Grace Episcopal Church

December 12, 2010

Today’s readings

There’s one of those British comedies that is often re-run incessantly on Public Television called “Waiting for God.” Set in what we would call a retirement community, it tells the stories of the antics of several irascible elderly people who fight against the community’s administration, their fellow residents, and injustice in their small town. The humor relies on the indomitable spirit of characters caught in situations over which they have no control. The title says it all. “Waiting for God” implies that their lives are over and they are only passing the time until they die.

Waiting for God may be a metaphor for people nearing the end of their lives, but it is also an appropriate image for the Season of Advent. We are waiting for the coming of Christ, and as we wait, we prepare in all kinds of ways for that coming.

In today’s gospel, we encounter John the Baptist, who like those characters in the sit-com, is waiting for the end of his life. Imprisoned by Herod, he must know that he will soon be executed. But he is waiting for God in another way. Having proclaimed the coming of the Reign of God, and the coming of the Messiah, John must be wondering whether his message was the correct one, whether he should be waiting for God.

Today’s gospel reading is one of the most interesting in all of Matthew. In the middle of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is confronted by several of John the Baptizer’s disciples. John has sent them to Jesus to ask a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Matthew puts this episode at in interesting point in his gospel. It’s one of those places where we see the gospel writer at work, very carefully shaping his image of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ public ministry begins with a series of healings and miracles. While Mark provides a summary of Jesus’ preaching message, he does not give any detail, or show Jesus teaching in his first chapter. By contrast, Matthew moves directly from Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness to Jesus’ preaching. The first public event of Jesus’ ministry is the Sermon on the Mount which extends from chapters 5 through 7. Only after that, does Matthew show Jesus healing people.

These healings are very carefully constructed as well. There are three sets of three in chapters eight and nine. First, Jesus heals a leper, the centurion’s servant, then Peter’s mother-in-law. Then he crosses the lake, where he stills the storm, casts out a demon and heals a paralyzed person. After calling Matthew, there are three more healings. Jesus raises a girl from the dead, restores sight to two blind men, and gives speech to someone who is mute.

Only then do John’s disciples come with their question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

It’s a puzzling, even surprising question. After all, if anyone should know that Jesus is the Messiah, it ought to be John the Baptizer. According to the gospel of Luke, John and Jesus are cousins, nearly the same age, John is six months older than Jesus. So like any good cousins, they had to have played together as children. Probably, since John’s parents were so old at his birth, they probably even shipped him off to Joseph and Mary during school vacations and summers so they could get some much needed rest.

Then, of course, he baptized Jesus, and according to the Gospel of Matthew, identified him as the Messiah, he saw the dove and heard the voice from heaven announcing, “This is my beloved son.” So how is it that after all of that, John still wonders whether Jesus is the one who is to come? If anyone ought to know who Jesus is, if anyone ought to know that Jesus is the Messiah, surely it’s John the Baptizer. Nonetheless, it is he who poses the question of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This little episode, hardly noticeable in the gospel accounts is very revealing. In spite of everything John the Baptizer knows, he retains some uncertainty. And in spite of everything John the Baptizer should know, Jesus addresses John’s questions directly. He does not ridicule his uncertainty, he does not respond as he so often responds to those who misunderstand him or misinterpret him. He does not say, “Oh ye of little faith!” No he answers the question directly: “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.”

In other words, Jesus clearly answers the question and relates it back to the prophecies in Isaiah that we heard in today’s first lesson, and also in the word’s of today’s Psalm: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see. There’s something about the way in which Jesus answers the question that is important. Note his language: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see. He is not emphasizing his own role in these miracles. Instead, Jesus emphasizes what has been done. It is as if he points away from himself, toward God, toward God’s powerful presence in the world through him. By acknowledging that the lame walk, the blind receive their sight, and deaf hear, we, and John, recognize the presence of God in our midst.

