What do you expect?

 “We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us" - Joseph Campbell

I’ve been pondering those words as I’m reading, once again, Matthew 11. The followers of John the Baptist come to Jesus and ask:

“Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” Matt. 11:3

John the Baptist spent his life preparing the way for The-One-Who-Is-To-Come, the Messiah (in Hebrew) the Christ (in Greek).

However, if you read Matthew 3, you will see that John’s Messiah brings a winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff – the good from the bad – and Jesus made friends with sinners. John’s Messiah was to baptize people with a burning fire, and Jesus came healing the sick. John’s Messiah was to rule the world, and Jesus was a poor carpenter whose name would have meant nothing to Caesar.

If Jesus is The-One-Who-Is-To-Come, then everything John expected and everything he stood for is wrong, almost.

“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 the good news preached to them. And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me.” (Matt. 11: 4-6).

Well, that was what John the Baptist’s hero, Isaiah, said would eventually happen after The-One-Who-Is-To-Come had sorted things out by judging “not by what his eyes see or his ears hear” but who comes as the Equalizer who takes the side of the poor against their oppressors.

Suppose, however, that The-One-Who-Is-To-Come decided to skip the judgment part? After all, who are the poor? The ones who don’t have any money? Or the ones who sold their souls? The widow who only had two pennies to put in the offering plate? Or Zacchaeus who owned half of Jericho? Suppose that The-One-Who-Is-To-Come decided to just come and seek and save the lost without making judgments about who “deserved” to be saved and who didn’t? Suppose that every blind person who came got to see? Suppose that every lame person got to walk?

Go and tell John what you hear and see . . .

Jesus is hoping that John gets it – that John will see that his life was not lived in vain. He is hoping that John will let go of what he always thought, what he always believed and what he always preached in order to receive the gift of knowing that, in fact, he did prepare the way of The-One-Who-Is-To-Come. It’s just that The-One-Who-Is-To-Come wasn’t who John expected.

What do you expect? What does your life stand for? What are your deepest beliefs? What if they are wrong? What if God has something better in mind for you than  you expect? Would you give up what you think your life stands for? Would  you give up what you had worked for all your life? Would you receive the gift of what you didn’t expect, but what you have always wanted?