Expectations

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³ and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴ Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵ the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶ And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Matthew 11

(This post is taken from a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent.)

“Are you the one?”

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This question asked of Jesus by John the Baptist is, to say the least, jarring. Does it surprise you? The first time I read this passage I had to go back and read it again: I was sure that I had misunderstood. But no, I hadn’t misunderstood; John was having a moment of doubt.

Perhaps his words are more understandable if we set them in context. At this point John had been imprisoned by King Herod for roughly a year. This herald of the Lord, who expected the Messiah to come in power, who expected God’s promise of the kingdom to be fulfilled, finds himself in a dank, dark prison. As far as John can tell, nothing has changed. Surely, he thought, this isn’t the way it was supposed to go. You can almost feel his disappointment.

Did John doubt God’s promise? If he did, it’s because the promise didn’t come true in the way that he was expecting. If Jesus was the Messiah, why didn’t he proclaim himself King, destroy the power of the Romans and of Herod, and release John himself from prison?

I love Jesus’ answer to John. He seems to be saying “what further proof do you need?” The evidence is there if you have eyes to see it. Jesus points out that “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” just as Isaiah foretold. These are all the signs of the Kingdom of God breaking into human history.

“Are you the one?” Hopefully John’s question sounds a little less jarring now.

And before we judge John too harshly, we first might want to take an honest look at ourselves.

I remember my mom once coming home from Bible study and confronting me. “I thought everyone in the Bible was perfect,” she huffed. I’m sorry, I said, but that is not the case. And then I told her about visiting a woman in a nursing home who had a little plaque on her wall that said:

I love Jesus
But I cuss a little

The words always made me laugh but they pointed to a deeper truth: no matter how much we’d like to be, none of us is perfect. It’s true God wants us to be perfect – but not in a legalistic sense. God wants us to be perfect in love. But I disgress…

What I’m getting at is we all have challenges in our lives, some big, some small. And when you’re going through something truly challenging you might entertain some doubts; you might wonder where God is.

The promise of Advent, the promise of the Incarnation is that God is with us, working in the world doing all the things God has promised. Advent reminds us that God is right here.

In Advent we live in expectation of the time that the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Right now, the Kingdom is only here partially. There is still a great deal of darkness in the world. How do we live in the meantime?  

How do we deal with the darkness? How do we deal with the doubts?

For me, the answer has always been music. When life doesn’t make sense I listen to the music of J.S. Bach. There’s something…logical about his music that helps me find clarity. Bach’s music brings calm and order into my life.

But when I have doubts or questions about my faith I turn to Handel’s Messiah.

I am sure everyone is familiar with Messiah – you know, the Hallelujah Chorus and all that.

I listen to Messiah because it lays everything out: the oratorio begins with God’s promises of comfort, peace and forgiveness and ends with the fulfillment of those promises. If you want a synopsis of the biblical story there is no better place to start than the libretto of Messiah. As you listen it becomes obvious that the librettist chose the scripture passages with great care. But the story of how and why he chose them – well, that’s another story.

Charles Jennens was the man who chose the scripture passages for Messiah. He was born into an incredibly wealthy family and filled the home on his 700- acre English estate with valuable works of art and manuscripts of the latest music Europe had to offer. He led a life of luxury that is almost impossible to imagine.

Still, Jennens wasn’t happy. In fact, he was miserable, often referring to himself as a ‘wretch.’ If Jennens lived today instead of in the 18^th century he would probably be diagnosed with clinical depression. He believed that society was doomed. You can’t blame him: He looked around and saw only political scandals and conspiracies, religious divisions and grinding poverty.  In addition Jennens’ brother Robert committed suicide in spectacular fashion because he despaired over losing his faith in God.

Grieving his brother’s death and believing society was headed for disaster, Jennens looked for something to give him solace. So he began working on what he called his “Scripture Collection,” Biblical passages from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that he linked together. He did a brilliant job and what he discovered was an underlying order of salvation.This discovery offered hope not only to his time, but to every generation since.

Jennens was a great admirer and friend of the composer Georg Friedrich Handel, so it was natural that Jennens should pass the libretto on to him to be set to music.

It took Handel a mere 24 days to complete the music. The words and music combined to became Messiah. And at the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters “SDG” – Soli Deo Gloria – which means “To God alone be the glory”.

What Jennens discovered in compiling the texts for Messiah is something that millions of other people, like me, have discovered as well: hope.

Hope because we can trace promises made and promises fulfilled. Hope because we learn that God is truly present and at work among us. That’s why Messiah speaks so strongly to me.

But, we can’t forget about John. You may have been wondering why this passage from Matthew’s gospel is appointed for the Third Sunday of Advent. Why a story about John’s doubt and disappointment?

I think it was chosen because Advent is a time of hope and expectation. The Incarnation of Jesus is good news, but it recognizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but first it declares the truth that the world right now can be very dark.

As David Lose writes:

“Aren’t we also still waiting for the consummation of the Christmas promise? I mean, isn’t it precisely what is so wonderful about Christmas — the promises of peace on earth and goodwill among all — that is also so difficult about Christmas, as the headlines and sometimes even our homes regularly make it clear that peace and goodwill are as scarce commodities today as they were just a few months or years or millennia ago?”

Part of the problem, I think, is that our expectations don’t always match our reality. In other words, our expectations don’t always align with God’s actions.

Perhaps like John the Messiah we’re expecting isn’t the Messiah we have.  

Lose continues:

“And so while Matthew’s portrayal of John and his doubts is striking, and even startling, maybe it’s not so odd to hear about it at Christmas, when we, too, at times, feel stuck between God’s promises made and God’s promises kept; when we, too, at times, know ourselves to live in between Christ’s first coming at Bethlehem and his second in glory; when we, too, at times, disappointed by ourselves, the world, and even God, find ourselves whispering a prayer as desperate as it is ancient and simple: O Come, Lord Jesus, come.”

“Are you the one?”

The answer to that question is just as important today as it was 2,000 years ago. People of faith continue to proclaim that yes, Jesus is the one, the Messiah, the savior of the world. We proclaim on this Gaudate Sunday, the Sunday of joy, that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises and the source of joy which no darkness can overcome.