| ||||
|
Twelve days before Jesus was born, Mary was already great with child. Not as great as she would be two weeks later when she and Joseph would pull into Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, but great with child nonetheless there on the road to Christmas, great with expectation by anyone's gestation calendar. Imagine what was on Mary's mind and heart those twelve days before Jesus was born as she walked and rode a donkey the sixty or seventy miles from Nazareth during the last two weeks of pregnancy! "Just when would the child be born?" she must have wondered. "It had to be soon. On the other hand, maybe the child would arrive later rather than sooner. Who could tell about such things? Or maybe they wouldn't even make it all the way to Bethlehem before they'd have to stop to welcome God's expected gift." Just what was Mary expecting anyway? A child certainly, but what manner of child? She had been told that her child would be different. "You are to name him 'Jesus,'" the angel had told her. You are to call him "The Lord is salvation," for "he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. He is to be the holy One who will be called the Son of God." That's a lot of expectation to lay on a young girl regarding her first-born son, and it must have weighed heavy on Mary's heart long before the angels arrived to sing about it at the manger and long before the baby was presented at the Temple, long before old Simeon had blessed Jesus and told Mary that her son "would cause the falling and rising of many in Israel" and would "be sign that will be spoken against." And then he had added that "a sword would pierce Mary's own soul as well." Just what would the child's life be like? What does life have in store for him? Mary must have wondered. What would her own life be like? Questions like these are on the minds of all mothers who are great with child, and surely they were on Mary's mind as well as she and Joseph walked their expectant way to Bethlehem. And Mary is not the only one who asks them. Joseph must have asked them as well. And John the Baptist. Years later such questions were on John's mind as he lay in his prison cell when Jesus was thirty years old, after lots of things that would happen to Jesus had happened. John had been in prison so long by then that he had missed some of the things that had been going on in Jesus' life. But he kept hearing about Jesus, about what Jesus was teaching and doing. And the reports he received perplexed him, troubled him. So he sent his own disciples to Jesus to ask him the Advent question: "Are you, Jesus, the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Are you the one to fulfill Mary's expectations? And God's? And ours? It has been over thirty years since the angel put that hope in Mary's heart and womb. Are you the one to come, or should we expect another?" And Jesus turns to the people around him with some Advent questions of his own: "What did you go out into the desert to see? A man dressed in fine clothes, or a prophet? If you are willing to accept it, John is the Elijah who was to come." And in response Jesus gives John's disciples an Advent answer: "Go tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is preached to the poor. Whoever has ears, let him hear." Just what will life be like? What's going to happen to us? What does life have in store for us? Are you, Jesus, the One who is to come, or should be expect another? These are Advent questions, Mary's questions, Joseph's questions, John the Baptist's questions, our questions, questions pregnant with Advent hope but also with concern and puzzlement in a world of Lenten reality... ...because by the time we catch up with John this morning, Lent has once again made its sober appearance in the story. John had been arrested, because he had mixed religion with politics. Straight from the pulpit John had condemned King Herod for taking his niece and marrying her when she was already married to his own brother. Politicians and kings don't like preachers accusing them of incest and adultery. "So the once powerful voice languished in jail," William Willimon reminds us. "Earlier John had touched many hearts. At the end of his sermons, great numbers of people asked, 'What should we do now?' And John told them, 'Repent! Turn around! Change!'" John's mistake was that he assumed that the Word he had been sent to proclaim to the people was meant for the king as well. "[So] there in jail, silenced, his death looming before him, John had time to think. He thought, "If the forerunner [of Messiah] can be so easily silenced [as I have], then what of Messiah [himself]?" John was confused, perplexed about the future. Things had not happened as he had expected. So he was led to ask his shocking question: "Are you the Messiah, Jesus, or should we be looking for another?" which was a shocking question because John had been so certain about Jesus earlier. Things had started out so well for Jesus. John had baptized him, and Jesus immediately began to preach and teach with authority. And