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Sermon for Advent 3A  December 16, 2001

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

There is something plaintive in this question of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel lesson; there is a hesitancy, almost a sadness, in the way John questions whether he was right about Jesus, questions whether he understood God’s promises correctly, perhaps even questions whether God’s promises can really be trusted. In the Gospel story John has to face the disappointment of his expectations, and he must learn to understand anew the good thing that God is doing.

It’s not hard for us to understand the source of John’s question. Things with Jesus are not turning out quite the way John had expected. You remember from our Gospel lesson last week the things John predicted about the Messiah who was to come: “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. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” “The Messiah will lay the ax to the roots of the trees,” John promised, “and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

John clearly expected the Messiah to be a military leader, one who would rally the righteous of Jerusalem and Judea and lead them in battle against the forces of evil and wickedness. The first enemy to be overthrown in that battle would be the Romans. Some commentators say that John’s symbolism of the ax laid at the root of the trees is a direct confrontation to Rome: the symbol of Roman power was the fasces, an ax with a bundle of rods or branches tied around it; by mentioning an ax that would cut down the trees, John was actively threatening that the power of Rome would be cut off by the greater power of the Messiah to come.

And John’s expectations of the Messiah went far beyond the military and the political: John expected that the Messiah would start the great War between the Children of Darkness and the Children of Light, the cosmic War that would bring God’s judgment on the wicked and God’s vindication to the righteous. That’s what’s behind all of John’s talk of the Messiah having his winnowing fork in his hand, and clearing off his threshing floor, and gathering in the wheat, and burning the chaff with everlasting fire: those are all images of the destruction and renewal that will come out of the Messiah’s supernatural war of good versus evil.

John clearly expected the Messiah to be a local and global and cosmic power figure. That's the expectation with which John greeted Jesus when he came for baptism, when the heavens opened up and the divine voice proclaimed Jesus Son and Beloved and Chosen. And John probably expected that he and his baptized penitents would be in the forefront of the Messiah’s righteous army when the time for battle came.

But things have not turned out that way at all. Instead of calling people to repent and prepare for judgment, John has now been imprisoned: he criticized the immorality of Herod's marriage, and now he is languishing in a dungeon somewhere, unable to preach and proclaim and prepare the way of the Lord as he was called to do.

Even worse, from John's point of view, even more puzzling, is the way Jesus has been behaving. Instead of bringing judgment and destruction, Jesus has been preaching forgiveness and reconciliation. Instead of driving out the Romans and proclaiming the kingdom of Israel, Jesus has been driving out demons and proclaiming the kingdom of heaven. Instead of starting the cosmic War to end all corruption, Jesus has been teaching the blessing of Peace that will raise people up to be children of God. Jesus has not been behaving at all as John had expected—and that's gotten John worried. What if he’s been wrong all along about this whole Jesus thing? So John sends disciples to Jesus with one desperate question:

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

And Jesus replies, “Tell John what’s happening here: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf here, the dead live, the poor receive good news. Let John make up his own mind if this is the work of the Messiah.”

Jesus is quoting here from Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah—prophecies that we read in our first lesson today. They’re a different set of messianic prophecies than the ones John has been thinking of, the ones that have shaped John’s expectations; but they are every bit as much prophecies of the Messiah. Even though it’s not what John expected, what Jesus has been doing has got “Messiah” written all over it. Jesus’ work of love rather than judgment, peace rather than war, resurrection rather than destruction, is a fulfillment of God’s promise even more than what John had been expecting. So what Jesus challenges John to do is to look beyond his previous expectations, and recognize what God is really doing in the things that Jesus does.

And that is the part of the story, I think, that really comes home to us. How often in our spiritual lives, how often in our faith walks, have we been like John: waiting, hoping, working for the coming of God’s promise, for the advent of God’s blessing, thinking we knew exactly what should happen and exactly what to expect—and yet when God’s grace does come to us, it comes in a different form, it comes with a surprising twist, it comes in a way very different from what we had expected. How often do we find ourselves asking, “Is this the promise that was to come, or are we to wait for another?” Then for us, as for John in the story, the challenge is to look beyond our previous expectations, to look beyond everything we thought we were waiting for, and to recognize what God is really doing in our lives.

And the good news is that when we can look beyond our expectations, we will see that God is doing something in us greater than we could ask or imagine, that God is helping our blindness to see, our lameness to walk, our deafness to hear, our corruption to be cleansed, our deadness to live again.

Once I heard a bishop from another diocese tell a story to a group of lay people and clergy about how he had come to be elected as their bishop. He said that, before he’d been elected to that diocese, he’d been in the running to be bishop of another diocese. He had been absolutely convinced that he was the right person to be bishop of that other diocese. He had the skills, he had the passion, he had the vision, to be their episcopal leader—and he was sure that it was God’s will for him to be elected as their bishop. But when the election came, that other diocese chose someone else. At first, he said, he was crushed. He was disappointed; he was angry; all his work and waiting, all his prayer and promise, all his expectations had come to nothing; and he was sure that somebody—the other candidates for bishop, the electors of the diocese, maybe even God—somebody had made a mistake. When he was asked if he would allow his name to be put in for election to his present diocese, he said he wasn’t sure he really wanted to—after all, his expectations had already been disappointed once. But after thought and prayer he allowed his name to go in—and he was elected. As he was addressing this group of clergy and laity in his new diocese, he said, “If I had been elected to that other diocese, I never would have come here”—and he paused just a moment, and then he went on— “and I never would have realized that this is where God wanted me to be all along. I never would have known the great things that God is doing among us. I never would have known the hope and the promise I have come to know with you.” That bishop had been challenged to look beyond his initial expectations—and when he did, he was able to recognize what God was really doing with him and in him and for him in his life.

Advent is our season of looking forward to the coming of God’s grace among us. Our Gospel today is a reminder that God’s grace doesn’t always come in the way that we would expect. God’s invitation to us today is to open our eyes, open our hearts, open our spirits, to look beyond our expectations and to see God’s grace in all the ways it comes—in Christ’s birth at Christmas, in Christ’s ministry in our present lives, in Christ’s helping our blindness to see and our deafness to hear and our lameness to leap with joy, in Christ’s promise of fulfillment in the world that is to come. That is the good news of Christ’s Advent for us here today.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.