"Plainclothes Messiah"

A Sermon by the Rev. Matthew B. Reeves
Parkville Presbyterian Church, Parkville, Missouri
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 29, 2007

Text: John 10:22-30

According to my Concise Oxford Dictionary¸ eighth edition, "the new edition for the 1990s," the word multitask does not exist. Not as a verb, "Don’t worry, I’m still paying attention to you—I’m just multitasking." Not as a noun, "I have so much to do, I must be a multitasker to get it done." Now come 2007, multitask not only resides in dictionaries, but to multitask—to do more than one thing simultaneously—has become a way of life.

Two years ago on the front page of the Kansas City Star was a high school student sitting at a desk in his room, doing his homework. And watching television. And instant messaging on the computer. And listening to music. And, one has to imagine, talking on the phone. Did I mention he was really doing homework? I remember this picture because the young person was a member of a confirmation class a number of years back. A person who professed his faith in Christ, making public commitment to a life-encompassing, "monotask" following of Jesus that, in John’s gospel, mostly entails recognizing a and heeding a single voice. For every generation, hearing the voice of Jesus amid the noise of life has been a challenge. Today we live in a world with more speech, more demands for attention, more encouragement to do everything at once than ever before. Yet even in our multitasking world, Jesus speaks. The same as ever, what is greater than all else comes to those who hear his voice and follow.

On a winter day in Jerusalem, the vaulted temple walls hold the dull murmur festival goers. On the temple’s east side, dwarfed in stature by the tall columns of Solomon’s portico, walks Jesus. His voice is familiar to the temple but unusually silent now as he enjoys solitary stroll during the Hanukkah celebration. His recreational moment is fleeting. A group gathers, ringing him in a less-than-friendly circle. They’ve come with a question and they don’t want him to slip off without answering.

"How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." It’s not a surprising question at Hanukkah as Jews recall the liberation of Jerusalem from the Syrian king some 200 years back. The need for liberation is still on the mind: the portico on which Jesus and his questioners stand is as much Herod’s portico as it Solomon’s, having been built by little-loved Herod who rules for occupying Rome. A Messiah would seem a likely liberator. The buzz about Jesus is that he might be it. At his hand, blind eyes are opening. The sick are being healed. Loaves and fish multiply in broad daylight. He attracts a following.

But the question is tinged with annoyance. "Give it to us straight," they say, "are you Messiah or not?" It’s asked more in a tone of interrogation than of hopefulness. That Jesus is powerful is clear. But his intentions and the origins of his power are not, at least to those ringing him. If not aligned with your purposes, a powerful person is a threat. So they ask for plain talk.

"I have told you," says Jesus. "I have told you, and you do not believe." It’s a communication crisis: "Tell us!" "I have" "Are you Messiah?" "You don’t believe." Conversations in John’s gospel tend to go like this. Jesus speaks words understandable by fourth graders, but somehow they’re not truly heard by most, even by the pastor and elder types. Jesus heals and blesses and teaches in the open, but does it so unobtrusively that the messianic glory is missed—or misheard—muffled by the noisy chorus of expectations about what a Messiah should be and what God’s work should entail.

"The works I do in my Father’s name say everything there is to say about me," says Jesus. His life holds no secrets. His revelation of God is as plain as the face he wears and the words he speaks and the hands that heal. The messianic work is clear as day. But here he is, surrounded by religious people who, though they look, just don’t see; and though they listen, just don’t hear.

It’s Friday morning, January 12 and the Washington D.C. Metro station is its usual mixture of chaos, bustle, and noise. Trains clack in, doors whoosh open, commuters scramble to get to work. A youngish-looking man cradling a small case steps from the Metro. He finds a place against the station wall next to a trash can and takes a violin out of the case. No one notices, and why should they? He’s another street musician wearing a black long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. He places the open case at his feet, tosses in a few bucks, and begins to play.

For the next 43 minutes he performs six classical pieces and 1,097 people pass by, each with a choice: do I stop and listen, or hurry by? Do I toss in a dollar, or is that not enough? Or should I give anything, even if he’s really good?

It turns out this violinist is really, really good. In fact, his going rate on the world stage comes to $1,000 per minute of performance. His violin is worth $3.5 million dollars, a 300 year-old Stradivarius. He is 39-year-old Joshua Bell, recently awarded the $75,000 Avery Fisher prize as the best classical musician in America. The Washington Post is in on this experiment in perception and priorities. The newspaper wants to see if the public can hear and recognize and appreciate beauty in the midst of ordinary life. The story was printed in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star. In the 43-minute performance, of the 1,097 passers-by, only 7 stop for at least a minute, only 27 give money—most of them tossing it in on the fly—and only 1 person actually recognizes the man as Joshua Bell. 43- minutes of soaring, virtuosic playing earns Joshua Bell $32.17, and some people give pennies.

We face no shortage of God’s glory and God is hardly speechless. Signs of life and salvation are more abundant than dandelions in spring. But we face a crisis of hearing. Of recognizing. Of purposeful attending to what is plainly before us, which is the world where Jesus’ glory lies unwrapped. But when Jesus reveals his glory, he’s not wearing a tux or shiny suit of armor. By God’s design he’s a plainclothes Messiah whose glory, through plainly present, is unobtrusive. To recognize Jesus in our world today, our eyes, and especially our ears, need retraining.

