1st Sunday in Advent: Are You the One We've Waited For?

(Audio here)

This time of year is a difficult time to preach. I mean, Jesus was born and I guess that’s a pretty big deal, but most of us here are pretty familiar with the Christmas or Advent stories in the scriptures. We’re all probably familiar, in some form, with the prophets foretelling, Mary’s singing, Joseph’s dream, Elizabeth’s surprise pregnancy, Zechariah’s tongue being silent. We may be less familiar with the encounters of Anna and Simeon than we are with the encounters of the shepherds and wise men. And I am very sure most us can recall, in that little town of Bethlehem, the most famous birth of all. While we may be familiar or acquainted with these stories, this time of year allows us to be deliberate and ask out loud, “Are you, Jesus, the one we’ve been expecting? Or should we wait for someone else?”

I am sure we all know what it is like to wait for something important to happen: a birth, a special day like a birthday, Christmas, Easter, graduation, or a wedding day. We all know what it’s like to what for something special to happen, and we carry with us great expectations of those days. We expect good tidings on those days, but what happens when we receive bad tidings on those days?

Early this week, a childhood friend buried his 3 week old daughter. She was born 14 weeks premature and couldn’t overcome the medical problems that followed. So, how do you respond to such tragedy on what was to be a day of celebration? How do you look at the coming of a joyous day in the midst of your darkest hour? How would you react to such a thing after you waited so long?

John the Baptist is locked away in a prison cell because he continually preached a message challenging the King Herod and others; telling Herod, “It isn’t right for you to take Herodias, your brother’s wife.” As with prophets, seeing the inside of a jail comes with the territory, and John is chained to the wall of a jail cell waiting. John has been a faithful servant of the Lord. He faithfully preached out in the wilderness of the one who was to come. He is the first one to recognize Jesus, saying, “This was he of whom I said,” and sending two of his disciples to follow Jesus; yet he sits in a cell waiting.

John sends messengers to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one we’ve been expecting? Or should we wait for another?” He has heard about the doings of Jesus, but facing his darkest hour, John wonders if the one he pointed out in the wilderness was truly the one they were waiting for. Jesus doesn’t give a yes or no answer. Jesus tells the messengers, “Look around you and report what you see. Tell John about the blind seeing, the lame are walking, the mute are talking, the deaf are hearing, the dead are alive, and the poor folks are having good news brought to them. Go now, and tell John all that you see and hear.”

Jesus doesn’t send John a blunt affirmation but a report of what is being seen. He suggests John remember the words of Isaiah, “He (God) has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Perhaps John remembered those words of the proclamation to release the prisoners. But Jesus goes further, he tells them to report the miracles happening, and report of the blind receiving sight, a miracle nowhere recorded in the Old Testament or predicated of any previous Biblical prophet.

I am not sure, though, if that’s what John really wanted to hear. I feel John wanted his messengers to return with a message reading, “At midnight, we shall storm the castle and ride to freedom.” John preached about a messiah who would clean house, who would run off the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the kings, and emperors of Rome. He expected a messiah who would raid the castle and set the prisoners free, surely John had earned the right to be rescued; yet Jesus tells his messengers, “Go and report what you see and what you hear.”

It is hard not to fault John for his doubt or for his need for affirmation. He had been waiting, like the others, for this coming messiah, and he went out into the wilderness to be the voice that prepared the way the coming Son of Man, and now he faces life in prison or worse death (something coming very soon). It is hard not to fault him because we too are waiting. We too are waiting on the return of the Son of Man. We too are waiting and we are growing weary of waiting.

Back in the 80s McDonald’s playground used to have a character called Officer Big Mac. He was an enormous (to a child) Big Mac that you could climb up and in and crawl around, he had bars on the crawl space, like you were in jail. When I was four, I climbed up inside and played for a while and as I started to climb back down I got stuck. Not sure what had happened, I just remember being stuck and crying out for someone to help me. A woman told me she couldn’t get in and I heard, “Let go.” So I let go and busted the back of my head open. It was a painful moment in which I waited and waited but the one who came to help couldn’t help me.

We all have been there, haven’t we? We’ve had those experiences in which we cry aloud to the Lord, “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for? Or are we to expect another?” We all have those moments in which we wonder if the light of God will not be overcome by the darkness of the world. Even if we are unwilling to admit it, we at the very least know of someone who has been there. They have been there, facing their darkest hour asking, “Are you the one we have waited for?”

Before she passed away last February, Darcy Donahue and I used to get together, spending our time talking. Most of our time was spent talking about the anxiety of waiting. She had spent most of her life waiting to for a cure or for death. There were days hope would fill her room and her heart and there were days she bluntly asked, “Is he the one I’ve waited for?” There were days when she believed she would be the disease and days when she would climb back in bed and ask me to pray for God to take her into the sweet by and by. Those days were the hardest because they were the realistic struggles of one who is weary of waiting.

It is hard to read Jesus’ response to the messengers as hopeful if you are in the midst of the painful waiting place, where no one is going anywhere, where people are disappearing, where people are stuck, where people are sick, where people are hurting, where people are fighting, and where people are dying. It is hard to hear Jesus say, “Go and report what you see and hear” and not respond, “What I see? What I see is a world in chaos. What I hear are people getting shot over televisions in Walmart. What I see are babies dying from incurable diseases. What I see are people starving. What I see are governments funding new ways to kill one another. What I hear are teenagers dying freak accidents. What I see and hear is a world in disarray. That is what I see and hear.” I wonder if that was John’s response when they said, “Jesus told us to tell you what we see and what we hear.”

It is hard to hear Jesus’ words of the blind receiving sight, of the lame walking, of the mute talking, of the deaf are hearing, the dead are alive, and the poor are having good news brought to them. It is hard to hear them in the midst of our chaotic world and our own chaotic lives. Yet we must hear them because he is affirming the signs that say, “Yes, I am the one you have been waiting for.” We must hear them because it gives us strength to stand, to throw back our shoulders, to raise up our heads, even with tears in our eyes, for we know our freedom is arriving.

Yes it is hard to hear Jesus’ words but we need to hear them. We need to know of these things taking place because it gives us hope in the waiting place. It gives us reassurance of the one who was, is and is to come. It gives us strength to sit with one another in our darkest hours, reassured that the light of God has indeed come into this world and the darkness cannot, nor ever will, overcome it. We need to hear, even in the midst of our pain, Jesus say, “the blind are receiving sight, the lame are walking, the deaf are hearing, the dead are alive, and the poor are having good news brought to them.” We need those words for when we ask, “Are you the one we’ve waited for? Or should we expect another?”

Let us join hands as we wait together in the waiting place of Advent, sing our songs of hope, peace, joy, and love, and hear Jesus tell us, “the blind are receiving sight, the lame are walking, the deaf are hearing, the dead are alive, and the poor are having good news brought to them.” And let us all together say, amen.