Written and Delivered by The Rev. Canon Paul S. Nancarrow, PhD

"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 Gospels for the second and third Sundays of Advent we always focus on John the Baptist. In the Gospel story for today, John has to face the disappointment of his expectations, and he must learn to understand anew the good thing that God is really 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."

It's pretty clear that John expected the Messiah to be a military leader, one who would rally the people of Jerusalem and Judea and lead them in battle against the Roman occupiers. Some commentators see that military expectation in John's symbolism of the ax laid at the root of the tree: the symbol of Roman authority was the fasces, an ax with a bundle of rods tied around it, which was carried in procession ahead of Roman leaders. By saying an ax would cut down the trees, John was in effect saying that the Messiah's ax would be more powerful than the Romans' ax, that the power of Rome would be cut off by the greater military might of the Messiah. The ax at the root of the trees is to be taken as a direct military threat against Rome.

But John's expectations of the Messiah went far beyond the military: John expected that the Messiah would bring the apocalypse. John expected that the Messiah's war against Rome would be the trigger for 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 end-times war of good versus evil.

John clearly expected the Messiah to be a local and global and cosmic power figure. And John thought that Jesus was going to be that kind of Messiah, and that he, John, would be at Jesus' side when the battle began.

But things have not turned out that way at all. Instead of calling people to rally 'round the Messiah, John has now been imprisoned: Herod has thrown him into dungeon to shut him up, and his 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 Jerusalem, Jesus has been driving out demons and proclaiming the kingdom of heaven. Instead of starting the cosmic War to destroy all evil, 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? What if Jesus is not after all the Messiah? 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 hear, the dead live, the poor receive good news. Tell John what's happening; and then let John make up his own mind whether this is the work of the Messiah."

Jesus is quoting here from Isaiah's prophecies about the Messiah--prophecies that we heard in our first reading today. They're a different set of messianic prophecies from 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 just as much, maybe 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 has the take-home value for 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, the advent of God's blessing, thinking we knew exactly what should happen and exactly what to expect--and yet, when it comes to it, we wonder if this really is what God intended, we have a hard time recognizing God's grace, 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, to look beyond our disappointment and our fear when things aren't the way we'd thought they'd be--then for us the challenge is 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 what God is really doing with us is greater than we had expected: 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.

When I was serving in Tennessee, I once heard the bishop (now retired) tell a group of lay people and clergy tell the story of how he had come to be elected as their bishop. He said that, before he'd been elected to Tennessee, 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 there. 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 Tennessee, 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 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 been part of the great things that God is doing among us. I never would have experienced the hope and the promise I have come to experience with you." That bishop had been challenged to look beyond his initial expectations, and the disappointment of those expectations--and when he did, he was able to recognize what God was really doing with him and in him and through him for the common good.

Advent is our season of looking forward to the coming of Christ's presence among us. Our Gospel today is a reminder that Christ's Presence doesn't always come in the way that we would expect. The Gospel's invitation to us today is to open our eyes, open our hearts, open our spirits, so that we can look beyond our expectations and see Christ's Presence in all the ways it comes. The Gospel's promise to us today is that Christ's Presence will indeed help our blindness to see and our deafness to hear and our lameness to leap with joy. Let it be our prayer today that we may know Christ's Presence in that way, and share Christ's Presence with all the world around us. Amen.