“Are You the One?”

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 11: 2-11

Preach By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Advent A-3, December  11^th, 2016

(*This Sermon adlibs on an original sermon preached by the late, great preaching master, Fred Craddock.  I reproduce this for no profit with no apologies because it’s truth begs to be told again and again.  The original sermon, “No Wind, No Fire, and God” can be listened to at Day1.org or as a Podcast on itunes.)

 Are children still getting excited about Christmas? 

We live in a time when we all have so much already.  I remember hardly being able to wait for the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Catalog which arrived in the Fall.   Or, at least at our house it was also the J.C. Penny’s Christmas Catalog which came, because my Father worked at the regional J.C. Penny Distribution Center located in our town.  I couldn’t wait to open those pages and to begin to dream about what I might be able to ‘wish’ for Christmas.

Today, kids, even young ones, can simply get on their Tablet, or Cell phone and everything they want is just a ‘click’ away.   They may not realize it now, but having ‘’everything” at your fingertips really can take a lot of the ‘excitement’ out of Christmas.   I guess our parents may have had some of the same feelings about us getting the ‘toy’ we wanted, rather than only getting a box of ‘oranges’.   Sometimes, when my mother watched me open a ‘toy’, she’d say:  “Now, when we were children in the depression, we were glad just to get an orange….”   She wasn’t trying to spoil my joy, but she was trying to teach me something she learned the hard way.  It was something she realized I would never learn, when I got what wanted.

WHEN JOHN HEARD IN PRISON…

John the Baptist certainly didn’t get everything he wanted.    As our Advent reading today opens, we are still in on our way to Bethlehem, where we find John the Baptist thrown ‘in prison’, having to hear about good things the Messiah is doing for others, but isn’t getting even one single ‘miracle’ for himself.

This is certainly a long journey from where we were in early in this gospel story.   The first time we encountered John, he was a strong, striking man--a ‘preaching machine’ telling the people to ‘repent’ (Matt. 3:2), get their act together, and prepare for this ‘one who is coming’  (Matt. 3:11).    The rule of God is at the door, John says.  God is about to send his Messiah—the Christ.  The fate of everyone rests on him.  What everyone needs to do is have their sins washed away in baptism and get ready to face the coming fire.

That was John powerful preaching then, but now, a few years later, John’s in prison.   One day, while John was conducting the service, the police show up, and without reading him his rights, bound him up, and took John off to prison for his fiery preaching.   Now, that voice, which all the people went to hear in the desert has gone silent. 

My preaching hero, the late Professor Fred Craddock*, whose voice makes up most of this sermon, once said that some preachers probably ought to be arrested for their sermons, but not John.  His preaching stirred and inspired people.   It was about fire, wind, water and God coming--- powerful!   But it wasn’t John’s preaching about the Messiah that got John into such deep trouble; it was his meddlesome, personal preaching about the specific sins of the ruler, Herod Antipas.   

Evidently, what happened to John was so frightening, so well repressed into the church’s memory, that Matthew didn’t even dare repeat what Mark’s gospel had already told.   And Mark only whispers this story as an afterthought.   Maybe most wanted to forget it.   You know how it used to be.  Something bad would happen in the community, in the family, or in the church, and it was ‘hush-hush’.  I recall asking my grandmother about a family secret.  She didn’t remember.  When as a child, I would speak out the obvious, no one else dared to say, my mother would step on my toe.   I would I asked my Dad about what happened when he was in the German war; he couldn’t recall.  Once, we were walking together near Bastogne; “Dad, do you recognize any of these places?  Do you remember being here?  He answered:  “None of it looked like this, when I was here?  I don’t remember.”  I couldn’t believe he couldn’t recall.   “You can’t remember anything!”  “I don’t remember.” Once I found an old ‘army’ photograph of a pretty woman with big red lips.  “Who’s that Dad?”  He wouldn’t remember her either.  So, being a smart aleck kid, I named her ‘hot lips’ after the MASH TV character.  Dad never said a word.

