Hope in the King

Posted on by Jennifer Sterling

Matthew 11:2-11 —

           2 When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples 3 to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

4 Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 8 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. 9 Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written:

“‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’[b]

11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

  1. Prayer:
  2. Here we are today in the third week of Advent where we focus on joy…..
    1. the joy that the pink candle on our Advent wreath shines to represent. 
    1. The season of Advent is all about waiting, longing and living in expectation. 
    1. We wait and we long for peace, hope, joy and love to be brought into the world…..things that we desperately need. 
    1. While we wait and live in expectation through the season of Advent it tends to take on a subdued and somber sort of tone. 
  3. Traditionally, the third Sunday of Advent lightens the mood a bit……to give us a break if you will, and we focus on joy.          
  4.  Joy is a welcome topic for many people during this time of year as it just happens to be the darkest and coldest time of year for those of us who live in northern climates. 
    1. The days are short, the nights are long and the temperatures…..well, you know about how the temperatures can be. 
    1. We need some joy through this time of the year.  It’s little wonder why many people choose to travel south seeking out sunshine and warmer weather which always seems to brighten their souls.            
  5.  And when we stay put through the festive season, we put up decorations and lights in order to force some brightness and color into our dark and cold surroundings. 
    1. They may be artificial, but they do bring some measure of joy into the hearts of those who live in the midst of the darkest season of the year.
  6. Decorations and bright artificial lights enflame the senses and they bring a bit of joy to our lives.  For many of us, depending on how things have been going in life, we need some joy injected into our souls. 
    1. Many people are mourning and grieving right now, and during the Advent/Christmas season this mourning and grieving seems to hit its peak.  There are people who live in anxiety, fear and hopelessness as well as those folks who have doubts of some sort.
  7. For the past several weeks we have been focusing on hope — hope in Advent. Hope for the coming of the long-awaited Messiah— Jesus the King of Kings.
  8. We wait, and we hope. – we have read prophecies about the coming of the Messiah – the Redeemer – the Savior – but this wish – this prophecy has not happened as yet. John the Baptist is asking “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for?
  9. Hence Today — Hope in the King —- and this morning we lit a candle about the prophecy.
  10. Pause
  11. Before we start in about John the Baptist and a look at his question “Are you the One we have been waiting for, or should we expect someone else?
  12. Here is a short, light story to set the mood: A few years ago in Reader’s Digest a lady reported searching for the perfect birthday card for her husband. She came across a promising one. On the outside it read: “Sweetheart, you’re the answer to my prayers.” Then she turned to the inside, which was inscribed like this: “You’re not what I prayed for exactly, but apparently you are the answer.”
  13. Let’s remember the Scripture for today. John is not certain who Jesus is. He has doubts. He and his people had hoped and prayed for years for a Messiah, one anointed by God to lead the nation, a deliverer who would vanquish occupying forces, conquer all enemies, establish a great kingdom, and usher in an era of peace and prosperity. In time past, and not that long ago, John had come to believe that the prayers had been answered. The Messiah was none other than his own cousin, Jesus of Nazareth.
  14. As you reviewed last week, John the Baptist had his own ministry until his recent arrest. Even though he located himself out in the wilderness near the Jordan, great crowds came to hear him. He had powerful words for the rapt audiences of the need for repentance from sin and right living.
    1. He certainly refused to mince words – he was abrasive, insulting, almost mean at times.
    1. And that is not to mention the wild hair and weird clothes. And what is with the diet of locusts and wild honey?
    1. Still, all sorts of people had come to hear his preaching – rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
    1. His celebrity had become such that even the  religious types made their way out to the desert to see him. He insulted them along with everybody else, all to prepare the nation for the coming of Messiah.
      1. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near…
      1. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
      1. I baptize you with water for repentance.
      1. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.
  15. Then there was that magnificent day when Jesus came to the Jordan. John knew that this was the one.
  16. After that, the two went their separate ways –
    1. John continued with his powerful public proclamation;
  17. Jesus with his somewhat different approach. No doubt John noticed.
    1. John was out there in the wilderness with locusts for lunch while Jesus was changing water into wine. John screamed at sinners; Jesus ate dinner with them. John preached fire and brimstone; Jesus preached “love one another.” Hmm.
  18. Now John is in prison, a hellhole of a place – filthy, nasty, foul, dark. He had preached just one sermon too many, and this one mixed religion with politics, dangerous anytime.
  19. It seems that King Herod had taken up with his half-niece, Herodias, problem enough according to Jewish Law, but it seems she was already married to Herod’s own brother, making it all the worse.
    1. John the Baptist was an old school kind of preacher and thundered that such ought not to be. Truth be told, powerful people do not like to be challenged by powerful preaching, then or now. They ignore it if they can, but when the people start to listen in, they do what they can to silence it.
    1. Apparently, the people of Judea were listening (and probably laughing at the palace soap opera).
    1. So, John is in jail.
  20. He has time to think. He remembers the high hopes he had about Jesus being the Messiah.
    1. He had been prepared for the revolution and would have been the first to volunteer to join Jesus’ forces.
    1. But time went on…and on…and on. No call to arms. In fact, the reports that had been coming in gave no clue that Jesus was thinking about overthrowing Caesar or Herod or anybody else.
    1. There were some intriguing stories of miraculous occurrences in places where Jesus was, but no revolution.
  21. The Messiah? The answer to our nation’s prayers? Well, Jesus, if you are, understand that you are NOT what we prayed for.
  22. Interesting response from Jesus, don’t you think? Instead of answering straight out, Jesus says, “Go back and report to 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 the good news is preached to the poor.”
