The third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as “Gaudete Sunday,” from the Latin word for joy. That’s why we lit the pink candle today. Yet, as I meditated on the scripture passages for this Sunday, I kept thinking about how painful a season this can be for many people-- people who are lonely, people who are grieving the loss of a loved one, people who are struggling with illness and wondering where God is in the midst of it all… people who are depressed, people who are trying to maintain their sobriety during a season of parties… people who are too poor to be a part of the festival of extravagance the merchants would have us believe is what Christmas is all about.
We remember that yesterday was the
1-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook School in Newtown,
Connecticut. We mourn the loss of the
children who died there and the principal and guidance counselor and teachers
who gave their lives, and know that the lives of their loved ones will never be
the same.
We try to make sense of what
happened, but then there’s another shooting in Colorado last Friday, not very
far from the massacre that took place at Columbine High School. And we’re reminded that in the year since
the school shooting at Sandy Hook, at least 194 children more children have
been killed with guns. Such senseless
loss of all those precious lives!
There’s so much wrong in our world,
and in the midst of all of it, a lot of people may be wondering: where’s the good news?
I think when we look around our
world, it exposes our brokenness as
human beings and as a society and reminds us how much we need a Savior. We live in a broken world. We’re still waiting for the kingdom of God,
and we yearn for it. We wait and hope
for what we can’t yet see.
In the gospel lesson we just heard,
we hear John beginning to doubt his own message. This is the same John who recognized Jesus
from his mother's womb, leaping with joy when her cousin Mary came to visit. John the prophet, who lived in the desert
eating locusts and honey, preaching to anyone who would listen: "Prepare
the way of the Lord!" John the
Baptizer, who knew Jesus the moment he laid eyes on him at the river Jordan and
baptized him and was there when heaven opened and the spirit of God descended
on Jesus like a dove. What's happened
to him—this man of faith-- that he should suddenly doubt Jesus' identity?
"Are you the one who is to
come... or shall we look for another? John had envisioned a mighty and powerful
Messiah, come to sweep away all the wickedness of the world and destroy
evil. Jesus will set the world straight,
and justice and righteousness will rule the day. The oppressed will be liberated and the hungry
will be fed. Those who resist, those who
don't believe, those who continue to
sin-- they'll be separated from the
righteous like chaff from the wheat.
They'll be swept away and cast into the "unquenchable fire."
That's what John expected and proclaimed. That's what drew crowds to hear his message
and be baptized. Then Jesus arrived on
the scene. John stepped aside... and essentially said, "Go for it, Jesus! Bring in the Kingdom! Wipe out the old age, and bring in the
new!" And nothing happened.
By this time, Jesus has preached the
Sermon on the Mount. He's healed people
possessed by demons and raised Jairus'
daughter from the dead. His ministry has
taken root, and a crowd of believers around him is growing.
But nothing was happening the way
John had thought it would. The Messiah
was supposed to change things. He was
supposed to fix it so that the wicked no longer prospered, and the righteous people, like himself, were
saved.
Things weren't going well for
John. He was in prison. Nothing was happening the way he'd envisioned
it. Jesus wasn't throwing anybody into
unquenchable fire or wiping out sinners. No. He
was visiting them in their homes, and even eating with them!
So John finds himself not living in
a new era-- but imprisoned in a very old world dungeon, with a lot of questions
and doubts. So he sends his disciples
to Jesus to ask, "Are you the one
who is to come? Or are we to wait for
another?"
John's question may be our question
as well. By simple virtue of our being
here this morning—especially this Sunday traveling through unplowed streets and
treacherous highways-- we make the
statement that we-- like John-- have
recognized the Messiah in Jesus. In a
variety of different ways, we're trying to prepare the way of the Lord. Every week, we come here and confess our
faith that Jesus is Lord. Every week, we
search for new, more effective ways to teach and preach and live that
truth. Along the way, we've acquired
some definite ideas about our Lord. As
students of the Bible... of
tradition... and of our own experience,
we have certain expectations of Jesus and what he will do for us his people-- sooner or later.
But—if we’re honest with ourselves--
who hasn't had doubts? Who has never
asked John’s question in times of disappointment
or anger or loss or confusion? Jesus, are you the one? Or shall we look for another?
Who has never looked to other things
for our joy and excitement and security-- haven't we gone off to look for
another?
It’s hard to wait. It’s hard to be patient. We tune into the
news, and sometimes it’s hard not to wonder, Jesus, are you the one? Or shall
we look for another? We’d like to hand
Jesus the ax John talked about and see him chop down all the trees that don't
bear good fruit. But Jesus lays it
down again, and sends us back into the wilderness of our lives, with words of
love on our lips, to carry out his mission of compassion and peace and
justice. We pass out food to hungry
people, and warm socks and hats and gloves to those need them, and take cookies and carols and holiday cheer
to a lonely shut-in.
They seem like such little
things-- these small acts of love. They don't satisfy us in the way a little
vengeance would-- a God with an ax. But they are the tasks we have been given to
do, while we wait. And we have promised
to try.
Perhaps it amounts to serving the
God who is-- instead of the one we would
like God to be. It was hard for
John. It's hard for us today.
"Are you the one who is to come?
Or shall we look for another?"
Jesus answered John’s people, "Go tell John what you hear and
see: the blind receive their sight...
and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed,
and the deaf hear. The dead are raised
up... and the poor have good news
preached to them. And blessed is the one
who takes no offense at me."