Of course there still things we don’t want to remember or talk about, but in this day of Internet, Instagram, and Instant Messaging people say, tell, and photograph things they wished they could also forget and ‘sweep under the’ proverbial ‘rug’.   But today you can’t hide.   When you ‘post’ something, almost immediately, the world might take notice.  And after it’s out there, it can’t be taken back.   Perhaps it’s always been this way, but now the truth comes out in High Definition!

It was exactly this way for John, after he mentioned Herod in a sermon.  Didn’t John realize that a preacher shouldn’t call out anybody’s specific sin in a sermon?   We all know what happens to Whistleblowers?  Even when they are right, people end up not liking them.   They are just too “right.”   John was a Whistleblower, in a day when rulers had total power.   Why did John take such a risk?  

From the story in Mark’s gospel, we read that Herod had married Herodias, who was Herod’s brother Philip’s wife (Mark 6:17).   That’s bad enough, but it gets worse.  Herod Antipas was one of the sons of Herod the Great, who had ruled over all of Judea.  After Herod the Great died, his kingdom was split up into quarters, with Herod Antipas getting Galilee, and his brother Philip getting what we today we call the Golan Heights, part of southern Syria.    Now, Philip was married to their niece Herodias.  Listen closely: The niece Philip married was the daughter of another brother of theirs, Aristobulus, who ruled Judea.   One day, when Philip’s back was turned, Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee stole Herodias, their niece, to be his wife.  This means that two brothers both married their niece.  It was adultery, incest, indecency, uncivil, and for crying out loud, just plain wrong!  John did cry out.  He was a sort of old-fashioned preacher, so he ‘hurled this sin straight into the teeth of the ruler’ (Craddock).  Now, a ruler can’t have some backwoods preacher speaking out against the royal palace.  While history is filled with royal families being notorious for getting what they want, this outrageously went against the very social order even they needed to uphold.  So, being a fearless preacher, John named it for what it was: “Herod, It’s not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18.   

You can only imagine how belittled this even made a Herod feel.  Herod wanted John’s preaching stopped. But Since John was so popular with the people---a kind of a righteous, outspoken, “Bernie Sander’s” of his day, Herod couldn’t do much.  He wouldn’t dare.   So, he did the only thing he could do, without setting off a riot.  Herod silenced John by having him arrested and put in prison.   John’s powerful voice went silent.  The crowds put their heads down.  They were all wondering what was going to happen next: Is it all over?  Was our ‘hope’ just a dream?  Is the hope for a Messiah true?  Is there any stock to be put it that at all?   Craddock said, ‘the desert wind erased the footprints of all who were there to hear John.  People were leaving, still wet from their baptism.   Within an hour, you’d don’t even notice that a crowd had been there.’  You can’t even recall what was said.   The service is over.  It’s quiet, too quiet.  The voice is gone.

ARE YOU THE ONE WHO IS TO COME...?

But the worst part of all this, is not that John is in prison, but it’s what comes next.  It’s what John said after he was in prison.  This is what’s most difficult to swallow.  We read that when John heard from his prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by others to ask Jesus about a question that has been haunting him.  I want you to wait for an answer.  Don’t leave until you get one.  His question was:  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  Are you the one we have been looking for and waiting on?  Are you the Christ—the long awaited Messiah?   We all understood it should be different when the Messiah comes.  It doesn’t look different.  In fact, it’s gotten worst.  Are you really the one, or should we wait for someone else?

Can you hear the pain and agony in John’s voice?   It’s not the kind of voice we want to hear, especially at Christmas.  But it’s the very realistic kind of ‘pain’ that comes from someone who’s been greatly disappointed.  Think about all those sermons John preached about ‘getting ready’.  “Someone greater than me is coming, repent, get ready!  And think about the Baptism of Jesus, when Jesus came to John requesting baptism, and John said to Jesus,  “Oh, no, no, no, you should be baptizing me!”  I shouldn’t be baptizing you.  No!   Has John forgotten about that?  And what about the voice that came from Heaven, saying “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”  Has John already forgotten that voice?  What is going on?  You talk about falling into doubt, a letdown, and confusion.  What John is saying is almost unbelievable?  Has he lost his mind?

