Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
The Rev. Scot Sherman
The Third Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2022
Isaiah 35:1-10 • James 5:7-10 • Matthew 11:2-11
The news story of the week was the release–finally!--of WNBA star, Brittney Griner, cruelly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin for having a hasheesh oil vape cartridge. Like many of you, I felt physical relief and joy as I heard the news. I thanked God, dropped everything and watched as her wife, Cherelle, wearing Brittney’s favorite color, expressed gratitude, relief and joy at the amazing news. “Gaudete”–rejoice!
But it was a complex story. The Saudi’s had brokered a prisoner swap for the merchant of death, Russians arms dealer, Viktor Bout. And then, on CNN, I heard the agonized voice of marine veteran Paul Whelan, speaking by phone from a Russian penal colony, where he has been languishing as Putin’s hostage for 4 years and facing another 12, expressing his disbelief: “I am ready to come home. My bags are packed. I need you...to come and get me.” Rejoice?
In today’s gospel, John the Baptist sounds a bit like Paul Whelan to me. He’s also the hostage of a sadistic autocrat, languishing in a prison-cave cell at Herod Antipas’ Fortress Machaerus, “the Sword.”
Last week, we were with John at the Jordan, giving his full throated endorsement of Jesus as the chosen one to bring about the longed for revolution that would put things to rights once and for all.
Months later, he’s in a living hell. His bags are packed and he’s ready to come home. We know from what Matthew reports of John’s preaching that he knew the promises of Isaiah that we read today—Isaiah’s dream was in the air!— and one of the things the Messiah is promised to do, Isaiah 61, is to set the prisoners free!
So John’s CNN interview with his disciples, if you will, is “so Jesus, is it you or should I keep looking?” Jesus tells them to report how the dream is being realized, that he is the one John’s been waiting for: tell him “the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor are hearing good news.” But instead saying, “AND the captives are being set free,” Jesus says, “Go and tell John... blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” In other words, freedom from this jail cell is not part of the Messiah’s immediate work. You have to deal with disappointment that the answer from God is “no.”
Many at the time were more than happy to welcome a God of vengeance who was on their side. But as Jesus tells Pilate, when he’s under arrest, “my kingdom is not of this world–it’s different, it’s not like yours– otherwise, my followers would be fighting to set ME free.” No. Jesus shows us that there is no violence in God. This is a revolution of love, a revolution of transformation from the inside out, and that means it takes time, and patience.
I love the sign maps when you are walking on a trail that say, “you are HERE now.” John had to do that internal work, and if you are a follower of Jesus Christ so do you. Faith requires you to learn where you are on the map: on the other side of Jesus’ resurrection, yes! But in painful tension between your current reality and God’s promised future. NT scholars talk about this as “the now and the now yet.”
The great 20th c. NT scholar Oscar Cullman had an analogy of “you are here now.” He said it’s like living between D-Day & VE Day. D-day, 78 years ago, the game-changing moment of WWII, when thousands of American, British and Canadian soldiers bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from the Nazi axis powers. It was a success! And once it was accomplished, Victory, final surrender was just a matter of time. Cullman’s point is that Jesus’ victory over evil and death on the cross, and his resurrection, show us our future—God’s victory over evil and death is assured—but we are not in the fullness of the kingdom of God, of new creation. Where we are now in the story, is the now of God’s love and sustaining grace in the midst of the MESS, waiting and working for the not-yet of “on earth as it is in heaven.”
There’s a hard-edged critical realism to Christian faith—we believe we can trust God, experience a with-God life, but honest spirituality recognizes that injustice and suffering are still with us. You are here now.
That can take the wind out of your sails. We can lose heart when we experience God’s “no.” Some of you today probably have a broken heart, maybe even bitterness and anger over something that God has allowed to happen. In a memorable scene in Nikos Kanzantzakis’ book, The Last Temptation, as Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha, the sick and disabled of Jerusalem pelt him with rocks, even their crutches, because he did not heal them all.
Jesus says to John, the way to get through the offense of no, is to look at what God is doing. That’s what we do every week. We gather to listen to God’s promises, to pray, and to meet at this altar. We are restored as we are re-storied, as we remember what God has done and is doing for us and in us in Christ.
I take heart when I remember people like Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, the 1st black woman to be ordained in TEC. She saw and lived through the worst of it, she lived with a lot of “no.” But she was a woman of faith. When things got tough she had a saying: “Hallelujah, anyhow!” Because through the struggle, through the pain, she knew the way of Jesus, the way of love, the way of resurrection, was the way of the future. Hallalujah anyhow!