Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Matthew 11:2-11

Last weekend, I got to go with my friend Emily to an AMAZING local quilting shop here in Virginia. Emily needed some supplies for several projects she’s working on for Christmas gifts, and I tagged along. I am not a quilter or a crafter at all, so I did not realize that when JoAnne’s fabrics shut down, an entire community of artists was left without a ready source for fabric and NOTIONS (isn’t that a great word??). Fork Mountain Quilting, in Rocky Mount, Virginia, is filling the gap.

And it is a gorgeous place. On Saturday morning, the shop was bustling. Someone was getting her sewing machine repaired. Several people were gathering supplies for quilting projects. A man was explaining his new business embroidering custom golf club head covers. And another person came in explicitly to apologize for her ugly behavior to the shop owner (I tried so hard to eavesdrop on this one, but couldn’t figure out what the original offense had been!).

Spending a little time in that shop made me want to take up quilting, even though I KNOW that I am not built for the precision and detail required for that particular art form. But being in the shop also reminded me of a documentary I watched earlier this year called, simply, The Quilters. Have any of you seen it?

The film follows a restorative justice program housed inside a Missouri prison. Prisoners who meet certain criteria can join the quilting program, outfitted with sewing machines, fabric, patterns and all kinds of notions, and spend every weekday creating amazing quilts. The aim of the program is to create a personalized quilt for every child in the surrounding counties’ foster care systems. Getting to witness and hear from the men who are part of the program was fascinating and heart-expanding.

I am pretty committed to the concept of prison abolition: I do not think that anyone’s life is made better by incarceration. Our American system of privatized prisons run explicitly for profit at the expense of the humanity of the people we throw into jail is inhumane, unjust and out of control. I understand that documentaries like The Quilters probably do harm by suggesting that life in an American prison is anything other than ongoing injustice and cruelty.

And I was still touched to get to hear from these incarcerated men who were spending their days quilting beautiful works of art to give to kids stuck in foster care. One of the men says in the documentary that quilting is what puts him on the outside. “When I do this,” he says, “I don’t even be in here.”

This morning’s scripture passage is written from prison: John, who has been thrown in jail awaiting trial for criticizing Herod. The jail that John was in was different than modern-day American prisons: it was a holding place for people waiting for their trial or execution. It was filled with poor people, because rich people could be held on house arrest. There was absolutely no provision for prisoners’ needs: no food, no sanitation, no clothes. Prison was a physically and psychologically torturous place. John’s community would have been mindful of him, bringing food and comfort and news from the outside world. John – like every other prisoner in the filthy prison – would have struggled to maintain hope or even a sense of a world outside the four walls where he was kept. 

Which makes his message, sent to Jesus via those community members who were visiting and caring for him, all the more meaningful: “Are you really the one we’ve been praying for? Or should we be waiting and preparing for someone else?”

This is John the Baptist, who was out in the wilderness in a loincloth, eating locusts and honey, preaching repentance and instructing everyone to prepare the way. This is John the Baptist, the prophet of Jesus, the one who was insisting that everybody get ready for the world to be turned upside down. This is John, the voice crying in the wilderness, the one who had been so convicted and certain that the Messiah’s arrival was imminent that he risked his own life by preaching the good news publicly. This is John, whose conviction got him in big trouble with the Empire, landed him in this dark, dank, hope-leeching cell where he is forced to rely on others for his every need, for every piece of news from the outside world.

I imagine it would be easy to give up, in this scenario, don’t you? Very easy to let go of all hope, all expectation, all motivation to be an active participant in the ushering in of the new world. But that is not what John does. Instead, he nurtures his curiosity. He accepts care from his community. He wants to know: are you the one, Jesus? Can we shift our focus from preparing for you to figuring out how to live like you, now? Or do I need to keep preaching the message of getting ready and repenting?

John needs to know what he should be doing, now. He’s not given up. He’s not ceding his life and work to the dim, soul-crushing realities of his prison cell. He’s looking for another opportunity, asking for confirmation, aligning himself with the new, inbreaking world of justice and mercy that he believes so deeply to be about to bloom all around him.

When Jesus gets the question from John, he doesn’t offer a direct answer. Instead, he tells the messengers to go report back to John the things that they’re witnessing with their own eyes:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers^* are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus is riffing, here, on a powerful passage from the prophet Isaiah: Isaiah says that the new world will look like streams in the desert, the blind receiving sight, the deaf hearing, the lame jumping for joy and a highway in the wilderness where no one – not even fools, he says – will go astray.

“Look around,” Jesus is saying. “Aren’t you paying attention to the things that are happening right before your very eyes? Just go tell John what you see.”

I love this little exchange, for several reasons. First, I love that Jesus – ever the wily trickster – refuses to answer the question directly. Maybe he is the Messiah, maybe he’s not. He forces his disciples to answer the question for themselves based on what they’re witnessing. 

Second, I love that Jesus instructs the disciples to PAY ATTENTION, but not just to anything – to PAY ATTENTION to the THINGS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING FOR. The prophet Isaiah wrote his explanation of what God’s new reign would look like hundreds of years before Jesus was born. The disciples had surely heard that passage read, chanted, sung and prayed over and over all their lives. They knew what a world turned upside down would look like: the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, rivers in the desert, highways appearing where everybody thought there was absolutely no way forward. But they weren’t doing such a great job at keeping their eyes open for these particular signs, for those particular paths.

