A Charlie Brown kind of joy

Matthew 11: 2-11
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
December 11, 2022

Photo description: three signs on wooden posts, each with a different letter, in a different style.  The letter J with black and yellow polka dots on red with a white outline on a red background. The letter O in yellow paint with a yellow dot in the center on a black background with yellow dots.  The letter Y in red cursive on a charcoal gray background.

A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on television on December 9, 1965. I still have my first edition copy of the book that my mother gave to me and my dad for Christmas. It begins with Charlie Brown explaining to his friend Linus that he’s just not happy and he doesn’t understand Christmas. He likes getting presents and decorating the tree and sending cards, but he doesn’t feel the way he’s supposed to feel, he says. That’s a whole word right there about our culture and Christmas and holidays in general.



His friends, his little sister Sally, even Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy try to share with him their own ways of getting into the Christmas spirit, most of which leave Charlie Brown feeling even more let down. Lucy tells him he needs involvement and gets Charlie Brown to direct the Christmas play. But even then Charlie Brown makes it all about him. Most of the time first person point of view is all we know but it’s not all we need to know.



John the Baptist and his disciples are trying to get into the Jesus spirit by trying to figure out if they want to get involved too. John is in prison because of Herod Antipas and he wants to know if it’s worth it. Is Jesus the Promised One who will save his people? During the 1st and early 2nd centuries there were multiple messianic movements that promised an abrupt end of the world, a world filled with corruption and evil, that would be transformed into a new world of righteousness in which the wicked are punished and the lowly are lifted up. John and his disciples want to know if they have found their people, the One who will bring God’s new age.



The gospel of Matthew is all about prediction and fulfillment, and so Jesus says, “Here are the signs.” He harkens back to the prophet Isaiah, to promises of recovery of sight to the blind, to bring good news to the oppressed, comfort to all who mourn, but leaves out release to the prisoners, perhaps because Matthew’s audience already knows that both John and Jesus would be condemned as enemies of the state.



A word here about healing the disabled as a sign of God’s kindom. On the surface Jesus healing everyone reads as ableist, as though in order to enter the kindom you can’t be disabled, as though wholeness and restoration is equated with being non-disabled. There is a horrid theology which regards disabled people as broken and in need of fixing, that somehow God made a mistake and the kindom is the place that rectifies that mistake. Another word for that horrid theology is eugenics, erasing disability and other variations of humanity in favor of one design.



When we look at Charlie Brown and his friends in 1965 for the most part there is one design: able-bodied and White. Sadly, Charles Schulz never developed a disabled character, but in 1968 after Dr. King was assassinated, Schulz received a letter from a teacher in California requesting that a Black character be introduced into the Peanuts cartoon strip. And thus, Charlie Brown’s friendship with Franklin was born.



To me, these healings signify two things about Jesus. One, that change is going on. The status quo, the world as we know it, will not usher in God’s kindom of justice and wholeness. Neither will violence and destruction. Those who live through times such as these, we are impatient for the change we wish to see in the world because we want to witness it, we want to live in it, we want to outlive our sorrow, our pain. And so, we do violence in the name of revolution. Yet change is about evolving and growing in a living world that was here long before us and will go on long after us. It’s the change we can affect today that makes a difference.

Photo description: A cinderblock wall painted white with sky blue, yellow, scrubs green, and periwinkle blue stripes with these words stacked on top of one another in the center, painted in lowercase black script: make people feel loved today.

If Matthew was writing his gospel today it could read like this: Jesus answered them, “Go and inform John of the changes taking place. The blind and vision impaired have ease of access to every form of media and free transportation to wherever they need to go. The deaf have interpreters at every public event, subtitles in every movie theater, and sign language is taught in public schools. Cities, towns, and neighborhoods are designed for those in wheelchairs, for anyone who need assistance with mobility. Black, brown, and Indigenous people, queer and transgender folx, the disabled, and people who are neurodivergent are CEOs and elected to school boards, public office, Congress, judgeships, and the presidency. As for the dead being raised, everyone has healthcare and all the paid sick leave they need. And the poor want for nothing. All this means everyone is in solidarity with each other. Everyone is liberated.”



The second thing these healings signify about Jesus is that he has found his people, the ones who will enter the kindom of God first because they need God’s justice the most. In effect he is saying to John and his disciples, you will know me by the company I keep, by the community I create, which is the kindom in your midst.



Prophets are not here to entertain us or to keep us comfortable. Colin Kaepernick, Brittney Griner, and others who kneel for the national anthem peacefully protest the deadly status quo that Black, brown, and Indigenous people live with every day. Prophets show us who they are by the company they keep, the community they create, the kindom in our midst. Yet are we not entertained regardless?



Charlie Brown’s Christmas may be a sweet story that entertains but within it he shows us the power, the joy of finding our people—people who love us when we can’t get past our first-person point of view. People who keep connection with us even when we’d rather disconnect from all that has been corrupted, including Church. People who love us when we’re in our Charlie Brown Christmas tree phase. People who need us to do the same for them, disrupt our lives for them. People who liberate us, who challenge us and disturb us to expand the company we keep, the community we create, the kindom of God in our midst.



Everyone deserves to find their people—as Linus puts it, that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. Shepherds and workers, new parents, children, animals, outsiders, and angels. Everyone in solidarity with everyone else, especially the most vulnerable. Everyone is liberated. Good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.



Like this little one when she finds her people, her family in a crowd of people waiting for a Christmas recital to begin. The feeling of being lost on her face and the sheer joy when she spots those faces who love her no matter what, the tears that spill out when she cannot contain her joy at being found.







Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown! Amen.



Benediction


Beloved, change is gonna come.
It’s the company we keep.
It’s the community we create.
It’s finding our people,
the ones who need God’s justice the most.
Jesus shows us the Way.
Amen.