Now, you ordinarily expect some sort of letdown, between a high moment and what follows.    There’s a world of difference between preaching that Jesus, the Messiah is coming, and preaching that Jesus has already come  (Craddock).   You can get a lot more people excited with a sermon about the Second Coming, the over the first one.   You can make a message on the Second Coming in most any form you want.   You can work people up with all kinds of expectations, like those Left Behind Books do.   What about the Mark of the Beast?  What about number of the Beast, 666?   What about the Antichrist?  Is he living already?   When will the end come?  What will it be like?  Most everybody would like to know that, and if you talk about what Jesus will do when he comes, since it hasn’t happened yet you can make the future just how you want it to turn out.   But when you talk about the Jesus who has come, or who has already come, well, you are stuck with what you got.  And what you’ve got, is basically ‘an assignment for how we are to live’ our lives, not an exact prediction of what Jesus will fix when he comes back. 

However, as we all know, between the expectation and the reality, there falls a ‘shadow’  (Craddock), even a kind of ‘sadness’.  It’s true for everybody, even for children.   A child sees a puppy on TV.  “Can I have a puppy, like that?   I want a puppy.  Everybody else has a puppy?  “Well, I don’t know,” the parent answers, “Oh, I’ll take care of it, I’ll feed it, and I’ll look after it!”    So they go and get the puppy, and a week goes by and mother asks, “Have you feed the puppy?  Have you given the puppy a bath?  Have you played with the puppy?”   The child answers: “I’m not the only one in this family!  Everybody else ought to help too!”  “But you said you wanted that puppy and you’d take care of it,” the mother says.  Between wanting a puppy and having a puppy, falls a shadow.

It’s true of so many things, just like in a wedding.  It’s beautiful.  Flowers.  The Bridesmaids dresses.  The wonderful flowing white dress.  The Candles burning.  Everybody’s happy.  There’s cake-- lost of cake.  Beautiful service.   It’s a wonderful, beautiful occasion.  But then just a couple of week later, the couple gets back from their honeymoon, and they have to settle into daily routines, a little small place to live, and they start making a go at sharing everything together.  Being married is surely not the same as getting married.  Of course, it’s not the same and there can be some shadows, you didn’t see until after the wedding.

Or what about getting the job you’ve always wanted.  You worked hard to get it.  You got a promotion.  Or maybe you went off to college.  You made the grade, you graduated.  Maybe you wanted to be a teacher.   You see the face of children.  You see them, at least in your mind, eager to learn.   There is so much they will want and need to know.  Then, The day finally comes and you are in the classroom.  You are now, officially, a teacher, but what do you spend most of your time doing?  Breaking up fights?  Doing paperwork?  Listening to the complaints of parents?  One irate parent comes in:  “What did you do to my child?” “I’ll call my lawyer!”  Is this what you had in mind when you wanted to be a teacher?

This kind of thing happens even in the ministry.   I remember imagining myself standing in the pulpit, sharing the good news of God’s grace, and people saying “Amen”, loving the gospel and the life it calls us to live.  And I thought it would get easier and easier to preach, to pastor, and to be a minister.   But it never occurred to me that there would be church fights, disgruntled members, late night meetings, long business meetings, or that I would have to listen to an argument about where to put the water cooler or the color of the carpet, or whether or not to pad the pews.   And I never dreamed that people would attack, argue, or accuse each other of things, or attack me, in ways that hurt, and cause more people to leave the church than would ever come back into the church.   I never imagined how the best and worst things happen at church.

The difference in what you expect, and how it turns out, can be so different.  How would I ever have guessed that almost everything I learned in Seminary, would not work anymore?  How could I have seen that coming, that I and the churches where I served would end up unprepared, and even disappointed at how things have turned out?   What about all those sermons about winning the world for Christ?  What about all those plans to grow a bigger, and bigger church?  What about all those hopes of transforming a nation, from saying we are a “people under God” to actually being “a people under God”?  There can be a lot of difference and disappointment between the expectation and the reality.

But perhaps there is something more going on here, than mere disappointment.  John was God’s servant.  He told the truth.  He was faithful.  He stood up for what was right.  He spoke the truth.   And what does he get?  He’s been arrested.  Now, he’s in prison.  Is this how God reward’s His servants?  If this is what God does for his friends, I’d hate to be his enemy!  Is this really all there is?   Could it be that the darkness and the dampness of the dungeon getting to him like the difficulties of life can get to us?  

