Year A Advent 3

Year A Advent 3

Text: Matthew 11:2-11 – Is there someone else up there?

A man had accidentally slipped over the edge of a cliff while bush walking.

He was hanging on for dear life to the edge with his fingers starting to slip.

In a last ditch bid he calls out to God:

God, if you’re really there, please save me.

A voice comes back – I want you to trust me.

Let go of the ledge and I will save you.

He thinks about it for a brief moment and replies – Is there someone else up there I can talk to.

Obviously not a true story, but one that typifies the situation that John the Baptist has gotten himself into.

How different things must have looked for John behind prison walls.

When John came onto the scene, he said what he wanted to say, without holding back.

John must have felt a kind of excitement with so much religious energy in the air.

John came proclaiming that “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2).

John came to prepare the people because someone was coming who was “more powerful” than he was (Matthew 3:11).

John was sure that when this powerful person arrived, things would change.

John expected that evil and corrupt people would be confronted.

Evil would be destroyed, burned up like chaff in a fire (Matthew 3:12).

From where John sat behind those prison walls, the chaff was still very much around.

Things hadn’t worked out the way John expected.

He must have expected that when the powerful one came, he and his group would be vindicated.

The corrupt leaders, like Herod, would be judged.

Now he was the one being judged.

He was the one in prison.

God hadn’t released him, even though Jesus claims he has come to set the prisoner free. (Luke 4:18)

The one more powerful than he hadn’t released him.

John had once made the crowds tremble with his words.

Now he is the one trembling with his head literally on the chopping block.

And so John rightly asks: “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (v2)

John knew that someone was coming.

Whatever has happened within him, he hadn’t lost his faith in God.

But he wondered whether Jesus was really the one.

John didn’t deserve the treatment he was receiving.

Jesus tells us that there was none greater than John on all the earth (Matthew 11:11).

John had been willing to accept Jesus as the one who was coming, but his life situation meant he had some questions for Jesus, and God, to answer.

Was Jesus really the one?

While John languished in prison, those doubts really began to matter.

Can we blame John under these circumstances if he began to wonder about Jesus being “one more powerful than I”?

Had he made a mistake about Jesus?

The answer to his question really mattered to John.

Life can be full of doubts when it comes to our faith.

John’s question about whether Jesus was really the one is sometimes the same question we ask.

How has being a Christian made a difference to our lives?

How has Jesus made a difference to the world we live in?

If the Messiah has come, why do so many of us find ourselves doubting at times?

We could all name some of those things that cause us doubts.

For John the Baptist, the prison was his doubt.

Maybe we have lost our job and the frustration eats away at us.

Maybe an addiction has us in its grip and, no matter how much we pray, we can’t break free.

Maybe the memory of some mistake we have made hangs over us and we have doubts about God’s forgiveness – about our salvation.

We can’t find any release from the guilt.

Maybe we feel isolated because we think no one would understand even though Jesus said, I am with you always.

If Jesus is the one, if Jesus came in power, if God has reached into our world through Jesus, why aren’t things different?

Why hasn’t God thrown into the fire the chaff of evil?

Why hasn’t his winnowing fork cleared the threshing floor like John said it would? (Matthew 3:12)

Not only do we struggle to understand the continued existence of evil, we wonder about the persistence of evil even though we constantly pray – deliver us from evil.

We don’t even seem to be making progress against evil.

Sometimes it feels that the more we have faith, the more we share John’s doubts.

Jesus sent an answer back to John.

It probably wasn’t the answer John wanted or expected.

“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” (Matthew 11:4-5).

It might seem to John that Jesus is helping all these people, but not him.

But what Jesus is pointing out is that he is fulfilling Scripture which we hear throughout the Old Testament (Isaiah 29:18, 61:1, 35:5, Psalm 146:5-10)

The point Jesus is telling John, and us, is the message of James:

Be patient until the coming of the Lord. (James 5:7)

Christ has won the victory but the battle still rages.

Jesus came at the first Christmas to begin the reconciliation process between God and humankind.

At Easter the battle raged and Christ was victorious by defeating the last obstacle in the reconciliation between God and humankind – death.

And now we wait patiently for Christ to return this time in Glory.

Until then, as we patiently wait, our glory is hidden, but it is there.

As St. Paul says to the Colossian church: you have been raised with Christ, so set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

That’s what we patiently wait for.

Jesus came in power, but not the kind of power John anticipated and not the type of power we are seeing in this lifetime.

Jesus’ power was the power of healing and grace.

Jesus’ power was in his message of the reign of God.

I love that part in the liturgy which we sing –

For the lamb who was slain HAS begun his reign.

Because of the evil of the world, we see that power now but Christ’s power is real and hidden behind water, Word and bread and wine.

Christ’s reign in this world doesn’t fix all of our problems.

It didn’t free John from prison.

Nevertheless, Jesus’ power and authority are here now.

Are we as convinced as ever that Jesus is the Christ and that the future is in God’s hands?

Doubt are part of this life, but the doubts are met by God rather than condemned.

Remember the greatest doubter in Scripture – doubting Thomas.

When he said that he would refuse to believe unless he saw the scars of Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus came to him and let him touch his scars.

And so when you doubt the power of Christ, bring those doubts to him and let him answer you as he answered John.

By pointing you back to Scripture – back to the Word of God which is the power of salvation.

As John says in his closing words of his Gospel:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31).

That is God’s promise to you until he returns in Glory.