    1. Words right out of the prophet Isaiah that indicated to an oppressed people that they were not alone; their God was with them. But no direct response to John saying yea or nay. Nothing saying, “I did it” or even “I didn’t do it.” No indication that he is involved one way or the other.
  23. What is Jesus saying? That the Messiah has not come to ride into town on a white stallion, ready to lead an army or ascend a throne? That the Messiah who is the answer to their prayers is not at all what they expected? It sounds that way. It sounds as if he is saying, “Go tell John that things may not be working out the way he imagined, but more and more, in surprising places, marvelous things are happening.”
  24. “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Barbara Brown Taylor, a wonderful preacher from Atlanta, who I had the privilege to be at a retreat that she was leading interprets the passage this way”
  25. Slow
  26. She writes, “People who were blind to the love loose in the world have received their sight; people who were paralyzed with fear are limber with hope; people who were deaf from want of good news are singing hymns. And best and most miraculous of all, tell John that this is not the work of one lonely Messiah but the work of God, carried out by all who believe, and there is no end in sight. Tell him I am the one, if you must, but tell him also that yes, he should look for another, and another, and another. Tell him to search every face for the face of God and not get tripped up on me, because what is happening here is bigger than any of us. What is coming to pass is as big as the Kingdom of God.”
  27. “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” I wonder if Jesus’ response is a way of saying don’t get tripped up on all this Messiah stuff. You might be pinning your hopes on someone dropping on to the scene to magically fix things and make everything all right.
  28. Well, if that is what you are counting on, stop counting. It does not work that way.
    1. Each of us today are in this scene too. You have a part to play in making these hopes real.
  29. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners and one of the true prophets of hope in today’s world, has a wonderful way of illustrating this.
    1. Politicians, he says, are all of a kind. A politician holds up his finger in the wind, checks which way the wind is blowing, and then votes that way. It generally doesn’t help, Wallis says, to change the politicians because those who replace them do exactly the same thing. They too make their decisions according to the wind. And so, “We need to change the wind!” The wind will change the politicians.
  30. How does it work? Wallis uses the example of the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was not brought down by guns or violence or even by changing the politicians, but by changing the wind. How?
  31. In the face of racial injustice, people of faith began to pray together and, as a sign of their hope that one day the evil of apartheid would be overcome, they lit candles and placed them in their windows so that their neighbors, the government, and the whole world would see their belief. And their government did see. They passed a law making it illegal, a politically subversive act, to light a candle and put it in your window. It was seen as a crime, as serious as owning and flaunting a gun. The irony of this was not missed by the children. At the height of the struggle against apartheid, the children of Soweto had a joke: “Our government,” they said, “is afraid of lit candles!”
  32. It had reason to be. Eventually those burning candles, and the prayer and hope behind them, changed the wind in South Africa. Morally shamed by its own people, the government conceded that apartheid was wrong and dismantled it without a war, brought down by lit candles backed by hope and prayer.
  33. But those candles did not light themselves. “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
  34. Among the Jews who celebrate Passover, there is a tradition of saving a seat at their Seder feast for Elijah, the prophet who is supposed to bring the news that the Messiah has finally come, and the one to whom Jesus compared John.
    1. At a poignant moment in the service, the door is flung open for Elijah and everyone falls silent with anticipation. For thousands of years that door has been opened, and for thousands of years all that has entered has been the wind.
  35. One Hasidic story tells of a pious Jew who asked his rabbi, “For about forty years I have opened the door for Elijah every Seder night, waiting for him to come, but he never does. What is the reason?”
  36. The rabbi answered, “In your neighborhood there lives a very poor family with many children. Call on the man and propose to him that you and your family celebrate the next Passover at his house, and for this purpose provide him and his whole family with everything necessary for the eight days of Passover. Then on the Seder night Elijah will certainly come.”
  37. The man did as the rabbi told him, but after Passover he came back and claimed that again he had waited in vain to see Elijah. The rabbi answered, “I know very well that Elijah came on the Seder night to the house of your poor neighbor. But of course, you could not see him.” And the rabbi held a mirror before the face of the man and said, “Look, this was Elijah’s face that night.”
  38. Which leads me to one last question: Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else? Are you the one? Are you the one?
  39. Pause
  40. A couple of weeks short of Christmas day we draw nearer and nearer to the flesh and blood of the baby in the manger…..
    1. this baby who will fully enter into a human life so that we may know of our God’s amazing love for us…..
    1. so that we can have peace, hope and yes, even joy—where we hope for a King.
    1. We can smile again, we can laugh again, for we know that this Messiah is for all of us, and with all of us, in our weakest, most trying moments. 
  41. Even when we doubt, like John the Baptist did, Jesus never doubts us and comes to us over and over again.        
  42. And here my sisters and brothers is true joy.  That the Son of God comes to us and holds onto us…..comforting us in our weakest moments giving us whatever we need the most to make it through. 
  43. In this Messiah we take no offense for he came, not for the strong and the mighty, but for the weak and the vulnerable…..in other words, he came for you and I. 
  44. A light of true joy has shone and continues to shine into our darkest nights and many lights are shining now – in our neighborhoods – in our communities – and throughout the world. 
  45. But I hope that you will see them in a different way…..whenever you gaze upon them I pray that you will see them, not as an artificial way to brighten our dark season,— but as something that points to the source of our true joy…..and there is nothing artificial about him. — Jesus the King of Kings.
  46. May each and every one of you enjoy many bright, joyous Advent blessings as you point to Jesus and help others to see the light that dawns on a weary world!
  47. Thanks be to God.  Amen.