“IS THAT ALL THERE IS?”
Matthew 11:1-11
(12-16-07) Advent 3

When you think of John the Baptist what usually comes to your mind?
For me it’s the image of the voice calling in the wilderness,
wearing a coat of camel’s hair, eating locusts and honey.
When I think of John I think of the fiery orator, preaching repentance.
I recall the vigor with which he chastised the Pharisees and Sadducees,
daring to call them a brood of vipers.
I remember the words he spoke, that while he baptized with water,
the one who would come after him would baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist recalls for me images of Jesus
coming to the Jordan and being baptized by John,
despite John’s clear understanding that he ought to be the one being baptized by Jesus.

The image of John I don’t often have is one which our text this morning portrays.
John is no longer in the wilderness preaching repentance.
No, he is in jail, locked up, finding it hard to maintain his passion and his hope.
He had been there in the beginning when Jesus came to be baptized
and he knew, he was sure he knew,
that this was the one who he was speaking of,
the one to come whose sandals he was unworthy to carry.
But now, after a few months, there didn’t seem to be much change.
If Jesus was the Messiah, why was John still languishing in jail?
Why wasn’t Jesus overthrowing the Roman’s
and getting rid of the hypocrites in the ranks of the Pharisees
and other religious leaders of the people?
And so John sent his disciples to ask of Jesus,
“Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?”

Now this is not what I expected to be hearing from the mouth of the Baptizer!
Are you the one or are we supposed to wait for another?
I’m thinking, John, do you not remember when Jesus came to the Jordan?
Did you forget what you so clearly understood only a short time ago?
What do you mean, are you the one or are we supposed to wait for another?
What kind of question is that?

But it’s a question we are all too familiar with, aren’t we?
Advent is a season of expectation and hope
but in many ways our expectation and our hope
is not confined only to this time of the year.
Our faith is rooted in our hope and let’s face it,
all of us have expectations of God, of Jesus.
Perhaps its not the most appropriate time of the year
to be addressing issues of doubt and hesitation,
with Christmas and all just around the corner,
but that’s where our text takes us
and it takes us to John in prison, struggling with doubt,
because precisely at times like this,
many of us do struggle to make sense of it all,
make sense of what we believe and why.

Maybe you know what I’m speaking of.
Maybe we recognize a confinement of a similar sort in our own lives,
not a cell marked by iron bars or prison locks,
but an occasional feeling that we are trapped by a sense of meaninglessness,
of loneliness, of being cut off from everything that seems alive,
of an inability to truly live in the midst of all the living that is going on around us.
These cells of solitary confinement
are felt occasionally in every life in one form or another.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the profound observation
that sin loves to have us to itself,
to keep this oppressive sense of inability to be what we ought to be
secret and hidden from anybody other than ourselves.
Sin loves to insist that nobody else could ever understand
those deep inner, hidden parts of our lives where doubts and questions
concerning the possibility of ever ridding ourselves of an unwanted past
trouble our very soul;
where things of which we are deeply ashamed fester within us
until they create a sickness that borders on, or, in fact is,
a living death, a miserable cell of solitary confinement.

And I know this,
suffering, our personal suffering, or the suffering of the world,
does not stop for the holidays.
Hunger does not take a break just because its Christmas.
And if anything, the situation of the homeless is even worse
when the weather turns cold and nasty.
Contrary to the words of the carol,
tidings of comfort and joy don’t always make the rounds at Christmas.
No more than a casual reading of the newspapers or watching of TV
conjures up all sorts of questions about where God might be
while the world continues to descend into misery and despair.
Where is God in the midst of the refugees, the oppressed, the homeless,
the orphans, the lonely, the victims of war?
If God is who he says he is, and as we want him to be, for that matter,
why doesn’t he do something?
Maybe we’ve got a loved one who is sick or suffering.
Maybe we’ve been struggling with a relationship,
maybe we’ve got a problem with debt, with an addiction,
with an oppression of some sort or another.
Maybe we’ve been praying for weeks, for months, for years,
laying out our expectations, holding on to our hope.
And still, things don’t seem to get any better.
And maybe we’re at the point when we think in our heart,
even if we aren’t ready to voice it publicly,
is that all there is?
Jesus, are you the one, or should I wait for another?