A notable feature of John’s gospel is that it doesn’t lack for Jesus speech. John introduces Jesus as "the Word" and Jesus lives up to it. In Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus teaches. In John, he gives discourses. Lack of true hearing and believing doesn’t stop Jesus from speaking. He still goes about revealing who he is, showing by speech and action the life of God. In Bibles with words of Jesus in red whole pages of John’s gospel are a scarlet sea of Jesus speech.

John’s Jesus is a talker, eager his words to fall on every ear, whether it hear or be deaf. And there are ears that hear. They belong to sheep. "My sheep hear my voice," says Jesus. I know them. They follow me." Sheep! Those who hear, who recognize Jesus as showing God’s glory, and who proceed to follow him, are called sheep! This sounds less than flattering. Sheep aren’t known as the brightest of creatures. There’s good reason for parents to hope their sons and daughters become more than sheep, mere followers of the crowd, mindless go-alongs to any old voice.

To be a sheep doesn’t sound so great, unless the shepherd is Jesus. "I am the good shepherd," he says. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." What blessed people are these sheep, and what wonderful ears they have! There are some, Jesus says, whom God is training to recognize the truth when it is spoken. They are my sheep. They discern my voice amid the surrounding clamor. "I know them," Jesus says. "They follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish."

Jesus’ sheep are no fools. They’re oddly complicated creatures whose trust isn’t blind, but radical. Their ears aren’t deaf to the world, but keenly discerning. They hear the shepherd amid the din heed his voice alone. They are bold, these sheep of Jesus. Daring creatures! They stake their lives on his voice, and learn glory by its sound. Wherever the voice sings—and it sings in the strangest of places!—they listen and follow and find in it life.

It’s the strangest of places for a singing Stradavarius, the D.C. Metro station. A shoeshine stand, a newsstand with skin magazines, and a denim-clad man whose violin speaks Bach. Joshua Bell starts his rush-hour concert with the "Chaconne" movement from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor. It’s a tumbling free-fall of notes, upbeat and playful, then dark and exalted, a piece Bell calls, "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any [person] in history."

Though played by one of the greatest violinists of our day, many pass without a glance. Until, 6 minutes in, David Mortensen stops. A hidden camera catches him getting off the escalator, looking around, walking away, then turning back, drawn by the sound. He lingers to listen. For the first time, he gives money to a street musician.

Then after the Chaconne Bell plays Schubert’s Ave Maria, and there’s a beautiful yet horrible moment. A woman and her preschool-aged child step off the escalator. She walks quickly, and since she holds the child’s hand he walks quickly too. The child is a cute kid in a big parka and he keeps twisting around to look at Bell while his mom pulls him toward a door. Their arms are stretched—he’s holding her back—so mom does what has to be done. She places her body between her son’s and Bell’s to cut the boy off from seeing. As she yanks him through the door, the boy still cranes his neck to look.

No ethnic or demographic distinction marks those who stop to listen to the virtuoso versus those who walk on by, except for one. Every time a child comes past, the child tries to stop and watch. And every time, a parent whisks the child away.

When along life’s way do we unlearn how to hear the beautiful voice and see glory in our midst? When did we learn the art of multitasking, of attending to so many things that we never pay complete attention to anything? To any who want to learn attentiveness to beautiful voice of Jesus, there is encouragement.

When Joshua Bell played at the Metro, it wasn’t merely for the sake of the few who would truly hear. Otherwise he would have packed up after five minutes. He played for the joy and beauty of what he was playing, as though he were at Lincoln Center. That’s the way God plays. God acts and plays in the world for the joy of bringing salvation, and God will do it even if we don’t notice. Jesus is the good shepherd for the joy of shepherding. He lays down his life for us because it is his joy to lay it down. He lays it down whether we see or not. The Holy Spirit speaks Jesus into our lives—Jesus with all his strange and unexpected glory—and the Spirit speaks for the simple joy of speaking the Word of God. Whether we listen or not, the Spirit will keep speaking.

Jesus’ way isn’t to advertise salvation as with flashing signs or speak to sheep as through a bullhorn. Yes, the sign the Romans put on Jesus’ cross said, "King of the Jews," but they meant it as a joke. Yet Jesus does speak a word of abundant life that is plain for the hearing. There’s a resonating chamber from which his voice consistently sings. It’s an instrument that’s Spirit-played. Jesus bids us stop to listen and not hurry by. Here it is: this Book, these Scriptures. Here is where we learn the lovely voice of Jesus that speaks in the world. Here in these stories and letters and prayers our eyes learn God glory that’s so different from world glory. Here is where we grow sheep ears, get following hearts, learn "monotask" listening to the shepherd. The flock of the church and the sheep of the fold lose their life if they hurry by this word that God performs. The biblical witness is the place for learning the voice that leads to life.

Sunday School. Bedtime prayers. Bible study. Morning devotions. 15 minutes during a lunch break. If we want to learn the voice, we need to stop and listen. And when we put the book down, the voice still speaks. Because the one who speaks is the risen Jesus—alive in our world, still showing his glory. And the next time we hear him might be at the corner, or across the office, or at the soccer field, or in the kitchen. How blessed we’ll be if we hear, and trust, and follow the Lord of life.