And third, I love that John WAS keeping his eyes open for the signs from the ancient prophesies. He’s pretty sure, I think, that Jesus IS the one. But he’s looking for confirmation before he moves on with his work. Even in prison, in the midst of some serious degradation, inhumane circumstances, the full force of the Empire brought to bear on his body and mind, he is watching out for the signs and signals of God’s new world order bubbling up. In prison. About to be beheaded. John is still watching for streams in the desert.

Which is, I think, why I like that documentary about the prison Quilters so much. Even in a maximum security prison, serving sentences that, for some, won’t end before their own deaths, these men are spending their days creating beautiful things meant to bring comfort and companionship to kids who’ve lost their parents. Even in the midst of circumstances that might cause deep, irreversible despair, these men are choosing otherwise. They are choosing to find highways in the wilderness, streams in the desert – and not only to find them, but to situate themselves and their lives right there in the midst of them.

These stories make me wonder how we might begin to train our own eyes and hearts to be constantly on the lookout for those signs and wonders that herald the new world coming, to notice when the blind receive sight, to pay attention to those places where the poor are receiving and living gospel good news, to keep an eye out for streams bubbling up in the desert and highways appearing in the wilderness.

I suspect that in order to cultivate this kind of attention, we’re going to have to wean ourselves off some of the things that steal and co-opt our vision, first. Headlines, social media feeds, the all-out footrace that is societal “discourse,” bouncing from one story to another faster than our bodies can manage to process any of it – they’re all demanding more of us than we are built to handle. I suspect that streams in the desert and blind receiving their sight are things that require a little more patience, loyalty and intention to notice. 

Bob Dylan wrote this poem about Woody Guthrie that I think about all the time. It’s called “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” and the whole thing is worth listening to, but here’s an excerpt:

You need something to open your eyes

You need something to make it known

That it’s you and no one else that owns

That spot that yer standing, that space that you’re sitting

That the world ain’t got you beat

That it ain’t got you licked

It can’t get you crazy no matter how many

Times you might get kicked

You need something special all right

You need something special to give you hope

But hope’s just a word

That maybe you said or maybe you heard

On some windy corner ’round a wide-angled curve

But that’s what you need man, and you need it bad

And yer trouble is you know it too good

“Cause you look an’ you start getting the chills

“Cause you can’t find it on a dollar bill

And it ain’t on Macy’s window sill

And it ain’t on no rich kid’s road map

And it ain’t in no fat kid’s fraternity house

And it ain’t made in no Hollywood wheat germ

And it ain’t on that dimlit stage

With that half-wit comedian on it

Ranting and raving and taking yer money

And you thinks it’s funny

No you can’t find it in no night club or no yacht club

And it ain’t in the seats of a supper club

And sure as hell you’re bound to tell

That no matter how hard you rub

You just ain’t a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub

No, and it ain’t in the rumors people’re tellin’ you

And it ain’t in the pimple-lotion people are sellin’ you

And it ain’t in no cardboard-box house

Or down any movie star’s blouse

And you can’t find it on the golf course

And Uncle Remus can’t tell you and neither can Santa Claus

And it ain’t in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes

And it ain’t in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons

And it ain’t in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices

That come knockin’ and tappin’ in Christmas wrappin’

Sayin’ ain’t I pretty and ain’t I cute and look at my skin

Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow

Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry

When you can’t even sense if they got any insides

These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows

No you’ll not now or no other day

Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache¥

And inside it the people made of molasses

That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses

And it ain’t in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies

Who’d turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny

Who breathe and burp and bend and crack

And before you can count from one to ten

Do it all over again but this time behind yer back

My friend

The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl

And play games with each other in their sand-box world

And you can’t find it either in the no-talent fools

That run around gallant

And make all rules for the ones that got talent

And it ain’t in the ones that ain’t got any talent but think they do

And think they’re foolin’ you

The ones who jump on the wagon

Just for a while ’cause they know it’s in style

To get their kicks, get out of it quick

And make all kinds of money and chicks

And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat

Sayin’, “Christ do I gotta be like that

Ain’t there no one here that knows where I’m at

Ain’t there no one here that knows how I feel

Good God Almighty

THAT STUFF AIN’T REAL”

No but that ain’t yer game, it ain’t even yer race

You can’t hear yer name, you can’t see yer face

You gotta look some other place

And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’

Where do you look for this lamp that’s a-burnin’

Where do you look for this oil well gushin’

Where do you look for this candle that’s glowin’

Where do you look for this hope that you know is there

And out there somewhere

And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads

Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows

Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways

You can touch and twist

And turn two kinds of doorknobs

You can either go to the church of your choice

Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital

You’ll find God in the church of your choice

You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it’s only my opinion

I may be right or wrong

You’ll find them both

In the Grand Canyon

At sundown

John is looking for the same thing that Bob Dylan understands Woody Guthrie to be looking for. Jesus knows what they’re all talking about, and instead of telling them yes or no, he reminds they what hope looks like, what the ancient prophet Isaiah says: here is where to train your vision. Here is what you should be scouting for. Here is how you’ll know that you’re in the right place, headed the right direction. 

Are the blind receiving sight? Are the deaf having their hearing restored? Is good news being delivered and enacted amongst the poor? Are there streams bubbling up in the desert? Are ways being made where we were absolutely certain that there were no possible ways forward?

That’s how you know that this is what we’ve been waiting for. That’s the hope you’ve been seeking. Now, the trick is to follow it.