Matthew 11:2-11
“Are
you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What an odd
question to come from John, isn’t it? I mean, just last week we heard him
declare, “…one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy
to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire…” He
was talking about Jesus, and I suppose it was easy to proclaim Jesus as that
one with “His winnowing fork in his hand…clearing his threshing floor…burning
the chaff with unquenchable fire,” when you’ve got all the people coming out to
hear you, when you’re on a roll, when you are full of spit and vinegar. But
John’s not out in the Jordan now; he doesn’t have throngs of followers lining
up to be dunked in the water for repentance. No, John’s in prison, placed there
because he spoke out too loudly in criticism of Herod Antipas, one of the
Tetrarch’s of Judea, and the way he unlawfully married the wife of his own
brother. John isn’t a wild holy man on the outskirts of town anymore—he’s a
political prisoner, sitting in a cell, awaiting his trial.
You
see, prison in the Roman empire of the first century wasn’t exactly what you
and I think of as prison. It was more of a holding place, a place where
criminals were to await their trial, and at their trial they would receive one
of three likely sentences: acquittal, exile, or execution. One didn’t spend a
lengthy amount of time in prison, and John knew his time was drawing to an
end—an end he likely assumed wouldn’t come until the Messiah came into his own,
when he would start all that fiery baptizing and winnowing John had been
preaching about in the Jordan just a few weeks prior. So maybe it isn’t such an odd question for
John to ask after all: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?” John had a lot riding on Jesus being “the one who
is to come.” I suppose we all have a lot riding on Jesus being who John said he
was.
I
think John is just expressing the sort of doubts we all have from time to time,
right? I mean, if you just flip a few pages back in Matthew’s gospel, to the
Sermon on the Mount, you’ll hear Jesus say in chapter seven, verse seven, “Ask,
and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be
opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches
finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Now here’s the
thing: I’ve asked….I’ve searched…I’ve knocked—sometimes until my knuckles
bled—and I didn’t receive what I asked for and I didn’t find what was I was
searching for and the door stayed pretty closed in front of me. So, I get why
John might ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?”
I have to say,
too, that this time of year can raise up more than one or two opportunities to
ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” After all, what
does it mean to sing hymns to the Prince of Peace, while people are so eager to
raise the rally cry to war, so ready to create conflict, so determined to be
divided in our world, in our nation, in our homes? If Jesus was the
long-awaited Prince of Peace, did he forget it sitting on the counter when he
left heaven? “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
This is the third
Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, a Sunday when we sing “Joy to the World,
the Lord has come…” But those words may sound almost cruel to those who’ve
experienced no joy this past year, this past decade, maybe ever. To those
who’ve been told that Christ was their savior, their deliverer, yet they’re
still drowning in the same darkness, still overcome by the same weight of this
world, still wrestling with their addictions, fears, instabilities, and
anxieties, I can see where they might gaze through the prison bars of their own
minds and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?”
I mean, what do
you do when Jesus just doesn’t live up to your expectations? What do you do
when you’re pretty sure you’ve done everything right, you’ve checked all the
right boxes, prayed all the right prayers, believed all the right things, but
still things aren’t the way you want them, but still you’re stuck in a rut,
still you’re falling behind, still you don’t know what to do, still you wind up
in prison waiting to hear the sentence of execution come down. What do you do?
What do you do when this faith, this Jesus you’ve been following, just doesn’t
seem to be holding up his end of the bargain, when God doesn’t seem to be
showing up to fix all the things wrong with the world, all that’s wrong with
“those people,” all that’s wrong with you? No, I get it. I get why John would
send word and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?” Jesus just wasn’t living up to the image in John’s
head, to the expectations John had of the Messiah. And maybe that’s where so
many of our failures begin, where so much of our fear and anxiety finds its
roots—in our expectations.