It's a radical answer-- almost as radical as the question... an answer delivered completely in the
passive voice, without a single claim for Jesus. There are no "I" statements
here. The blind are seeing and the lame
are walking-- but who's
responsible? Jesus apparently refuses to
take credit... to take charge and
singlehandedly rescue the human race from the circumstances of their lives.[1]
"Go and tell John what you hear
and see," Jesus says. We might wish Jesus would work a showy miracle
on the spot or give us a simple, pat answer.
"Lift up your eyes and see,"
he says. "See for
yourself. Make up your own minds."
What is Jesus saying? It sounds as if he's saying, "Go and tell John that everyone who is
expected has already arrived. Go tell
him what you hear and see-- that things
may not be working out the way he wanted them to... but that every now and then, in surprising
places, amazing things are happening.
People who were blind to the love loose in the world have received the
sight to see it.
People who were paralyzed with
fear-- are limber with hope. People who
were deaf from want of good news-- are hearing the good news. And best and most miraculous of all, tell
John that this is not the work of one lonely Messiah-- but the work of God, carried out by all who
believe... and that there is no end in
sight to what God is doing in the world.
I love the way Barbara Brown Taylor puts
it: “Tell him I am the one, if you must. But tell him also that yes, he should look
for another... and another... and another.
Tell him to search every face for the face of God and not to get tripped
up on me because what's happening here is bigger than any one of us. What is coming to pass is as big as the
Kingdom of God."[2]
During Advent, we're reminded that
we wait for the second and final coming of Christ. It’s a paradox: Christ has come. Christ is here. Christ is yet to come. But in the meantime, we're given the sight to
see glimpses of God's Kingdom breaking in.
A very different kind of kingdom, a reign that comes, not by force, but
by the birth of a child who came to life in a humble little stable. The Kingdom of God was present in that
common, yet extraordinary birth, as God was born as a helpless baby who came to
live among us, full of grace and truth. The
mystery we celebrate at Christmas is the mystery of God-with-us... Emmanuel.
When Jesus sent word back to
John—“the 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”—he wasn’t just cataloguing his previous day’s to-do list. Nor was he simply quoting Isaiah.[3]
Most importantly, Jesus was
encouraging John to cultivate what Ted Wardlaw called “eschatological eyesight” to see past what is yet unfinished in our
world in order to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God drawing near.[4]
Wardlaw writes how, near the end of
the twentieth century, some people in the Presbyterian denomination pulled out
their calculators and assessed things from a certain angle and then went public
with a startling prediction. Influenced
by all the literature about the decline of the mainline church, they predicted
that if present trends continued, Presbyterians would become virtually
non-existent sometime in the twenty-first century.
They put this prediction in what
they thought was a particularly clever way.
They said that, if present trends continued, Presbyterians would become
“the Amish of the twenty-first century.”
It was a way of saying that, for all practical purposes, Presbyterians
would be marginalized and irrelevant, as if we were horse-and-buggy
people—totally out of date and rendered invisible by our irrelevance in a world
that had totally eclipsed us.
Wardlaw remembers that prediction
was made in print and was repeated at any number of church meetings. Whenever that prediction was voiced—“the
Amish of the twenty-first century”—people laughed at how cleverly the thought
was put.
Then, in the fall of 2006, we
watched as an Amish community in Pennsylvania grieved over and buried a group
of their own schoolchildren who had been slaughtered by a rage-filled man with
a gun that he finally turned on himself.
In the midst of their grieving, this Amish community paused to send a
delegation to reach out in forgiveness and compassion to the widow and family
of the one who had slaughtered their children, and even to provide financial
support for them. The world watched in
disbelief as they summoned a strength that was impossible, humanly speaking…and
then dealt with the sin and tragedy that had penetrated their world by
beholding it all with the right kind of eyesight.
We watched as they returned love for
evil…as they reached out in healing and redemption. We watched in complete awe as they directed
our gaze, if we had the eyesight ourselves to see it, toward a light shining in
the darkness-- a light that the darkness
could not overcome.
What a witness! In a world that can be dark and threatening
and incomplete and full of terror, what a difference it can make if we can have
the right kind of eyesight, as we move further into God’s future. May we have eyes to see the long view. May our eyes be opened to see God’s activity in what happening.
In the first verse of the hymn we’ll
sing later, we sing with Mary, “Could the world be about to turn?” By the second and third verses, the we sing
“the world is about to turn.” And in the
fourth, we affirm that God is turning the world around.”[5]
On this Third Sunday of Advent, the
rose-colored candle reminds us that God invites us into joy. God offers us hope, trusting that the day is
coming when that hope will become reality.
In the meantime, every time we reach
out with love... care... and compassion-- the Kingdom of God grows a little
larger... and is that much closer to
being fulfilled.
So-- in the meantime, let us wait
patiently. For the coming
of the Lord is near, and the world is about to turn.
My heart shall
sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of
your justice burn.
Wipe away all
tears, for the dawn draws near,
And the world is
about to turn.
Rev. Fran Hayes,
Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
December 15, 2013
[1] I
continue to be grateful to Barbara Brown Taylor all these years later for some
insights on this passage, in “Are You the One?” in Mixed Blessings (Susan Hunter Publishing, 1986), p. 57.
[2] Barbara
Brown Taylor, ibid.
[3] Isaiah
35:5
[4]
Theodore J. Wardlaw, Journal for Preachers, Vol XXXI, Number 1, Advent 2007, (Decatur, Ga:
Journal for Preachers, 2007) p. 6
[5] “My Soul
Cries Out with a Joyful Shout” / “Canticle of the Turning.” Text: Rory Cooney, 1990. Music:
Irish melody. Text and music from
1990 GIA Publications, Inc. This is in
the new Presbyterian hymnal, Glory to God
(2013).