But it’s not enough. It’s not enough for John, and it’s not enough for us. There’s another image in today’s readings that I find of great help. In today’s epistle reading, we are reminded to be patient, to wait the coming of the Lord. As a farmer or gardener must wait for the crops they planted to bear fruit, so too are we told to be patient.

Of course patience is a hard thing to come by at any time of the year, but it may be most difficult in the season of Advent. We all know how eager children are for Christmas. We adults may be equally eager, if only to get it all over with. But there is more to it. In the midst of the hectic pace of Christmas, the shopping, the parties, the planning, we come to church and hear the simple words of the letter of James: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

It’s a message that is important to hear, and not only during Advent. To wait for God is a very difficult thing to do. It means to allow God to act in the way, and when God wants to act, to allow God to answer our questions, to answer our prayers, in the fashion and at the pace that is God’s time, not ours. The letter of James was written at a time when early Christians were asking the question why the Second Coming hadn’t taken place; that delay was enough to challenge the faith of many. We see John the Baptizer in something of the same position in today’s gospel. For some reason, Jesus’ actions, his ministry did not quite fit the expectations John had of it. So he began to wonder, is Jesus really the Messiah, or should we wait for another?

To wait for God means also to open oneself up to the presence of God. God is here, in the world, God is present in our lives, yet too often we fail to see God’s presence, we fail to sense it. We don’t take the time we need, we don’t take the time that God needs to make that presence real.

But it’s also easy to mistake the presence of God for something else. John had a set of expectations about what the Messiah would be and do. And apparently, those expectations were not met by Jesus’ actions or teachings. The disconnect between the two led to his uncertainty. The same is true for us. There is a cacophony of voices around us in the world, laying claim to being the authentic voice of Christianity and of Christmas. There are shouts that Christians are persecuted in contemporary secular culture, that we have abandoned the truth of the faith in favor of being politically correct.

As Advent moves toward Christmas, as the pace of holiday activity increases, I pray that all of us find time in our daily lives to wait for God, to listen for God’s presence, to look for the signs of God’s coming in our midst. But most importantly, let us allow God to come to us in the fashion and manner, and at the speed, God chooses.

December 5, 2010

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”

Sometimes, I think Advent suffers from bi-polar disorder. The lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans ended with those words, but in the Gospel, we heard words from John the Baptizer that promised doom and destruction, fire from heaven.

What are you hoping for? What is your deepest desire, your greatest wish? Advent is a season of hope as we look forward to Christmas. Children are hoping for a big haul under the Christmas tree. Some of us are hoping for other things—that the pain we live with will go away; that we will have enough money to make it through the month; that the relationship with our spouse or partner will pass through the rough patch and find more stable footing. Are your hopes only about yourself and your family? Do you harbor hope for Grace Church, for this community, our nation and the world? Or are those things just too much to ask for in our time, with a difficult economy and a poisonous political culture?

Paul’s hope encompassed all of those things. His expression of hope comes at the end of a passage that began with him pleading to his readers to be at harmony with one another, and moved from the immediate community to Christ’s work of reconciling human communities with one another—Jew and Gentile, and with God.

Paul stresses that the community, the church, is the primary place for hope, and for the expression of reconciled community in chapter 16. He does it explicitly by naming individuals in the church at Rome, 26 of them. They encompass the diversity in society and the church. There are rich and poor, slave and free—we know that there were some Roman Christians who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery in order to provide for the needy in the congregation. He also named women who were leaders in that community; indeed, he named one woman Junia, who was an apostle.

Paul’s vision of this new community came up against the reality of human nature. He was writing to a church at Rome with which he had no direct connection. In fact, many scholars believe that he conceived the letter to the Romans as something of a letter of introduction. Paul would be coming to Rome, and wrote this to let the church in Rome know who he was and what he was about. But Paul knew well the reality of people living together. He himself experienced bitter conflict with churches that he had founded, in Corinth for example. But that conflict did not temper his faith in God. Nor did it shake his belief that the church was the body of Christ, and his hope for the church and for the world. He believed strongly that God was at work in the world, making all things new.

