What Are You Looking For?
Advent 3A - December 15, 2013
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Jesus is not the Messiah John the Baptizer was looking for.
We see that in the message he sent his disciples to Jesus with in the gospel this morning. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John says.
The last time we saw John in Matthew’s gospel was back in chapter 3, just before Jesus comes to be baptized by him. There John the Baptizer “appears” in the wilderness, there to prepare the way of the one who is to come, the Lord. There he creates quite the spectacle, urging people to repent, calling the Pharisees and Sadducees out on their sin when they come to be baptized. He demands that the people bear fruit worthy of repentance, with the warning that those who don’t bear good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. “…one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” he says, with a winnowing fork in his hand, ready to separate the wheat from the chaff, burning the chaff with an unquenchable fire.
This is the kind of messiah John the Baptizer was looking for – one who would come in power and might to usher in God’s kingdom. But read on from chapter three, and that’s not what we see Jesus doing. Not the way John expected. No, after he is baptized and led out into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus begins his ministry, calling people to follow him, curing sickness and disease, teaching, and proclaiming the good news. He touches lepers and makes them clean, he heals a Roman centurion’s servant, he casts out demons. Jesus stills storms, heals the paralyzed, raises a young girl from the dead. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, gives sight to the blind and speech to the mute. It’s these things Jesus points to in answer to John’s question – but it’s not quite the in-your-face, direct confrontation and overturning of the status quo that John was looking for in the messiah.
And as we draw ever nearer to Christmas this Advent season, I’m wondering where we find ourselves in this story. What are you looking for? What kind of messiah are you expecting to find? Do we wonder with John the Baptizer if Jesus the one or should we be looking for another?
This time of year comes with great expectations – of how Christmas will be, of how life should be, our hopes that perhaps the year with all of its struggles and problems and grief, whatever they may be, could possibly be redeemed or at least that the New Year will give us a fresh start. Perhaps you struggle, like Clark Griswold, longing for that old-fashioned family Christmas, with the perfect presents and the perfect lights and the perfect meal, and everyone getting along for a change, and that adorable little baby lying in the manger who will somehow, some way bring peace and good will to all, finally.
But we all know that our reality sometimes doesn’t live up to those great expectations. Christmas is not just like the ones we used to know. Life can be harder than we’d like, and we are left, with John the Baptizer, wondering why Jesus doesn’t just swoop in with power and might and fix everything. If Christ the Lord has come, why do we still struggle and hurt so much, especially at this time of the year?
So, is Jesus the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Is he the Messiah we've been looking for or not?
The way Jesus responds does not give a definitive yes or no to John the Baptizer, but it does point to who he is and what he's about. And what Jesus reminds John is that in Jesus' actions, the kingdom of heaven is coming near. God's kingdom is breaking into this world in the words and actions and person of Jesus. John may have expected a powerful, mighty savior who would go up against the political and religious powers of the world in obvious ways. But what he gets is a powerful mighty savior who comes to heal the broken, to lift up the downtrodden, to give hope to the hopeless. This messiah doesn't look like the one John the Baptizer was expecting, but what he does ultimately goes beyond John's expectations. This messiah doesn't trample the powerful only to assume power. No, this messiah, Jesus, stands with the poor and the lame. He heals the blind and the deaf. He doesn't stay at a distance, but touches the leper and makes him clean, even raises people from the dead! This messiah does not simply deal with the symptoms of our trouble, he gets to the root of it, exposing the brokenness of all creation, the warping of who we were created to be by the power of sin, and he lays his ax to those roots, cutting them away with the power of love – offering as he does, not judgment and recrimination, but hope and healing and wholeness, not necessarily in one fell swoop, but still with the promise that ultimately, love wins. This messiah comes to redeem us and all of creation because of his deep, steadfast love for all he has created.
This messiah comes to us in the dark prisons of our lives, promising to stand beside us, to walk with us, because Jesus always reaches out to the ones in need. He may not be the messiah we were looking for, but thank God, he's the one who always comes looking for us.
Amen.
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