Are You The One?

In last week’s Gospel reading, we met for the first time John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness, that voice, crying in the wilderness, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” In a few weeks, we’ll read of what happens when Jesus as an adult responds to John’s voice, and comes to be baptized. John is so overawed by meeting Jesus that he says that instead of John baptizing Jesus, Jesus should instead be baptizing him.

In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.

While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.

Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.

Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.

After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.

While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?

In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.

A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.

In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.

“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
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O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org