"Reason to Rejoice"
Matthew 11:2-11; Isaiah 35:1019
The third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as Joy Sunday. That’s why we lit the pink candle today Yet, as I meditated on the scripture passages
for this Sunday, I remember how painful a season this can be for many
people. Some people are lonely… some are grieving the
loss of a loved one, some are struggling with illness and wondering where God
is in the midst of it all. Some are struggling
with depression or anxiety. Some are
trying to maintain their sobriety during a season of parties. Some 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 grieve that there’s so much wrong
in our nation and in the world. In the midst
of all this, 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 humans and as a society and our need for 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, who lived in the desert alone, crying
out when anyone approached,
"Prepare the way of the Lord!" John the Baptizer, who was there at Jesus’ baptism,
when heaven opened and the spirit of God descended on Jesus like a dove.
So what's happened to John-- that he should suddenly doubt Jesus' identity? "Are you the one who is to come-- or shall we look for another? Are you the
one, Jesus?
John had envisioned a mighty and powerful
Messiah, who would sweep away all the wickedness of the world and destroy evil. The Messiah will set the world straight. Justice and righteousness will rule the
day. The oppressed will be liberated and
the hungry will be fed. Those who resist
and continue to sin will 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. At one word
from the Messiah, the very walls of his prison should come tumbling down. But far from rescuing John-- Jesus was into more and more trouble himself.
Jesus wasn't throwing anybody into unquenchable fire. He wasn’t wiping out sinners. No. He was visiting them in their homes, and 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. Sitting in the darkness of Herod's dungeon,
John knew he may not have long to live.
He doesn't want to die still wondering about the Messiah, so he sends
word to Jesus. "Are you the one who
is to come? Or are we to wait for another?"
Could it be that John's question is
our question today as well? By simple virtue
of our being here this morning, we make the statement that we-- like
John-- have recognized the Messiah in
Jesus. In our different ways, we're trying
to prepare the way of the Lord. Every
week, we come together 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-- in anger, hurt, disappointment,
or loss-- asked John's question? Jesus,
are you the one? Or shall we look for another? Think about it. When we look to other things for our joy and
excitement and security-- haven't we gone off to look for another? When other things take priority over
worshiping God on Sunday mornings or in our lives—haven’t we gone off to look
for another? Are you the one, Jesus? Or shall we look for another?
We turn on the evening news, and sometimes
it’s hard not to wonder, Jesus, are you the one--are shall we look for another?
John was the one who had
baptized Jesus a year or two before, but now he’s in prison. Maybe John is wondering if all the preaching
and baptizing he did out in the
wilderness meant anything at all, or whether his work for the kingdom of heaven
had been for nothing. Maybe he’d been
wrong about Jesus, and he should see if there’s someone else out there who will
make this a better world. "Are you the one, or should we look for another?” John’s question gives voice to our doubts and
uncertainty, even in the midst of anticipation. John looked around the world and wonder, “If Jesus is the one, where’s the evidence that there’s a transformation underway? Doesn’t the world look pretty much the same as it was before Jesus, in terms of idolatry, injustice exploitation, and violence? It doesn’t look like things are getting better.
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” is a question of longing -- longing for what we deeply hope, longing for promises to be fulfilled, even when it seems impossible.
Jesus tells John’s friends, “Go back and tell my cousin John that things move in fits and starts, but there are always signs of hope. Sometimes when we aren’t seeing the results we’d hoped for, when our lives aren’t the way we need or want them to be, we need to look a little differently at kingdom signs.
We might
want to hand Jesus the ax John talked about, to see him chop down all the trees
that don't bear good fruit. That might feel satisfying to us. But no--
Jesus sends us back into the wilderness of our lives, with words of love on our
lips-- to help somebody carry a load of grief...
to feed hungry people, and give warm
hats and gloves to those who need them...
or to bring cookies and carols and holiday cheer to a lonely shut-in.
They seem like such small efforts. But they are the tasks we have been given to
do, while we wait. And we have promised
to try.
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 with us. Christ is yet to come. But in the meantime, we're given the sight
to see glimpses of God's Kingdom breaking in.
A kingdom that comes, not by force,
but by the birth of a child who came to life in a humble little stable,
behind an inn. 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, to share our suffering
and pain, to die for our sakes on the cross, and to be raised from the dead,
conquering sin and death. 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.[1]
Most importantly, Jesus was
encouraging John to cultivate an 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.
A few years ago, 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.
Ted 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, ten years ago, in the fall of
2006, we watched as an Amish community in West Nickel Mines, in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania grieved over and buried a group of their own children who
had been slaughtered in their one-room school house 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, a strength that helped them deal 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 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, would that we can have the right kind of
eyesight, as we move further into God’s future.
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, forgiveness, and compassion the Kingdom of God grows a
little larger and is that much closer
to being fulfilled.
So-- in the meantime, let us look
toward the light that shines in the darkness--
the light that darkness does not overcome.
Come, Lord Jesus!
Rev. Fran Hayes,
Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
December 11, 2016