My
roommate had expectations the night he decided to he’d try to show off in his
jeep to one of our friends and three other girls. I suppose he expected that his Jeep
could go anywhere, and that the wet, red mud of a development off of Lakeshore
Drive would be no match for his driving skills and his Jeep’s all-terrain
tires. But after he buried it up to the axles, he called me, asking if I could
our friend John’s four-wheel-drive Bronco and come pull him out. I suppose he expected we’d just show
up, drive down into the mud, throw a strap around his bumper and ever-so-easily
pull him out of his self-inflicted hole. However, when we arrived, we found him
stuck over a hundred yards from anything John was willing to drive his Bronco
over, so we trudged down to where the Jeep was stuck, and I decided our best
course of action was to dig it out. There were eight of us in all, so I figured
we could dig it out in about an hour. Well, after ten minutes I noticed I
hadn’t heard anyone else digging, and as I turned around, I found fourteen
eyeballs just watching me. So, with my shirt soaked in near-freezing sweat, my
pants caked with mud and clay, I stood up, threw the scrap board I had been
digging with in the nearby woods, and declared I was done helping and anyone
who could fit in the Bronco was free to ride back to campus with me. See, he expected
that I would show up, and with my South Alabama, Redneck, Mechanic voodoo
powers, I’d liberate his Jeep and save him the potential charges (financial and
criminal—since he was technically trespassing).
I
think John had similar expectations about Jesus…I think we have similar
expectations about Jesus. Maybe John thought Jesus was just going to show up
and start all this fiery baptizing, all this winnowing of those unfit for the
kingdom, that Jesus would just show up, snap his messianic fingers and set
things right. Maybe we think Jesus will just come into our lives and make
everything better, that Christmas will come, and all will be set right. Maybe
we’re looking out for a Jesus who is coming to fulfill our expectations, but
what we have is a Jesus who shows up to call us into action. Maybe the
catch in John’s question isn’t his doubt, but his verbs: “Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?” Should we be waiting in the first
place? I mean, think about Jesus’ response to those from John: "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 brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me."
Jesus doesn’t tell
them to tell John what Jesus has said; rather he says, “Tell John what you hear and see…what
you have experienced.” In other words, when John wants to know if
Jesus in the “the one we’ve been waiting for…” Jesus says, “You tell him what you
think!” I mean, Jesus almost sounds impatient in his reply as he turns to the
crowd: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed
shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft
robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you
go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the
one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who
will prepare your way before you.' Truly I tell you, among those born of women
no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom
of heaven is greater than he.”
Here’s
the thing: this whole Jesus thing, this whole Advent thing, this whole Kingdom
of God, is not something that just shows up like a train running on some sort
of cosmic schedule. It’s not some sort of production with a sharp start time.
Jesus asks, “What did you expect to see in John? Someone who was going to do it
all for you? John was just the beginning! The first one, the one who would have
to figure the rest of this out, same as you, doubts and all!”
That’s
why I think John’s question is a fine one: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?” Well, Jesus, are you? And Jesus says, “I’m not the one who is to come,
the one you’ve been waiting on…I’m the one who is here,
calling you to be a part of this now!” To paraphrase theologian John Caputo, the
kingdom of God doesn’t exist it insists. God isn’t a static being like the moon—there
whether we believe in it or not. No, God is calling us to take part in this
in-breaking kingdom, to be the response to the call of Advent, to be like those
messengers from John, reporting to those who ask “Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?” everything we’ve heard and seen ourselves. The
advent of the kingdom of God in Christ isn’t just an event we secure tickets
to, it isn’t something that we passively take part in, letting it arrive like
some date on the calendar. It is the reality Jesus is calling us to create here
and now.
When
someone asks of Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to wait for another?” we respond by showing them the ways Jesus is
the One who has come, that Christ is so much more than they expect, that the
kingdom of God is here—Emmanuel—God is with us. That doesn’t mean we’ll go
around handing our halos, white robes, and harps. That’s not what the kingdom
looks like. The advent of God’s kingdom began in Christ and continues with
those of us who are called by his name as we seek to make it a present reality.
We do that as we love one another, as we feed those who are hungry, as we care
for those whom no one else cares about, as we stand up for justice for the
oppressed, as we practice peace, as we carry our own portion of the light of
hope and joy to those who are in darkness.
This
Advent/Christmas season, while so many of us will be singing carols and hymns
of praise and joy to and about Jesus, there will be others who are asking “[Jesus,]
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” How will we respond? How will we answer the
insistent call of the Kingdom of God to make it real here and now? In the
coming year, how will we bring the Kingdom to those who have doubt enough to
still ask the questions, how will we bring the kingdom to those who still have
faith enough to look for the questions, how will you answer when they ask of
Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Amen.
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