Broadway Christian Church - Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship - December 12, 2004

The Third Sunday of Advent

Prayer of the Day

As we light the third candle of Advent, we pray for patience as we continue to wait for the coming of God in our midst.  We wait with patience for the day when the weak will be strong, the blind shall see, the hungry shall be fed, and living waters will come forth in the wilderness of our world.  Amen.

Preface to the Scripture and the Sermon

Our text today comes from the gospel of Matthew, who will be our teacher, in many respects, over the year to come.  We begin in chapter 11, which is an interesting place to begin at Advent, but nevertheless, I think you’ll see why in just a few moments.  Here begins that reading.

Scripture
Matthew 11:1-6

After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and to preach in the towns of Galilee. 

When John the Baptizer heard in prison what Jesus was doing, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one?  Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Jesus answered them saying, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.  The blind receive their sight.  The lame walk.  The lepers are cured.  The deaf hear.  The dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed is he who takes no offense of me.”

This is the Word of the Lord for us this day.

Message
Drip, Drip, Drip
Rick Frost

Here we are in the third Sunday of Advent.  Christmas Eve is not too many days down the line.  All of your shopping is done, I assume?  That’s wonderful.  Travel plans are made.  Right?  How many of you will be traveling this season?  (Reviews a show of hands.)  OK.  Fine.  Meanwhile, everything in our culture seems to be in this cycle of completion.  It’s the end of the semester.  In very short order, it’s the end of the calendar year, and the end of the harvest season. 

You should see the board’s agenda for the meeting tomorrow night.  It’s very long.  We have all kinds of things we’ve been thinking about, talking about.  There are items we need to make decisions about.  And somewhere in all of the harriedness, in all of the very important things we need to pay attention to, the birth of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords comes on our screens.  It’s the birth of Jesus, the birth of the Christ of God, the birth of Jesus Christ.

Of course, that name rolls off our lips so easily today.  Our text this morning is one the Church Universal is asked to consider, and I think it reminds us that it was not always so.  It was not always so easy to say, “Jesus Christ.”  In fact, there is fairly good evidence in the New Testament, the scholars say there are at least two candidates for the job – the job of Christ.  You knew, of course, that being Christ was a job.  It was sort of like being a Mom and being a Dad.  It was being the president.  It was being the CEO.

How old were you when you learned that “Christ” wasn’t Jesus’ last name?  “Christ,” in the Bible, is a title.  It’s a calling.  It’s a vocation, and evidently two candidates appeared at about the same time.  There was Jesus, the carpenter’s son, but also John the Baptizer, who, quite frankly, many believed was the true Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed of God.

According to Luke, John’s birth was also miraculous.  Angels announced John’s birth.  Indeed, it was Gabriel.  John’s mother and father were descendents of the priestly line.  John had all the markings of Messiah written all over him.  He was an evangelist from the get-go.  It could have been that today we would be saying, “John Christ,” instead of “Jesus Christ.”  Doesn’t that sound strange?  “We’re meeting today in honor of John Christ.”  Oh, no!  But it could have been.  It could have been.

When Jesus sat down, for instance, at fancy dinner places in town with folks who like to eat, and drink, and laugh a lot, John led a very austere life, a very severe, a very somber life, as in relation to his equally hard-core disciples.  They were out in the desert – out in the wilderness, no man’s land.  If he found something to eat, he ate.  If he didn’t find anything to eat, he didn’t.  South Beach was not on his reading list.  And the scholars say John avoided alcohol.  He abstained from sexual activity.  As far as we know, he held no property or anything else that might soften his focus on God.

John the Baptizer was an amazing man.  Everything about John set him apart as a holy man.  He could have been John, the Christ.  Above all, his message made him a very strong, strong candidate for the job.  I mean... no one had heard anything like John preached in 500 years in the life of Israel.  For 500 years, Israel was simply, as you may remember, passed around from one super power to another.

Can you imagine what it must be like to have some other country, with their army and with their people coming into your country and taking over, establishing their ways in your place and draining you by skimming all of the wealth off the top to be used somewhere else?  For 500 years, that’s what happened to Israel.  First it was the Greeks.  Then it was the Egyptians.  After that, it was the Assyrians.  By the time of John and Jesus, it was the Romans.  Empire building was nothing new in those days.  Right?  It still goes on today.  Doesn’t it?