Contrast that vision of a hopeful future with today’s gospel. The second Sunday of Advent is always dedicated to John the Baptist, that enigmatic figure who in all four gospels is linked to Jesus, but whose depiction in each of the gospels raises questions about who he was and about his relationship to Jesus. John is clearly depicted as the last of the prophets, one pointing forward to the coming of the Messiah. By describing him clad in camel’s hair and a leather belt, Matthew places him in the line of Hebrew prophets that stretches back to Elijah and Elisha.

He seems to be something of a celebrity, or at least a figure of curiosity, someone people might check out as they do today. The crowds come to see him, and he preaches to them the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and calls for them to repent of their sins in preparation for its arrival. Eventually, even the members of the leading Jewish groups—the Pharisees and the Sadducees come to see what the fuss is all about. His message to them is somewhat different, much more threatening: He calls them a brood of vipers and warns that fire from heaven will come down to destroy them.

I’ve always suspected that John spoke those words of condemnation with at least a little glee. Here he was, out in the desert, preaching and baptizing, sensing with immediacy a coming change, a cataclysmic intervention of God in history. He preached against the comfortable, the wealthy, and the powerful. And now, they were coming out to hear him, too. The kingdom of heaven may have been at hand, but like so many other prophets of disaster, John may also have been looking forward to seeing the destruction of his enemies.

The gospels agree that there was more to his message than gloom and doom. Whether historically accurate or not, the gospels all have John proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the man who the gospel writers, and we, believe to be the Christ, the Savior of the World. Matthew has him proclaiming Jesus’ coming with the same certainty that he had about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the descent of divine fire upon God’s enemies.

What I find most interesting is that despite the certainty we see here, at the end of the day, John was not certain at all. Later in the gospel, after he’s been arrested by Herod, John sends some of his disciples to Jesus, to ask of him whether indeed he was the one they were waiting for, or whether they needed to continue to wait, and hope. He died without knowing whether the one he hoped for had come. He died in uncertainty. Did he have hope?

In today’s readings, we have two images of hope. Isaiah paints a picture of a world in which there is no anger, enmity, or violence, where natural enemies play and rest together. John offers a different image of hope, yes a hope of the kingdom of heaven, but also hope for vengeance upon the enemies of God. But the two images share something. Both are vast, cosmic, in proportion. Both prophets look for drastic, thorough-going change, where the world as we know it is transformed into something new.

Is our hope of that caliber? Rarely, if ever. The most that we hope for is usually a better life for ourselves and our children. Ours is a vision that normally encompasses not the universe, but our little worlds. Such hope is valid as far as it goes, but it is a hope that is tiny compared to the God in whom we proclaim our faith. Isaiah painted a picture of a world transformed by God, removed of its violence and suffering. He hoped for a king who would transform the human community in which he lived. In Romans 8, Paul writes that all creation groans in labor pains, waiting for its coming redemption.

Our temptation is to view our relationship with Christ, our faith, in deeply and only, personal terms. The coming of Christ that we celebrate this season tends to be viewed as a coming only to save us from our sins, to help us, as individuals, to get right with God. But that is only part of the story. Advent’s emphasis on the second coming is a necessary reminder that we need to broaden our vision to include all of creation.

What are we hoping for? A pretty and expensive stash of gifts under the tree? A good life for us and for our children? Perhaps, like John, that God will rain down fire on our enemies? Advent, the coming of Christ, should inspire us to hope for bigger things, for a transformed cosmos, a renewed creation, for a human community in which there is justice, and peace and equity, “where the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

How can we, as individuals, and as a community, be a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world? How can we experience for ourselves the cosmic reach of Isaiah’s vision? How can we share that experience and that vision with others? How can we create in Grace Church a spirit of hope that embraces all who come near in a community of hope? Those questions should give us plenty to ponder during this season of Advent as we await the coming of Christ.