Luke 7:29-30

(And all the people who heard this, including the tax-collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.)

Just in case we may misunderstand Jesus’ words about John, Luke makes matters even clearer in this parenthetical remark. Those who came to John to be baptized recognized that God was doing a new thing, that God’s justice was working itself out in a new way. Those who refused John, however, missed what God was doing and so rejected God’s emerging plan and purpose.

There’s little question that Luke adds this statement to confirm the faith of his community and to bolster their confidence over and against those who charged that Jesus was not the messiah. But I think it’s a mistake to confine the force of Luke’s affirmation to his own generation. Because we, too, are regularly challenged to see how God’s “new thing” plays out in our own lives.

This is a part of the life of faith that can be most difficult. For it’s easy to see faith as a refuge, a comfort, an answer to life’s problems. And no doubt at times faith is. But just as often – in fact, I’d suggest more often – faith invites us to be surprised by God’s unexpected movement.

Who during the first century, after all, could have suspected that God would show up in the wild-eyed and strangely attired John rather than at the Temple? And who would have ever dreamt that God’s redemption of Israel and all the world would come not through the power of a king like David but rather through the vulnerability of the man Jesus hanging on a cross?

More often than not, God’s redemption does not conform itself to our imagining because our imaginations themselves are limited and in need of redemption.

So where is God at work in unexpected ways and places and through unexpected persons in your life or community? Perhaps through the homeless person who is so hard to attend to, perhaps through that difficult family member or annoying colleague, perhaps through people who look and think and act differently than you.

Who knows? What we do know is that God’s justice regularly unfolds in unexpected ways, and we do well to resist the temptation to judge that which is new and be open to God’s surprising presence.

Prayer: Dear God, you regularly surprise us in how you work out your plans and purposes. Open our hearts to your movement in new, different, and unexpected ways in and through the people around us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.