Of course, what was missing in all of this was any response from God.  Where were the prophets who had once spoken through the power of God to the people?  Where were the Nathans who confronted the kings when they were doing things that were very clearly wrong?  Where were the Amoses who shouted out God’s disgust at Israel’s obscene wealth and empty values?  Where were the Elijahs who called down fire from heaven so that no one would doubt the power and the authority of God?  Those voices had for a long, long time been missing in Israel.

So, when John the Baptist came along, and he came on the scene, it seemed to people that someone was speaking God’s language again.  Here was a person who talked about sin instead of profits.  Here was a person who talked about repentance instead of compromise.  John had absolutely no interest in helping people become more productive citizens in their communities.  He was not interested in helping people be happier with their personal and family lives.  He was not concerned whether you were a good volunteer in your community who gave back.  He had no concern at all whether his message related to your every day needs.  What he wanted to do was to make sure you were ready to enter the Kingdom of God, and he had absolutely no qualms about condemning anyone or anything that stood in your way.

John was an amazing man.  He let Herod have it.  Do your remember?  Herod was being an all-around evil kind of guy.  John let the Pharisees and the Sadducees have it for teaching people to observe certain things in their churches and to focus their life in church, instead of teaching them what was right and what was wrong.  John promised absolutely everybody that God was coming with a sharpened ax, and God was prepared and willing to clean up all the dead wood in this world.  Let me hear “Glory Hallelujah” from you here.  I don’t hear any “Hallelujahs” about that.  (Laughter.)  I don’t hear any “Amens.”  (Some of the congregation responded, “Amen.”)  Thank you!

John’ gospel, John’s message, John’s life was invigorating to the people.  It won all kinds of converts.  He had people standing in line down at the River Jordan to be baptized.  They were ready for action. They were looking for a leader.  They wanted somebody who would give the word and galvanize them into a force to be reckoned with.

And then, John met Jesus.  In fact, you remember, he baptized him as an adult.  And things started to shift into high gear.  Surely it would not be long before the Messiah, the Anointed, the Christ of God would establish the right way of living, called “shalom,” and living in harmony.  The Kingdom of God, the Reign of God on this earth would be established.  That was the hope.  That was the plan.  That’s what everybody wanted.

Then, Herod’s soldiers showed up, and John was arrested.  This holy man who had lived as far away as possible from all the corruption of this world suddenly found himself a prisoner, caged in Herod’s basement like a rat.  The good news was he was alone, locked up, yes, but Jesus was still out there free.  Jesus was still out there somewhere.  He didn’t know where.  Jesus was poised, John believed, to bring in the Kingdom.  Somehow, John kept up with what Jesus was doing out there.  Early reports were very promising.  Jesus was healing.  There were exorcisms.  There were miracles, signs, and wonders.  Those were good things.  It got people’s attention.

All that was needed now was for Jesus to pull the trigger.  Step up with authority.  Announce that the day of God’s judgment and wrath and cleansing had come.  Only, the big announcement never came.  While John was sitting it out in jail, Jesus was playing doctor to a bunch of very common, no name, marginal, out-of-the-way, ordinary people.  There were a couple of blind folks, a paralytic lying on a mat in the street, a woman with a fever, a few lepers, a couple of folks who had demons who were mentally ill, a woman who was hemorrhaging, and a slave of a Roman soldier.  We don’t even know their names.

What kind of Messiah is this?  Is this the greatest demonstration of God’s power that this one has to offer?  How in the world is what he’s doing going to make right all the things that are wrong?  Hello?

Well… We don’t know exactly what John was thinking while he was there in Herod’s dungeon.  But we do know this.  At least as far as the New Testament tells us, Jesus didn’t do anything to help free John.  We do know that John sent Jesus a message.  Do you remember what that message was?  In fact, it was a question.  John wanted to know, he really wanted to know, “Are you the one?  Are you really the one who is coming, or should we start looking for somebody else?”

It’s hard to underplay the disappointment, the pain, and the anguish in that question.  “Was I wrong about you?  I was sure wrong about something.  If you’re not the one, just say so, and we’ll reopen the search.  OK?  Because I don’t have a lot of time.”