Jesus has an answer for John and for us…well sort of.
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 the good news brought to them.
I get the feeling that its not quite the answer John was hoping for
and maybe not the one we are hoping for either.
Often our questions tell us a lot about the expectations we have, the hopes we hold. John’s question was rooted in his expectation
that the coming of the Messiah would usher in the kingdom of God.
After all when John was preparing the way, he quotes from Isaiah,
of an age where every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low,
a time when the uneven ground becomes level and the rough places a plain.
John expected Jesus to deliver the glory of the Lord, revealed to all people together.
John expected nothing less
than the kingdom of God to be revealed by the advent of the Messiah.

The questions we ask also tend to be rooted in our expectations of a physical change.
We want the sick to be healed, we want wars to cease, we want the hungry to be full,
the lonely to be befriended, the oppressed to be liberated.
We want Jesus to cure us,
we want Jesus to restore our fractured relationships,
we want Jesus to bring into our lives people who love us,
we want Jesus to grant us a sense of security in our lives.
The problem is that when the kind of changes we expect don’t happen,
we can end up in a place where expectation is replaced by a quiet resignation.
We move from too much expectation to no expectation at all.
Another Advent season, another Christmas, big deal.
Nothing ever changes anyway,
perhaps the best we can hope for is that Jesus will give us something to take the edge off, just a little analgesic for the pain.
Is that all there is?

And if it were, how infinitely sad it would be.
But the good news friends, is that its not.
The good news is that Jesus isn’t just about a physical change,
though of course he can be about that as well.
Go and tell what you hear and see.
And what do we hear and see?
What I hear and see on a daily basis are stories of people, stories of faith,
stories of hope which transcend merely the physical.
What I hear and see on a daily basis is the courage of someone facing an illness,
not knowing how it will turn out,
but trusting that whatever happens, they will be in God’s care.
What I hear and see is the hope of a parent who just won’t give up on a child
who is difficult, who doesn’t meet expectations.
What I hear and see on a daily basis are lives which have been reconnected to God
late in life, but not so late that they couldn’t affirm to whom they were going
as they faced their last days.
What I hear and see on a daily basis is a community of people
who are able to see through and beyond this world’s despair
and into the hope and promise of God’s reign
and who give so sacrificially of themselves for the sake of that reign.

What I hear and see are women and men who, through the gift of the Holy Spirit,
are unafraid to speak the truth,
who put themselves on the front lines in the battle against HIV/AIDS,
against abuse, against neglect, against oppression.
What I hear and see on a daily basis is the passion of the people
who make up the body of Christ, the church, here and throughout our world.

Is that all there is?
No, there’s more.
We may want Jesus to address our present needs,
but Jesus has a bigger life in mind.
Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?
Tell what you hear and see.
Tell the story of the one who came, not in power or by force,
but who came with a meekness strong enough to serve,
with a compassion deep enough to care,
with a love pure enough to die for us,
so that we would live with him in a bigger life.
Tell what you hear and see,
that God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Is Jesus the one who has come and who is to come again,
or will we wait for another?
Does Jesus meet our expectations
or do our expectations need to be revised to meet Jesus?
I know that some of us may think and wish
that Jesus could have been much clearer in his answer to John and to us.
But like he did for John, Jesus leaves it up to us to decide about him
based on what we have heard and seen.

What have we heard and seen?
Have we heard about the Son of God,
dying on the cross so that we might have life eternal with him?
Have we heard of the on whose death and resurrection
has the power to liberate us from the sin which too often confines and isolates us,
have we seen lives changed around us and in us,
from an overriding sense of meaninglessness and resignation,
to one of determined, sacrificial hope and compassionate love?
Have we seen the work and witness of the church,
the community of God’s people
working to faithfully live out the kingdom of God’s reign,
preaching, teaching, singing, serving, giving, loving?
Is Jesus the one who has come and who will come again,
or will we wait for another?
My friends, this Advent season, God invites us to let go of the expectations
which limit what God in Jesus Christ can truly be for us,
to finally stop following the Jesus of my expectations
and to follow the living Lord.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, sometimes we wonder what it would take for us to be convinced that you are the one who has come and who will come again. Sometimes not even one who rises from the dead is enough to convince us. God help us in our struggles of faith, walk with us through our times of doubt, love us still, even when we are unsure of our love for you. Move us ever so gently in our hearts by the leading of your Spirit, that more and more, day by day, our expectations and hopes line up with what we have heard and what we have seen, in our world, in the church, in those around us and even in us. Through your holy name we pray, Amen.