there were healings and miracles, too, and the crowds that were following him were growing. But then came those depressing warnings Jesus had given his disciples when he sent them out to proclaim the new kingdom. "Be on your guard against men when you proclaim the kingdom," he told them, "because they will hand you over to the authorities and will flog you in their synagogues. And you'll be arrested and brought before governors and kings.... Brother will betray brother to death," he added, "and a father his child, and all men will hate you because of me.... But do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but who cannot kill the soul.... [For] anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." And it was all this teaching that John heard about when he was in Herod's prison, and it made John wonder. "What's all this stuff about a cross? What's all this about losing your life in order to find it, and about being arrested and brought before governors and kings, and about following Messiah to the cross," John must have wondered. "Is this the language of Messiah? What about victory? What about the new kingdom, the new Israel? Is it possible I was mistaken about Jesus?" he must have thought. So John sent his own disciples to speak to Jesus. "Are you the one we are to expect, Jesus? Or are we to wait for another?" "Has John forgotten some of his own sermons?" Willimon asks. John's whole ministry had been pointing to Jesus. At first John was so certain that Jesus was Messiah that he insisted that Jesus should baptize John, not the other way around. And remember? Just a few months earlier, when John baptized Jesus, the Holy Spirit had descended upon Jesus like a dove. John had seen it with his own eyes. And a voice from heaven had proclaimed that this one, Jesus, is indeed my son. "With him I am well pleased," the voice had said. How can John now ask, "Are you the one?" "In even the most stunning religious experience, no matter how dramatic," Willimon insists, "there is always some let-down afterwards. You can't stay on a spiritual mountain top forever.... [John had heard the voice from heaven at Jesus' baptism, and] John had preached [his powerful word], 'Messiah is coming! He is going to fix everything, set things straight.' "But now Messiah has come. Anticipation of the Messiah has now met the reality of the Messiah." And Messiah is talking about being brought before the authorities, and John himself is now in prison. "And perhaps that's John's problem," Willimon suggests. "Jesus just does not deliver what John expected in a messiah.... Maybe John worked better with the anticipation [than with the reality]. Maybe John found it hard, more difficult to be a preacher of the reality.... Maybe John was just disappointed." Willimon says John's question reminds him of a Woody Allen movie, the one where Woody says, "I don't hate God. No, I think the worst thing you can say about God is that he is an underachiever." That pretty much speaks for us as well, doesn't it? "Here came Jesus [on Christmas], the one who was [supposed to be] mighty, and [now] he is telling people to turn the other cheek, [to love your enemies, and] to 'Do good to those who hate you.' We expected so much of Jesus. And he delivered so little. When they put him on a cross, we expected him to act like the Son of God. [We expected him] to be able to throw himself down from the cross, to [tell the ones who put him there], 'Now it's payback time. Instead, he looked down from his cross, hanging there in utter misery, and said simply, 'Father, forgive them.'" And then he had died. "Go tell John what you hear and see," he had said. "Good news is preached to the poor. Blessed are the poor, the meek, the gentle, the merciful," he had taught. And this puzzled John. Just as it puzzles us. "Blessed are those who seek peace, and those who suffer for the sake of righteousness. Blessed are you when people persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you because of me," he added. And John was puzzled. And so are we. "Blessed are those who put their trust in God, and not in governors or kings," he had taught. "Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven." Nothing but failure, this must have seemed to John from his prison perspective. It was not the Advent John had expected. But it was the Advent that led to Easter Day, to the kingdom itself, on the other side of the Cross. So here, once again, is the question of Advent on this Third Sunday of Advent, in the Year of Our Lord, 2004. It's the same question of that first Advent back in John's time, and in Mary's What do we expect? What Messiah do we expect this year? Will we receive Messiah, Jesus, not as we would have him be, but as he really is? Will we let God come into our lives this year, not as we desire, not as just another Christmas of tinsel and trees and toys, but as God really does come in the world of Lenten reality? What is our hope on the road to church and back this morning, twelve days before Christmas? In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |