Third Advent
Matthew 11
John had been hearing about Jesus his whole life--even before his life began if you believe his mother Elizabeth's story. The story that recalled the time when Mary came to visit Elizabeth. Elizabeth was pregnant with John and when Mary came to the hill country to visit Elizabeth and Elizabeth realized that Mary was pregnant with Jesus the unborn John leaped in her womb till Elizabeth exclaimed to Mary blessed are you among women. John had been hearing about Jesus his whole life. John's father was the priest, Jesus father was only a carpenter, but Jesus had the instincts, Jesus was the smart one the one who could lecture the priests and rabbis in the temple when he was only 12.
John lived in Jesus shadow his whole life. Maybe that's partly why he turned from his childhood religious heritage that centered on the temple to a monastic existence in the wilderness.
And then there was that day when Jesus came over the hill. John had gathered the crowds with his ferocious message of radical repentance. He was waist deep in the waters of the Jordan river baptizing the old and the young, the rich and the poor. --there was that day when Jesus came up over the hill. "I can't baptize you" he'd said to Jesus. I've been hearing about how wonderful you are my whole life, why would you want me to baptize you? But Jesus insisted. For whatever reason, Jesus wanted John to baptize him.
It was an amazing day--the heaven's opened up, a voice from heaven was heard and a dove came and rested on Jesus shoulder. For once in his life John was rendered speechless. This Jesus was the real deal, he really was! John might have attracted the crowds with his hell fire and brimstone messages but the heavens had never opened up on him.
So as John says, "He must increase; I must decrease."
And that's how it was for a few months; till loud mouthed John got himself into real hot water by criticizing King Herod's marriage to his brother's wife. A lot of people felt the same way but nobody but John had the guts, or stupidity to say anything. Herod wasn't pleased Now it was prison food and isolation.
And in that isolation his mind was working, churning, thinking all the time. Did I really see what I saw at the baptism? Does he really think he can combat the outlandish evil of Herod and his ilk with that namby pamby message of healing and hope? It's not that John didn't believe but day after day went by in that sweltering box of a prison cell and he wondered, if Jesus really was the messiah, when was he going to make his move? When were the powers of death and destruction to be overturned? When would those purveyors of hatred and hostility get what they deserved?
And so John gets word out to his disciples, "Go and ask, Are you the one who is to come -------or should we look for another?
John is not so different than we are. Sure when things are going blithely along and life is, if not perfect, at least okay; then we can entertain this Jesus as the Messiah, as the longed for, hoped for incarnation of God. Then we can believe. But when it's all gone sour--when it clearly appears that evil and hostility have the upper hand and that we are helpless victims to powers and forces over which we have no control then we wonder what kind of Messiah is this Jesus.
Is he the one who is to come----or should we look for another?
Like John maybe we should grow up and grow away from the childhood fantasy that Jesus is anything other than a sweet bedtime story. Maybe Jesus isn't realistic enough or tough enough to take on the really big stuff like dictators and addictions and cancer and torture and death. Maybe Jesus message, his philosophy, his life style is just too wussy for the tough world we live in.
Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?
Jesus answers them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see, 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 preached to them. Go and tell John.
On Thursday morning WELCA officers and I sat down to talk about distributing the money raised from the rummage sale and the boutique this year and with this text in mind I couldn't help thinking that these activities are just the thing that John needed to hear.
Go and tell John that a woman in Uganda will be receiving a good breeding goat. Go and tell John that a child on the west side of Chicago will fall asleep tonight after he hears his mother read him a bed time story even though his mother is incarcerated at the Decatur correctional facility, Go and tell John that two children will sleep in a tent and be scared by a hoot owl this summer because they got a camp scholarship, and that a little Christian boy and a little Muslim boy will work on a math problem together at a Christian school in Palestine and that a mom will go to work worry free tomorrow because she knows her four year old is safe and happy at Lutheran Day Nursery.
And then there's so many other indications that the Messiah is real and that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Go and tell John that 30 homeless folk got three meals and a place to sleep last night and that Carla, a single mom with two kids whose paycheck from the first of the month was all used up picked up two sacks of groceries down on Water Street in Waukegan.
John might not have heard there was a big fire in the LaSalle building in Chicago on XXXX. It was a scary thing. One man said he thought to himself "this is how it will end.' But then a firefighter found him and gave him his oxygen mask. The both breathed in smoke and were hospitalized but go and tell John they'll be okay.
How easy it is to get discouraged. Sometimes from where we sit things can look unbelievably bleak. We might even wonder "Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?"
There are a lot of folks like John out there, who are discouraged and disheartened. People who wonder if Jesus presence in our world means anything or not. Did it matter that God entered our world, that God came to us in the child of Bethlehem. There's a lot of people out there who are doubting and for whom hope is illusive. They can keep going,--- they can keep the faith,--- they can imagine a brighter future even if it is not there for them but somebody needs to tell them what they hear and see. Somebody has to see that God is at work. Maybe it's not the in the headlines or on the front page, that's what makes it difficult to see some times but God is most assuredly at work.
Sometimes I think we feel that what we do is pretty meaningless, insignificant in the whole scheme of the need and want, fear and hurt that pervades the world. A goat after all may mean something to one poor woman in Uganda but it won't go far with the whole issue of poverty and hunger. I think some times we think we need to do God's job in taking care of everyone and everything and fixing all the problems of the planet. If that's what we think we're called to do then yes of course we're going to be dismal failures because it is certainly not in our power to fix it all alone
No I think we are called rather to be purveyors of hope. We're the ones to whom Jesus says, "Go and tell John". Nothing got fixed for John, he himself did not leave that prison cell alive but what he needed to know to go on was that there was a power greater than his, a power that had overshadowed him his whole life and that power was afoot in the world. The power of health and peace and compassion and love was loose. The power of Christ was on the move and nothing would ever be the same again.
Somebody's got to go tell John what they see and hear!!! Could that be you?
A thank you to the Thursday Bible Study for Ideas and Illustrations
Amen