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“Are You The One?”

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Matthew 11:2-15
given December 16, 2007

Sharon Montgomery will receive one more pay check, and that’s it. For the past few years she has been living her dream, working for a new and dynamic company with a promising future. She has been with them since day one, and has hired nearly every one of their 85 employees. She believed in the company and the people in charge, and that's why she never moaned about the long workdays. She said her co-workers have been more like family than simply fellow employees, and that’s why it is killing her to have to pink slip them. Every Friday for the past ten weeks, she has had to call them into her office one-by-one and hand them their final paychecks. Last week she even had to fire herself. She has begun a job search, but with the dip in the economy, her prospects appear dim. She says her future, like her company, is going up in smoke.

Life does not always turn out as we expect. Sometimes, the future we plan for and work for and hope for comes crashing down around us. We become frustrated and depressed; perhaps angry and despairing. It surely must have been that way for John the Baptist when he was dragged away to prison.

Events had started out very differently for John. Many saw him as a prophet and scores of people had responded to his hellfire preaching. They came in waves to his back country pulpit where he scrubbed them clean with a watery baptism when they pledged to stop heading down the wrong path and start marching in a new direction. John sounded the alarm; he alerted everyone that he was setting the stage for the Messiah who would show up at any moment. Then, without warning it happened. As John was exhorting a crowd to take the plunge and begin a new life, Jesus was suddenly in his face. John was prepared to dunk all the sinners who stumbled forward, but when Jesus stood before him, he balked. “No way!” John protested, “I need to be baptized by you.” But Jesus insisted, so John relented.

From that day on, Jesus began to rise in importance. He gathered followers around him like a great mother hen and then pried open their eyes so they could see God in a new light. He stood in solidarity with the outcasts, he trumpeted the cause of the poor, he popped open the ears of those who had become deaf to God’s voice, he transformed the lame into runners and he brought healing and wholeness to those who were hurting. A new movement began to gain traction.

However, the success of Jesus was not a signal for John to file away his sermons and close the door on his own ministry. John continued to attract followers and never hesitated to speak out in brash and defiant terms. But eventually, his fiery oratory and acerbic criticism landed him in a hot spot. Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, became enamored with his brother’s wife. Obsessed with having her for himself, he ditched his own wife, lured his sister-in-law away from his brother, and then married her. John the Baptist rebuked Herod publicly for his immoral deed. Everyone knew that John was right on target, but no one else would have publicly scolded the ruler of Galilee. Herod was raging, so he ordered John arrested and thrown into prison in the mountains near the Dead Sea.

Being locked away in that dank cell would have been a grueling ordeal for anyone, but can you imagine its impact on a man who was not even accustomed to being indoors? For someone who was at home in the wide open spaces of the desert, confinement in a jail must have been suffocating. Yet being an extremely devout individual, he surely relied on his indomitable faith to sustain him. And since the exodus from Egypt was the paramount story of the Hebrew people, it’s not hard to imagine John equating his plight with Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Israelites. That basic paradigm of the Hebrew people would have buoyed his hope that God would liberate him from bondage. It is not difficult to picture John appealing to God for a miraculous intervention that would separate the bars of his cell like the waters of the Red Sea.

I would think that in the early days of his imprisonment he would have been confident that his present dilemma was merely a temporary setback. I can picture him composing sermons that he intended to preach immediately upon release. His first sermon would focus on how life seems darkest, immediately prior to the dawning of the light. Next, he would expound on the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity.

I can imagine John pacing his cell, not as a caged lion, but as a mighty orator delivering powerful sermons of hope. I can see him saying, “The hated Romans will not dominate our lives much longer. The corrupt Herods of this world are about to be toppled. Their time is short, because the Messiah has come into the world to set things right. I prepared the way for him, baptized him in the Jordan River, and soon, very soon, he will usher in God’s kingdom.”

I imagine John preaching those sermons over and over; tweaking them until he had them exactly as he wanted. And then, preaching them again. And again. And the weeks wore on, and the strength of his voice began to weaken and the conviction of his soul began to waver. And as he was waiting and waiting for something to happen, doubts began to seep into his mind.

He must have struggled mightily. “Haven’t I been faithful to God in my preaching and teaching? Haven’t I lived a righteous life? Then why am I still in prison? And why is that adulterer Herod still reveling in power? And where is Jesus anyway, and why isn’t he acting like the Messiah? Jesus, are you the One, or are we to wait for another?”

Have you ever found yourself losing hope and wondering why life can be filled with so much suffering?

The clock radio goes off early in the morning. We are awakened by the voice of a journalist reporting from Baghdad. Another suicide bombing kills dozens of innocent people. We climb out of bed and wonder to ourselves: Jesus, are you the one, or are we to wait for another?

