Series A                                                      Advent III          December 12, 2010                                                                          

Matthew 11:2-11

THE WAIT THAT TEACHES CONSISTENCY

Advent means “coming”.  You have heard that many times before.  When we know someone or something is coming, we wait and prepare.  When grandma and grandpa are the ones coming to our home to stay a few days, while we wait: we may also be preparing the bedroom where they will stay; we may give the house an extra special cleaning; we may take a trip to the grocery store to stock up for the meals we will serve them; and take the time to bake cookies or a pie or two.  It is what we do when we are waiting.  We prepare!  But when it comes to Advent, no one wants to wait any more because we don’t want to take the time to prepare.  People aren’t getting ready for Christmas, They are celebrating it already.  Even before Thanksgiving arrived, stores were already decked out with Christmas decorations, and playing Christmas music.  The world is not Christian, it cares nothing for God or Christ.  The world’s Christmas isn’t about what God did, it is about what I can get, how good sales will be.  It is not about waiting for God to come into our world, and become a part of our lives, it is about having fun, enjoying the season, doing what we want, when we want.  And that means we don’t want to wait for Christmas, we want it now.  The world will not take the time to prepare for the true meaning of this season, and that day, it wasn’t to enjoy it now.

Yes, Advent hymns are the pits, except for “O Come, O Come, Emanuel” and “Joy To The World”.  But we don’t yet sing the Christmas carols we love because it is not Christmas.  Advent is about waiting, anticipating, and preparing.  But for the world, it has become a season characterized by impatience, anxiety, and inconsiderate impulsivity.  All you have to do is be waiting outside the doors of any store as it opens on black Friday.  You can’t miss the pushing and the shoving, and the scramble to be the first in line.  That is what this world has made of Advent.  And the day after Christmas, everyone is tired of Christmas.  Trees appear on curbs, Christmas songs are no longer heard playing in stores or on radio.  But Christmas lasts 12 days, and Epiphany is still part of Christmas right up to March 8 of 2011.  Have you ever heard anyone singing Christmas Carols that long?

But we can’t let those attitudes loose in the church.  We can’t push the season and sing Christmas carols before it is Christmas.  For Advent is not about what we want.  Because when it is, that is when all the impatience, anxiety, and worry fill our days.  But that is out there.  For the church, for our faith, for our lives, this season is all about God and what he wants.  We heard it last week from John the Baptist who told us we must “repent … be baptized … and prepare the way of the Lord”.  And we are to do this because when the Messiah comes he will bring God’s judgment upon the earth.  Trees will be cut down with the ax.  Chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire.  We must prepare the way of the Lord.  Repent!  That is what God wants.

But John was like every one of us.  That is why John shows us the need for every one of us to use this time to prepare.  When we don’t, we can jump to conclusions that can lead us astray.  John was all about preparing and yet he, too, wasn’t fully prepared for the Christ who came from God.  For Jesus did not fit what John was prophesying to the people.  Jesus wasn’t baptizing the repentant with the Holy Spirit.  In fact Jesus baptized no one.  Jesus wasn‘t  wielding an ax or carrying a winnowing fork in his hands.  John heard of no unrepentant folk in Israel being destroyed, like King Herod who arrested him and put him in that prison, or the Pharisees who rejected his message.

John certainly had heard what Jesus was doing, or he would not have had to ask the question, “Are you the one?”  Miracles were not what John had prophesied.  Where was the vengeance, the punishment, the retribution John expected?  But Jesus came to do more than what was expected of him.  In fact God is always doing more than his faithful expect from Him.  Giving sight to the blind; the lame now walking, lepers now cleansed, the deaf now hearing, the dead now living; John proclaimed none of this.  But Isaiah did.  John only remembered the first part of Isaiah’s prophecy:

“He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.”

Jesus reminded him of the rest:

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Isaiah also made this same prophesy in the 29^th chapter as well.  But even here in Matthew Jesus tells John he is doing more: “the dead are raised”!  That wasn’t part of even Isaiah’s prophesy.  So Jesus’ response to John is not a rebuke.  Jesus’ intent is to tell John that he was right about the Messiah, but what John did not understand was that this Messiah had to fulfill another mission first, just as John’s ministry was meant to do, before the judgment that would bring vengeance and violent recompense would appear.  

God is always at work in ways we don’t understand, and John was no different than us.  When his expectations were not fulfilled, he just had to ask if Jesus was the one.   And there is always that fear that lurks just on the fringes of our thoughts that what we are expecting will not actually come.  John could not help but know, sitting in that prison, that his work was done.  And because of that all the confidence, certainty, and intensity of his fiery pronouncements has given way to doubt and discouragement.

One theologian, David Rhoads, suggests that Matthew displays all of Jesus’ antagonists as hypocrites.  A hypocrite is one whose inward motivations or dispositions don’t match their outward actions.  But when it comes to Jesus, his actions, his words, his motivations all match.  Those people, like John, who had doubts about him were only watching his actions, they were not taking into consideration his words, his teaching, his preaching.    Today’s Gospel begins by telling us that John’s question originated when he heard what Jesus was doing.  Jesus tells those John sent to share with John what they see and hear.  That is why we need worship!  We need to hear those words of our liturgy that we speak, and then allow them to create repentance and faith in our lives.  By doing so our words can direct our deeds to follow in the way Jesus expects of his disciples.

Both words and deeds need to jive.  There are those who do good deeds, but their words are disrespectful or slanderous.  Consider a child that washes the dishes and takes out the garbage for his parents, but talks back and complains all the while doing it.  And then there are people who speak good words, but whose deeds are mean and abusive.  Consider a spouse who says I love you while physically abusing his wife. Words and deeds must be considered together.  Can we say we are a Christian when we are not found on Sunday’s where Jesus has promised to be?

  John was sitting in prison, facing execution.  Jesus hadn’t done anything to rescue him.  But then Jesus also said that persecution, even death, would happen to his followers.  Like John, we also have to deal with tragedies and diseases, and problems that Jesus doesn’t rescue us from.   Like John, we, too, may question if Jesus is the one, when a beloved spouse dies, when a child gets seriously ill, when we lose our jobs, or our house burns down.  Why couldn’t an all powerful Messiah stop these things.

This is why we need Advent, to prepare ourselves, and through that preparation, to better understand and recognize the Messiah who will be born.  Our question can also be John’s question; “Are you the One?”   There is nothing wrong with asking the right question as long as we then weigh both the words and the deeds of the one who answers.  And then through our repentance and preparation, ensure that our words are consistent with our deeds and our motivations as well.

That’s what this gift of Christmas does for us.  For when we can see beyond just what he hear, and hear beyond what we can see, we find reconciliation and peace.  Jesus didn’t come just to save those who were perfect.  The lame, the blind, the lepers, the deaf, were far from perfect.  But Jesus came to them, as he comes to us.  What they once were, they are not now.  That is what repentance means — to change.  If we are ready for what Christmas brings, then we will recognize the love, the peace, the changes that others who have this gift now have.  And we will be changed into one who is even greater than John the Baptist.

AMEN