Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Today’s scripture readings: Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:5-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

Michael Gerson was a gifted writer, a presidential speechwriter for George W. Bush and, later, a regular columnist for the Washington Post who was also seen from time to time on PBS Newshour. Gerson died of cancer last month. He was just 58 years old.

A tribute to Gerson penned by his friend Peter Wehner appeared the next day in The Atlantic.Wehner reflected that Michael Gerson was a person of deep faith whose best speeches attempted to “call forth our better selves, to right wrongs and dispense comfort, and to strive for justice.” He also described Gerson as an “instrument of mercy,” in particular, highlight Gerson’s role as a key figure in the Bush administration’s effort to address AIDS in Africa. It was a controversial plan because previous efforts had been ineffective, there were substantial infrastructure challenges to overcome, and the program’s cost was enormous. At an Oval Office meeting, as the details of the ambitious plan were being discussed and the President’s closest advisers were deliberating whether to act, the President asked each person present for their opinion. Michael Gerson was the last one to speak. He told the President, “If we can do this, and we don’t, it will be a source of shame.” The Bush Administration went ahead with it. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was the most significant commitment ever made by any nation to address a single disease. Now 20 years later, a researcher at the National Institute for Health reports that the program has saved 20 million lives, prevented millions of new infections, and changed the course of the epidemic.

Gerson’s friend Peter Wehner says that not many people knew just how many health challenges Michael Gerson faced. He suffered a heart attack in 2004, when he was 40 years old; kidney cancer in 2013; and debilitating leg pain, probably the result of surgical nerve damage. Eventually, the kidney cancer spread to his lungs. Then came Parkinson’s disease and metastatic adrenal cancer, and finally, metastatic bone cancer in multiple locations, which was intensely painful. At one point, he said he was on 20 different medications.

As if all that weren’t enough, Gerson revealed in a 2019 sermon at the National Cathedral that he had been hospitalized for depression, with which he had struggled since his 20s. He was shockingly candid and vulnerable in describing its impact on his life. He said there were times when he thought he had reached the breaking point, but he didn’t break, fortunate to have the right medicine, the right medical care, and the right friends. And then he said this: “Over time, you begin to see hints and glimmers of a larger world outside the prison of your sadness. The conscious mind takes hold of some shred of beauty or love. And then more shreds, until you begin to think maybe, just maybe, there is something better on the far side of despair.”

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Today’s Gospel lesson begins with a despairing and depressed John the Baptist sitting in his own prison of sadness. Last Sunday, we read the earlier part of John’s story about him preaching repentance in the wilderness and preparing the way for one even greater who was soon to appear. Now, eight chapters later in Matthew’s Gospel, we hear how John’s story has unfolded: He sits languishing in a jail cell, wondering if everything he thought he knew has turned out to be wrong. He thought he had understood his mission clearly. He was to prepare all those with ears to hear for someone who was coming to bring about the reign of God, who would right the wrongs of the world and make it the way God intends it to be.

But then he is arrested. And as far as he can tell, Jesus—the one for whom he thought he had been preparing the way—has changed nothing. He was supposed to turn the world upside down and establish justice and righteousness—remember that business about the axe lying at the root of the tree, the winnowing fork, and the chaff burning with an unquenchable fire?—but none of that, to his mind, has been done. The Roman Empire continues to inflict violence and oppression, and those who speak out against it, as John himself can attest, are locked up and silenced. If Jesus is the Messiah, why hasn’t anything changed? So John the Baptist sends a delegation to Jesus with a question: “Are you the one? Really? Is this it? Or should we wait for someone else to get the job done?”

Jesus responds, “Go and tell John what you’ve seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.” The message Jesus sends to John is that the Reign of God is at hand. But if you’re looking for a momentous change, he says, it’s no wonder you’ve missed it. It isn’t the toppling of a tyrannical regime or the sudden ceasing of warfare and violence between people and nations. The Reign of God, Jesus says, is unfolding on a smaller scale in the lives of plain, ordinary people all around us. If you’re not seeing it, maybe you’re not looking in the right places, or not looking for the right things. Outside the prison in which John finds himself, there are to be found hints and glimmers of a new world emerging, tiny shreds of goodness, first here and then there, like single seeds sown in barren land that spring up one by one and bring forth gardens of new life.

How did John receive Jesus’ reply? Was he satisfied with this response? Did he hear what he needed to hear? Scripture doesn’t say. It’s important to note that Jesus’ answer doesn’t change John’s situation. Ultimately, John will die a grisly death, beheaded at the order of King Herod. It seems important to Jesus not to diminish John’s doubt and despair. That’s real, and it’s warranted. But more significant than doubt and despair is this: We can see glimmers of God’s reign even now, signs of hope that give us confidence that God’s love will ultimately prevail over every situation of desperation and defeat.

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Somehow, during the season of Advent three years ago, amid his terrible illness, Michael Gerson managed to write a beautiful essay—essentially an Advent devotion—in The Washington Post. “On the evidence of our senses,” he writes, “despair is perfectly rational. Entropy is built into nature. Decay is knit into our flesh. By all appearances, the universe is cold, empty, and indifferent…. This leaves every human being with a choice between despair and longing. Both are reasonable responses to a great mystery.”

The world as we know it, broken and imperfect as it is, leaves us to choose between despair and longing. And Advent, Gerson says, is no time for despair; it is a season for longing. He writes, “God, we are assured, is at mysterious work in the world. Evil and conflict are real but not ultimate. Grace and deliverance are unrealized but certain. Patient waiting is rewarded because the trajectory of history is tilted upward by a powerful hand…. The assurance at the heart of Advent is the antidote to fear. No matter how desperate the moment, we are told, time is on the side of hope.”

Gerson concludes the essay this way: “This is the fullest expression of the hope of Advent—that all wrongs will finally be righted, that all the scales will eventually balance, and that no one will be exploited or afraid. But this hope is not yet fulfilled. Poets and theologians have strained for ways to describe this sense of anticipation. It is like a seed in the cold earth. Like the first, barely detectable signs of a thaw. Like a child growing in a womb.” Advent calls us to hope and expect that God is somehow at work bringing healing and justice and mercy and love, and calls us to direct our attention to the hints and glimmers of God’s goodness being revealed beyond our prisons of hopelessness, to strain our eyes to catch a glimpse of shreds of beauty and love that assure us that there may indeed be something better on the far side of despair.

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Resources consulted:

Michael Gerson, “Advent Teaches Us that Hope Is Not a Cruel Joke,” in The Washington Post, published December 5, 2019, accessed December 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/advent-teaches-us-that-hope-is-not-a-cruel-joke/2019/12/05/55415420-17a6-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html.

Daniel P. Matthews, Jr., “What’s the Plan?”, on Day1.org, published December 12, 2010, accessed December 8, 2022, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002b99/whats_the_plan.

Melissa Bane Sevier, on Contemplative Viewfinder, published December 4, 2016, accessed December 8, 2022, https://melissabanesevier.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/advent-doubts/.

Debie Thomas, “Has It All Been for Nothing? The Third Sunday in Advent,” on Journey with Jesus, published December 4, 2022, accessed December 8, 2022, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1201.

Peter Wehner, “My Friend, Michael Gerson,” in The Atlantic, published November 18, 2022, accessed December 8, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/michael-gerson-speechwriter-george-bush-dies-cancer/672172/.