Or maybe it’s just the whole prospect of death.   John knows that he’s not going to ever be released.  There will be no lawyer, no fair trial, no chance for appeal or legal recourse.   John is there for good, and he is in some way, or somehow, going to die for this.  It’s just a matter of ‘what day will it be’.   Perhaps he even mulls over in his mind, will I be strong and clear eyed when the executioner comes, or will I choke up and cry when the moment comes and I have to face the axe?

Maybe it’s the confinement itself.  It’s hard to be cooped up like that, no exercise, no sunlight, no good food, no clear water.  It’s one of the worst things in the world, if you’ve never experienced it, to always be in bed, living with four walls closing in on you, no one to see, to talk, or who understands.  When we had that Football player, who broke his neck, with that contraption on his head,  it brought back all those terrible feelings I had when they operated on my foot, and I had to have screws holding a fixator on my leg and foot, keeping me from putting my leg down for 6 months.  That kind of thing can get to your head.  It took me back to being in the hospital, as a seventeen year old, when they put me into traction and made me lie on my back for two months.  They would come to my bed at night and pull up the bars, even though I couldn’t fall out of bed even if I wanted too.   And I recall all the fears I had of what would happen, if the hospital caught on fire and I couldn’t get up and couldn’t get out.  I wanted to get out of that situation, but I couldn’t.  I even got my guitar and started singing and people came into my room, thinking I might be Elvis Presley.  He just happened to be in that same hospital where I was.  It was the only thing I could do to have a relief.  If you’ve ever been confined like that, it can get into your head.  When they pull up those bars at night, it’s like a cell, a prison.  I know they are trying to help you, but it still hurts.  All you want to do, it get out, get away, and go home—and get free.

It’s hard to be in that kind of ‘prison’---a prison called ‘disappointment’?   But the reality is, that some people, still today, even in our own community, have to experience this Christmas from a kind of prison.  Some are imprisoned by a disease or illness.   Others are shut away because of disagreements or conflict.  Some are simply depressed because they are alone---all alone.   Without the children, without the family, and without the old friends, Christmas is just not what it used to be.   Is the message real?  Is the joy, good news, of Christmas what it’s cracked up to be?   Was he the one?  Is Jesus the only way?  Has his coming really made any difference?

For whatever reason, John had been forced into confusion and he was beginning to have doubts.  He felt he needed, for himself and his followers, some kind of answer that might bring comfort and promise to his imprisoned soul.  So, John sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

WHAT YOU SEE AND HEAR

There are many things that could have plunged John into doubt, or might also plunge us into doubt and disappointment, even depression this Christmas.  The lights are coming on, but it’s still dark to some people around us.

But what really made it hard for John was not the darkness nor the dungeon that was getting next to him, but it was the kind of ‘light’ Jesus was shining.   Jesus was just not being the kind of Messiah John had expected.   Jesus did not do all the things the people had been anticipating.  Jesus did not fulfill the Scripture the way it had been hoped by the prophets or interpreted by the experts.    For you see, here was a man who had imagined Jesus coming with all kind of “wind” and “fire”,  a ‘strong man’, full of God’s wisdom, who would accomplished God’s will in this world.   But now, here comes Jesus and there’s no strong wind.  There’s also no big, blazing, burning fire.   This Jesus fullfilled a Scripture no one was reading, like that was quoted by Matthew from Isaiah, where he writes: “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen… I have put my Spirit upon him… He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.  He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick…  In his name (not the Jews, but) the Gentiles will hope (Matthew 12: 18-21).   Jesus did not come as some hot and angry wind or fire, but he is humble, meek, mild, and lowly.  Where is the wind?  Where is the fire?  Jesus is not who John, or anyone was expecting.

But what did he expect, and WHAT DO WE WANT JESUS TO SAY OR DO?   When the disciples, including John found a community who did not believe in Jesus, and ask Jesus to call down ‘fire’ from heaven on them and burn them up, what do think Jesus should have said?   Burn them up?  No, but he said, let’s wipe the dust off our feet and go on to another town and leave them alone.   “When somebody hits you on one cheek,” what did you expect Jesus to answer,  Hit ‘em back, and harder?   When somebody calls you a bad name, or does something bad against you, what did you expect Jesus to say?  Retaliate?  Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth?  

