Br. Keith Nelson

Advent 3A

Isaiah 35:1-10

In my senior year in college, I took a linguistic anthropology course. One lecture seemed to summarize much of my life’s experience. The topic was direct and indirect communication, and the cultural dimensions that shape our often unconscious use of one or the other in public situations.

I had spent the first nine years of my life in southern New Jersey, then age nine to eighteen in central Alabama. In very general terms, U.S. culture as a whole favors direct communication, along with countries like Germany and Australia and all of Scandinavia. But the northeastern and Atlantic states, as well as the Western U.S., especially typify direct speech. People say what they mean; clarity and efficiency are priorities; the manner of speaking is more informal. Indirect communication characterizes places like Japan, China, the Middle East, Latin America, and the south of England: places where people often infer or imply what they really mean using understatement; where avoidance of social conflict is a high priority; and where speech tends to be more formal.

Lots of exceptions apply: the individual, the context, the class, race, and gender of those speaking. But generally: New Jersey and Alabama fit those contrasting patterns.

In my first year of school in Alabama, a teacher asked me a simple question, to which I gave a polite but simple, “Yes.” She smiled and said, “Yes, what?”

I repeated my reply. She again said “Yes, what?,” but her smile began to look a bit more . . . forced.

I could not imagine what additional information to add. So I said, “Yes, yes.”

The class erupted in laughter, and she asked to see me after class. She explained that “Yes ma’am,” was the response she expected, because that’s how polite people in the south talk. I apologized, but added that in New Jersey, that would sound rude.

Roughly speaking, direct communication risks offense to ensure understanding, while indirect communication risks potential misunderstanding to avoid offense.

St. John the Baptist may be the New Testament’s archetypal direct communicator, and in this scene from Matthew’s gospel, he also faces a situation of dire need and a question of grave significance. The entirety of his life’s calling – to prepare the way for the coming Messiah – seems to hang in the balance. So he gets to the point to avoid all ambiguity:

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

In reply, Jesus gives an incredibly indirect answer.

He could have said: “I am the one: your waiting is over.”

Instead, he tells the messengers to tell John what they see; he alludes to two separate quotations from the prophet Isaiah; and he adds a somewhat mystifying afterthought: “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

The direct communication of John the Baptist and the indirect communication of Jesus, at least in this verbal exchange, point to something characteristic about each of their ministries. Each approach illuminates something about the Messiah we seek to follow. Somewhere between offense and misunderstanding, we start to speak the same language.

When Jesus says “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” this reads a bit like a stray verse from the Beatitudes intended just for John. The Beatitudes in Matthew’s sermon on the mount allude directly to the prophets: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

But Jesus is not the kind of Messiah who is going to ride into Herod’s fortress, slip past his guards, and rescue John from prison. It may be that John still clings to a hope that this may come to pass. If Jesus came to liberate the captives, why not John the Baptist? Jesus seems to anticipate that this may well cause John grave disappointment.

This Greek work translated as offended is literally “to be tripped” or “snared” by a trap, or metaphorically, a “stumbling block.” It is to encounter an obstacle, and fall.

Such taking offense or tripping up seems to be about a fundamental mismatch between an expectation concerning the Messiah and the reality of who and how Jesus truly is.

Matthew 11 sets the stage for another telling use of this word. In Matthew 13, Jesus returns to Nazareth, his hometown, to teach in the synagogue. These people, his extended family and neighbors, “were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?” Nonetheless, they cannot square this wisdom and this power with the humble reality of Jesus’ origins: “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” And thus: “They took offense at him.”

Jesus uses language that is scathingly direct when he critiques the pious posturing and in-group assumptions of the Judean religious establishment. He calls the pharisees “hypocrites” and “white-washed tombs” to their faces. He is unafraid to say what he means, just like his older cousin John.

But when Jesus teaches about the kingdom of heaven, there is a distinct pattern of indirect speech: he tells his listeners what it is like. He accompanies his words with physical demonstrations, in the form of healings. He uses metaphor and parable. He offers arresting inversions of customary logic: The one who would save their life will lose it, and the one who loses their life will find it.

His indirection is motivated partly by a need to make the most of his short time on earth: if he says too much too directly, the force and shock will lead to verbal and physical confrontation too quickly with those who resist his message. He needs time to introduce the kingdom into his followers’ lived reality gradually, like slow-release medicine.

But Jesus also communicates indirectly because he is imparting Truth: the truth of who God is, and how God acts, and the boundless nature of that Love, which cannot be contained in language.

Emily Dickenson captures this brilliantly:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom: this unprecedented new reality in intimate relationship with God that is both now and not yet in its fullness. The vision of the prophet Isaiah captures this in-breaking reality in ways that clearly captivated Jesus. The desert, the place where flowers are least likely to bloom, produces life extravagantly and spontaneously through no human effort. All is by the sheer grace of God. This is what will unfold at the end of all our creaturely waiting, seeking, and yearning. Yet in some measure, this impossibly life-giving place can be our home now, if we die to the self and the ways we have known, like the Messiah we follow.

If direct speech risks offense and indirect speech risks misunderstanding, we see both in response to Jesus the living Word. Jesus would end up offending those closest to him in his earthly ministry, and they would not grasp the heart of his message until after his death and resurrection.

Likewise, we can and do come to Jesus with preconceived notions of who or what can save us, heal us, or make us whole. The actual Jesus may or may not conform to those expectations. How we choose to respond in those moments, or seasons, of our journey is crucial to following Jesus faithfully over the long haul.

We, like the first disciples, need to remain open to more and more of the truth, adjusting our always partial understanding to keep up with each new glimpse. We learn slowly to walk the narrow way until that great day when, in the vision of Isaiah, we find ourselves on a highway where “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”