of pulling-back-the curtain, realize that this was the person you had been picturing, praying for, and even hoping for over many years.  Somehow you are both surprised to realize, "This is it!" and also somehow it feels exactly right.  Maybe for you it's been when you've fallen in love, or when you first looked into the eyes of your children when they were born, or when you first stepped into the house you would turn into your home. I hope in some way it has happened, or will happen, or is happening to you when you find a congregation that feels like "home" to you, too, and you know you have arrived at a community of people with whom you belong.  But for however it has come in your own story, I am going to ask you to tap into that emotional memory to help make sense of these final words from Paul's letter to the Romans, as he thinks about Jesus' arrival on the scene of world history.

These words, which many of us will hear this coming Sunday in worship, have the feel of recognizing that Jesus of Nazareth turns out to have been the One for whom God's people had been waiting and hoping for generations, like seeing the face of the person you've been praying for or picturing in your mind for so long, now actually in the flesh.  There's both a sense of "Aha!" discovery, and also of surprise.  Paul sees Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets' hopes and visions, but he also surely knows that Jesus' actual coming didn't fit a lot of people's expectations.  In his letters to the Corinthians, for example, Paul would point out that the notion of a crucified Messiah--whose way of saving was by dying rather than killing his enemies--sounded nonsensical to so many hearers, both Jewish and Greek.  Plenty of others expected God's "anointed" to look like a military commander or a conquering king, and to finally see that the One for whom they'd been waiting was a homeless itinerant rabbi... well, it certainly took them by surprise.

Paul talks about all this as "the revelation of a mystery," that is, the revealing of something you wouldn't have figured out on your own unless someone else had shown it to you. But it's also got the feel of that moment of realization that the thing, or the place, or the person you have been forming a mental picture of, is finally in front of you.  And at that moment, when you see the Real before your eyes, whatever other mental pictures, theories, or hypotheses you might have had are at last set aside.  The guessing game is done--the genuine article is there.

For people in Paul's time who had been nurturing a hope of God's promised Messiah (a reminder, too, that the title "Christ" is just the Greek word for "anointed one," just as "Messiah" is the Hebrew for the same), that certainly meant a revision of their mental picture. It's not that Jesus was a disappointment, but rather that his deliberate coming without an army of zealots or legions of the heavenly host to "take back their country for God" from the Romans was a reversal of many people's expectations.  When they discovered that the Messiah had come to bear a cross rather than to crucify, they would have to decide whether they would prefer to cling to their mental pictures or embrace the Real Thing who had come into their midst.  When it was clear that the community of Jesus' followers was now including people from every nation, background, language, and culture (whom Paul collectively calls "the Gentiles" here), plenty of folks had to revise their thinking, away from the Messiah as a mascot for one nation or ethnic group, but as Savior of all.  It was undoubtedly worth it, if you ask Paul, to receive Jesus on his own terms, but it was also a challenge for folks who expected (and maybe wished for) something different.

Maybe that's really what the Christian faith is supposed to be: the willingness to lay down our mental pictures, our pet theories, and our partisan agendas in the face of the genuine Messiah Jesus, no matter how much the Real McCoy surprises or startles us, and to say in joyful trust, "So you're the One after all.  You're the One I've been waiting for, praying for, and hoping for all along."  Maybe all our lives long will be spent getting to know Jesus more deeply and truly, beyond the shadows and sketches of our fantasizing.

To be honest, that sounds like a good way to spend a lifetime.  When the real has come, you don't need the mental picture as a placeholder any longer.  You just enjoy getting to know the real.

Come, Lord Jesus.  Come in your authenticity.  Come in your unpredictability and faithfulness.  Come beyond our illusions and expectations.  Come in all of your real-ness, and let us know you more truly.