Last week in our reading from the gospel of Matthew on the 2nd Sunday in Advent, our hero, John the Baptist, was out in the wilderness - and that’s a good thing because that is just where he wanted to be eating yummy locust and honey, dressed in camel’s hair. To which I say, to each his own. What’s particularly great is that he is doing what he was born to do - getting his people ready for the coming of the Messiah, preparing the way of the Lord. The One for whom Israel has been waiting. The One who, John proclaims, will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The One who has a winnowing fork in his hand, separating good from bad, wheat from chaff. That’s where our reading ended last week, but immediately following that the One comes, Jesus, the Messiah. The wait is finally over and John baptizes him. It’s the culmination of all that John hoped for, worked for, was born for. John has fulfilled his purpose - a job well done!
This morning we have John again, but he’s different. He’s no longer where he wants to be doing what he wants to do. That big, bold talk about the Messiah has landed him in King Herod’s prison where he sits and waits, listening to reports about what Jesus is doing. And it seems that something must not be quite right for John sends word through his disciples with a question, “Are you the One who is to come? Or are we to wait for another?” Are you the One? How could John ask such a thing? He was the one who boldly, confidently told everyone that Jesus was the Messiah. How did he get to this place of doubt, of questions? Jesus, are you really the One?
Perhaps the question arose from the possibility that Jesus was just not acting like a Messiah was supposed to act. Where was that Messiah of Fire? God’s Messiah was to come in a mighty way to set things straight, which would include a military Messiah that would set Israel free. From the reports that John was getting coupled with his own situation locked up in Herod’s prison, clearly this was not happening. Seems natural that John would start to wonder, to question.
We can sympathize, can’t we? Don’t we want a Messiah who will come and act in a mighty way? We want and pray for God to heal, to protect, to save, to change things in our own lives and in the lives of those we love. We pray that suffering will stop, that justice will come. We, too, want God to set things straight and make things right. But when God does not act as expected we may, like John, wonder. His question may become the question of our own hearts: Jesus, are you really the One?
So what’s Jesus’ answer? Go tell John what you see and hear: the blind see, the lame walk, the leper cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised, the poor have good news. You know, probably John and the rest of us would have preferred a simple yes or no answer. But maybe a simple yes or no would not really answer the question. The answer Jesus gives is bigger than that. His response, I’m sure, would ring familiar to John and perhaps to us as well as we hear the echoes from our first reading in Isaiah where the prophet is giving the Jews and us a glimpse of the age to come. An age where Israel’s wounds and all the world’s ills are healed. Jesus’s answer seeks to enlarge John’s vision, his expectations about the Messiah who may not always operate in the expected ways.
Now back when John was out in the wilderness he particularly pointed fingers and called out the Pharisees and Sadducees telling them that when God’s Messiah came they would need to change. You know though that when you point a finger at someone there’s one finger pointing at them and three pointing back at you. When God comes into the world and into our lives it’s not just the religious leaders or other people that are called to change, but us too - even John the Baptist.
Last week Fr. David reminded us that God’s way is always the way of love. And that how we experience the fire of God’s love - whether it will burn or baptize, undo us or uplift us depends on how open, how willing we are to let it change us. John was experiencing that fire of God’s love and it was calling for change - to expand his understanding, his expectations, his acceptance that Jesus the Messiah would indeed fulfill all the prophecies, but in a different, fuller way than John originally had in mind.
It’s rather remarkable that our Scripture includes this type of epilogue to John the Baptist’s story. It would have been much easier, much simpler, and rather two dimensional to stopped the story last week - letting our hero stay on the mountaintop of faith basking in the glory of Jesus’s baptism with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. However, John is more complex than that. We are exposed to not only his passionate commitment to his faith and call, but also his struggle, his doubt, his question. And it’s not just John, is it? I imagine his story is ours as well and that is why it is in our Scripture because a life of faith is complicated.
So on this third Sunday in Advent, as we wait for the coming of God, Jesus the Messiah, into the world and into our lives, let us like John in the midst of the complexity of faith be willing to open ourselves up to the fire of God’s love. May we let it change us, baptize us, make us bearers of that loving fire so that we might share with the world in both word and deed the good news that Jesus truly is the One.
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