But this is NOT what Jesus says, but he says,  “Be good to those who hate you?  Speak good, even of those who mistreat you.  And when you are at the altar and you remember that somebody has something against you, what do you expect Jesus to say?  Well, that’s their problem, if they don’t like me.  But no, Jesus said, oh, yes, it’s your problem too.  You go and make it right with them.  That’s what he said, but what do you expect Jesus to say: Now, one day you are going to pay for what you’ve done.  You’ll get what’s coming to you.  Full sentence, full payment, full judgment.  No, but Jesus said: “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”  Does that disappoint you?  When lepers called out, and Jesus touched them, Does that disappoint you?  When Jesus was finally put on the cross to die, what did you expect him to say:  “You’re gonna burn for this”.  What goes around, comes around!  But no, he said,  “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing!”  Is that disappointing to you?  Would you like to have seen or heard Jesus doing something different?

Here, we need to realize what is still true:  Jesus is a disappointment to some people.   As I once read a book about Jesus in German:  “Jesus failed”.  He was not a success.  He came to his own people and they rejected him, didn’t they?  That’s how it really was, wasn’t it?  He came to earth, and he had his chance, with all the power and glory of heaven, to teach everyone a lesson, and to put us all in our place, and what did Jesus do, or better yet, what didn’t Jesus do?  He didn’t settle once and for all, what was right and what is wrong, and punish the wicked.   What he did do, is send this message back to John:  Go tell John what you see and hear:  the blind are seeing, the cripples are walking, the lepers are made clean, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised,  and the poor have good news spoken to them…. (v. 4-5).  Tell that to John.

Is such an answer disappointing to you?   As a preacher, a pastor, and a minister of the good news, I never want the church or the message of Jesus to disappoint anybody, but I know it will disappoint some.  It disappointed Jews, then, and now.  It still disappoints people from other religious traditions, too.  Our message disappoints many secular people, who’d prefer to go it alone, without such having to deal with a Jesus, who might still be a disappointment.   Some of these people will come in a church and visit one time, but then they go home and never return.  Some of them were looking for the church to preach fire, wind, judgment and put people in their place.  Of course there are churches that will do that, and they have filled up at times.   But even after all that heat, there’s not much light, and people often go back home, and never go into a church again.  Somehow, someway, the church and the message of Jesus, as it was preached, disappoints.  We all know that’s true.  How do we deal with that?

Years ago, Sundays used to be very slow and different.   After Church on Sunday afternoons, people used to go out into the fields, along the roads, and into the woods, walking, picking up interesting rocks, finding four leaf clovers, and picking interesting wild flowers; just spending slow time together.   They would look for small, but ‘marvelous’ things.  They even called the practice ‘marveling’.  They would all get together and just go ‘marveling’ together.  Then, they would go back to the house, with the rest of the family or neighbors, and show off these ‘marvelous’ things they had found.

Maybe the answers to some of the hardest questions we meet in this life, are not found in books, theories, or even just in our Bibles alone.  If you were to try to go ‘marveling’ early or late one Sunday, you might find yourself walking or driving along the road, maybe even coming upon a place where a group of people are gathered, singing, praying, reading and teaching Scripture, and sharing together their love for each other, caring for each other, upholding each other, and sharing their hope for the hurting world.   If you would listen closely, you might hear them praying and promising to each other, and to God:  “God help us, to reproduce the life of Jesus, in our own lives, from our Bible.”  Wouldn’t that be marvelous?  Wouldn’t that be something you couldn’t find happening anywhere else?   Wouldn’t that be a kind of hopeful, healing, encouraging ‘miracle’ that you would and could ‘see and hear’ in this place, among these people, right now!  And it wouldn’t that be a ‘light’ that could shine into your own dungeon of disappointment to be the answer you’d could live and die with?  Wouldn’t that be, as a jewish comedian once said, “marvelous?”  Let it be so.  Amen.