Don’t shoot the messenger

Ever miss an important message because you didn’t care for the messenger?

It could have been that the messenger wasn’t “authoritative” enough for you. That is, the messenger didn’t fit the picture in your mind as qualified to bring you important news and information. You couldn’t take the messenger seriously. Things like appearance, lifestyle, gender, and ethnicity all come into play. I know I have been tempted to size up a messenger before listening to the message.

May be you simply didn’t like the messenger. Whether it was based on bad experience or prejudice there was something about the messenger you didn’t like, and therefore regarded the message as suspect. I’ve been tempted in that way too.

Or it may be that the messenger brought unwelcome news. When you heard it you became so upset you wanted to shoot the messenger. I’ve been there too.

However, God speaks to us through the most unlikely people. Don’t miss the message because you dismiss the messenger.

We all love good news. And we like to hear how much God loves us and wants the best for us. We love messengers who are profound and humorous. We like it when we can “connect” with them because they are like one of us, or struggling with the same issues.  We like it when they fit our idea of one who has something worthwhile to say, who can invoke our trust and awaken our hopes. If messenger and message line up with a positive experience we’re good.

When it’s not like that we’re not so good. Our notions of what or who is credible, our prejudices, or our predisposition to good news may be barriers to hearing the message.

God likes to challenge us by sending unlikely prophets. It is important to make sure we don’t dismiss the messenger and miss the message.

The Sadducees of Jesus’ time were that way. Keepers of the temple, the chief priests and elders were in charge of Israel’s religious life. For them it was a surface religion of keeping certain liturgical rules found only in the books of Moses. There personal lives were very Roman.

So when Jesus came to town and shut down the temple exchange on the busiest day of the year, and followed that the next day by making himself at home the teaching chair, they became upset. “Who told you you could do these things?” they demanded.

“Not telling,” Jesus replied, “unless you tell me whether you think John’s baptism was authorized by God or not.”

That was touchy. John was a messenger they didn’t want to hear. John’s dad had been one of them – a priest in the most prestigious aristocracy in Israel. John would have been, too, but he left and exchanged it all for a rough life in the wilderness bellowing something about the kingdom of God.

The Sadducees didn’t like John. They didn’t like his defection, his appearance, his lifestyle, or his message. When they went to the wilderness to see what he was up to John called them a “brood of vipers.” So they discounted John and his message. But they didn’t want to tell Jesus that.

Jesus told a story to make his point. A father asked two sons to go to the vineyard to work. The first said, “Nope. Too busy. Catch you later, dad.” Later he thought the better of it and went to work. The second said, “Sure, dad,” but never got around to it.

“Which one actually did what his dad wanted,” Jesus asked.

“The first one,” the priests responded.

“Well, tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom before you,” Jesus said. “John came in righteousness and you wouldn’t listen to him or change your ways. Even when you saw tax collectors and prostitutes change you still didn’t change.”

You see, the Sadducees, keepers of things religious, dismissed the messenger out of hand, and thus wouldn’t consider the message. They missed it. John was one of them, but because he had defected and drastically changed his appearance, and because he was blunt and coarse in his delivery, they ignored him. They marginalized him. And they missed the kingdom of God.

God will bring challenges to us through messengers that do not match our preconceived notions of what a prophet should be. They may be coarse, blunt, and unpleasant. They may make us uncomfortable and call into question things we hold dear. They may be offensive. They may look different, be of a different race or gender, and seem completely unqualified to speak.

Our entertainment-driven world has deceived us into thinking God wants us to have nothing but pleasant experiences as he speaks to us. So when someone who makes us uncomfortable challenges us and calls us to a deeper life of sacrifice and commitment we are tempted to dismiss messenger and miss the message. Sometimes we want to shoot the messenger.

The genuine message of the kingdom calls us to be a part of the embassy of God’s kingdom, and join the work of renovating the world ravaged by Adam’s sin in anticipation of a glorious resurrection to come. We are to make disciples of Jesus, who saves but also challenges us to grow and mature, to “go and sin no more.”

At the embassy we are concerned with what Jesus says. That is our curriculum. And we are concerned with what Jesus does. That is our ministry. Then we are to reflect that in our lives to a darkened world. That is our testimony.

In other words, in the embassy we are sold-out, committed followers of Jesus. We heed the unlikely messengers God sends our way. And we become the unlikely messengers ourselves, taking God’s message to the world around us.

So don’t shoot the messenger. You are called to be one.

Matthew 21:23-32 (Proper 21 A)