You remember in the story, Jesus would not say so.  Instead, do you remember what he did?  He turned those disciples of John around and had them not face him but to look instead at the group of Jesus’ followers, and he said to them, “Now you go back, and you tell John what you see.  The blind received their sight.  The lame walked.  The lepers are healed.  The deaf hear.  The dead are raised.  The poor have good news for them.  And by the way, blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”

You biblical scholars know that Jesus didn’t make up those words.  That’s fairly much a quote right out of the book of Isaiah.  John and Jesus would know those words.  But it was not the part of Isaiah that John focused on.  It wasn’t that part in Isaiah that speaks about God’s anger and about God’s coming.  It was that other part of Isaiah that speaks about the lame leaping like deer, about the speechless singing with joy.  And then there is that little P.S. to the one who had baptized him as an adult.  Jesus sent him a little note that said, “And blessed is John for handling his disappointment in me.”

What the scholars say is that John wanted a tidal wave of a Messiah, and Lord knows, there are people in the world today who would like very much for a tidal wave of God to come.  John wanted somebody with the power of God to sweep things clean.  But what John got was a steady drip, a steady drip of grace, and a steady drip of love and mercy.  He was a man in whom plenty of people saw no Messiah at all.  Billions in this world do not see him as Messiah at all. 

As far as we know, John the Baptizer died unconvinced.  He sat in that cell, and he wondered what kind of joke God had played on him to have asked him to be the messenger, the one who paved the way, at the cost of his own life, for such a weak, toothless, powerless savior.

I wish this Advent Sunday that Jesus’ own death and resurrection that John didn’t get to witness would change everything.  I wish that once the word got out to the whole world about Easter, that everybody had seen the light.  I wish the world would have turned toward that light and would have followed it.  But I can’t tell you that.  I wish I could tell you today that everyone believes in him.  I wish that everyone believes that somehow Jesus wedged himself between heaven and earth, and through him, God is at work bringing the Kingdom, the Reign of God right now with great might and power.  I wish I could tell you that today, but I can’t.

Now you believe that is true, don’t you?  You are a Christian.  Not everyone in the world believes that, but you do believe that, don’t you?  I know there are days, there are times, there are places when you would love to see a tidal wave of God come – the raw power of God come and just sweep away all of the things that are wrong in this world.  But that’s not what we have.

What we have, instead, is a steady drip, a drip of grace, and a drip of mercy, and a drip of love from the followers of a man called Jesus, the one whom you and I know as the Christ.  We have followers, for instance, like a group who are going in his name to Honduras to build a school in the not-too-distant future from this church.  And there are followers like a group from this church who are going to be leaving for South Africa the day after Christmas to build spiritual bridges and relationships.  We have followers like a group of kids who go in his name to person’s houses in this community that need a helping hand, or to a soup kitchen to serve supper tonight.  We have persons and followers like families in this church, who went to Russia, or Guatemala, or maybe across town to adopt one of tens of thousands of children desperately needing a home.  I could go on and on.  They don’t have any names attached to them.  These are ordinary people – small stories.  Only a few get saved.

Meanwhile, many others believe God has literally abandoned them.  They hear the bold claims of faith, but they see the modest returns, and they, too, like the rest of the world ask, “Are you the one?  Are you the one who is to come or should we be looking today for someone else?”

The only way I know to answer that question came to me from a friend.  She took a rock.  She held it up and said, “See how this stone has been shaped by water?  Water has literally dug a hole through this rock.  It took ages and ages for that to happen.  No tidal wave could ever do to this rock what one drop at a time can.”

For reasons beyond our understanding, folks, that’s how the Messiah, the Anointed, the Christ of God whose birth we are getting ready to celebrate has decided to come down.  It’s not all at once, but very steadily, drop by drop by drop for 1000 years, for 2000 years, for how many years who knows.  But every time someone like you lives like he lived, every time someone like you loves like he loved, another drop falls.

Some folks in our world say that is too slow and that’s not enough.  But there are others among us who say, “It’s a way of life.  And blessed are those who take no offense at him.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Merciful God, in this Advent season, we are awaiting the arrival of our Messiah, and we embrace him as your child and our savior.  Thank you for sending Jesus to us that we might know your love in the sweetest, most humble examples of his tender mercies.  Amen.