The news broadcast continues as we shower and get dressed. When we head into the kitchen to grab a bite of breakfast, a reporter with the BBC is relaying a story about a tanker spilling ten tons of oil into the ocean. As we pour our cup of coffee we ponder all the pollution of our planet. Jesus, are you the one, or are we to wait for another?

We pick up the newspaper and skim the first few pages. A 19 year-old fires 30 rounds in a mall in Omaha, killing eight people before turning the gun on himself. Scores of major league baseball players accomplished their feats thanks to illegal drugs. The Israelis are sabotaging the peace process by building settlements on disputed land in East Jerusalem. There is another murder in Philadelphia and a friend’s name shows up in the obituaries. With all of that news floating in the back of our mind, the telephone rings. A friend has just received the worst news from a pathology report. Again, we wonder: Jesus, are you the one, or are we to wait for another?

Jesus is the one all right, but do we, like John the Baptist, misunderstand what it means that Jesus came to usher in God's kingdom? John thought it meant the end of evil during his lifetime. Remember his sermon predicting that the Messiah was on his way and would clean house, so you had better get your life in order? Anticipating the Messiah’s arrival, John said, “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.”

Peering out between the bars of his cell, John was yearning to hear that Jesus was slamming the unjust and liberating the faithful. That would be a sure sign that his imprisonment would be short-lived. So he was understandably perplexed when he received reports about Jesus’ ministry and there was no news about Jesus raking in the righteous and shoveling out the sinners. A question was rambling around in John’s head; a question he did not want to face.

I suspect some of us have had that same question meandering in our minds at some point and we have also been reluctant to face it. The question is: “Jesus, was I wrong about you?”

There is a great temptation for all of us to expect Christ to act according to our desires. We expect him to get us out of a mess we’re in or to cure our health or to repair our marriage or to boost our financial situation or to straighten out our kids; or perhaps more nobly, to rid the world of hunger or to cure terminal diseases or to stop wars.

One of the hard truths about life is that Christ does not always act according to our expectations. John the Baptist did not see Jesus doing what he expected the Messiah to do, so he sent his followers to ask Jesus: “Are you the long-expected One?” And Jesus responded by saying: “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.” (Matt 11:5&6) In other words, blessed is anyone who does not get tripped up on the kind of Messiah I am.

Many first century Jews expected the Messiah to overthrow the Roman authorities and to become the new earthly king. They expected him to wield his power to set the world right, by ruling with justice and mercy. But Jesus turned out to be a different kind of Messiah. He ended up dying on a cross. To some, that equated to total failure.

But to those who believe, it was the revelation of a different kind of power - the power of suffering love. It turns out that God’s power is not the coercive power of a master chess player who moves the pieces around the board, but the persuasive power of one who loves us in our freedom and urges us to live a Christ-like existence.

God seeks to establish a world of peace and justice where people live in harmony with one another, but people of faith often become confused about what that means. Some imagine that God is going to accomplish this unilaterally, but since we are free beings with wills of our own, the establishment of God’s kingdom will not be realized until we forge a partnership with God and work with God to make it a reality.

Traditionally, advent has been defined as a season of waiting. We are told to wait patiently for God to set the world right. We are to wait for God to bring an end to violence. We are to wait for God to establish justice. We are to wait for God to permeate our planet with peace. But, when I pray for the patience to wait for God, I never feel peaceful; I always feel troubled. It’s as if I get a nudge. A thought appears in my mind and I wonder if it could it be a whisper from God? I imagine God saying, “You’re waiting for me to set the world right? I’m waiting for you to do your part.”

We ask Christ, “Are you the one?” And he comes back at us: “Are you the one? Are you the one I can count on to be my hands and feet in the world?”

And let’s call it like it is. It’s a tough assignment. When you spread compassion, when you strive for justice, when you work for peace, not everyone is happy about it. There are many forces that resist the spreading of God’s kingdom in the world. They go by the names of selfishness, greed, jealousy and lust for power. But Christ calls on us to possess a courageous faith, an adventurous faith, and a determined faith that is focused on spreading love and justice and peace. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

A few years ago, a former Secretary of State spoke at Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. She explained how people of faith wait for the coming of God’s kingdom. She said that some believe that there is nothing they can do about it, and so they wait very passively for something to happen from the outside. But others possess the kind of faith that will fight for justice and truth even when they are defeated and beaten back a hundred times. This kind of faith sends forth seeds out of which change and progress may one day grow. The difference is between waiting for lilies to appear that have never been planted, and doing your utmost to help good seeds find the right type of soil.1

Life can be a struggle and it does not always turn out as we plan, but we must never give up believing that God seeks to lead us to a better world. Our hope is in God’s wisdom and the bright future God envisions. God seeks to lead us to world of peace where justice will roll like a river; and God will not give up urging us in that direction until that day becomes a reality. Christ is the one who shows us the way. We are to live as he lived by loving as he loved.

NOTES

1. John Buchanan, sharing the words of Madeline Albright in “The Peace of God,” preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, on December 9, 2001.

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