WHAT WERE YOU
EXPECTING?
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect
someone else?” Coming from John the Baptist, this is the most startling
question of the New Testament. He who had seen and heard God’s affirmation of
Jesus when Jesus was baptized, “This is my Son,” now asks this question born
out of pain and doubt.
Advent
is a season of expectancy. Hope gives the foundation for expectancy. We are
given a promise; the promise gives us hope; we expect to see the fulfillment of
this hope. But what happens when hope disappoints us? What happens when you
feel that God has let you down?
God, we
can imagine, responds with this question, “What were you expecting?”
We
talked last week about favorite Christmas movies. Some of my favorites are off
the beaten track. One I enjoy is called “It
happened on 5th Avenue,” released in 1947. The story follows a
homeless man who regularly inhabits a mansion in New York while the owners are
down south for winter. This homeless man invites other down-and-out characters
to live with him, forming a community or family of losers trying to get on
their feet. One of the squatters happens to be the real owner who poses as a
hobo, but learns to appreciate these interlopers and helps them out. It all
works out in the end. A happy ending! Christmas movies always have a happy
ending. The majority of movies end well. Depressing movies don’t sell seats as
well.
But life
is not a movie. Happy endings are not guaranteed. It doesn’t always “work out
in the end.” If we hold on to that cliché we will be sorely disappointed in
life. Our hopes, our dreams, our goals will not magically become reality like a
Christmas movie.
When
your hopes are dashed, when God has not come through for you, when Jesus seems
far away, we need to consider the question: What were you expecting?
Does Jesus leave you wondering?
John the Baptist is in prison. How do you imagine this
scene? Is John chained to the wall of a five-by-five basement cell? Does he
have room to pace in that dark, dank, grimy cubicle? What is worse for John,
the dungeon or the doubts that assail his heart?
John had
boldly spoken out against the sin of Herod Antipas. Herod divorced his own wife
and seduced the wife of his brother and married her. John publicly rebuked
Herod for this sin and Herod imprisoned the fire and brimstone preacher.
Now John
is battling doubt and fear. A man facing the death penalty cannot afford to
have doubts – he must be certain. But to be fair, John’s doubts should not
surprise us. What he had predicted and longed for, a new world order, had just
not materialized. He expected the world to change when he announced that Jesus,
God’s anointed, had come. Months after the baptism of Jesus, John could not see
the change.
John
sends two disciples to Jesus with the question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
(11:3). I wonder if the question stung Jesus.
There
are three ways of looking at this question:
1) Some people think that the question was not for John’s
sake, but for his disciples. He had said, “I must decrease so that he can
increase.” John was stepping aside for Jesus. So maybe he was sending his
disciples to see what Jesus was doing and to witness for themselves that he is
the Christ.
2) Others think that John’s question was born out of
impatience. John’s message was of divine judgment – the ax is at the tree - the
winnowing fork is in his hand - the Christ comes with cleansing fire (3:10-12).
So when is Jesus going to act? When will he crush the Romans? When will he
condemn the sinners and make all things right?
A
passionate man, a man of action, John wanted Jesus to establish his kingdom.
Impatient, John sends Jesus this question: “Are you him or not?” Is Jesus our
only hope?
3) A few have ventured to suggest that John’s question
was nothing less than the question of a dawning faith and hope. They think that
John has indeed seen that Jesus is the One and merely seeks confirmation. But I
don’t buy it.
My own
impression is option 2. John had doubts. He was human. He was like us. When
Jesus fails to work in just the way we expect him to work, we begin to question
him. We doubt. Maybe we doubt the strength of our own faith, or maybe we doubt
that God really cares.
Who of
us has not cried out to God in frustration over dashed expectations? We have
prayed, we have been faithful, and still we do not see the results we hoped
for. Life gets tougher. Innocent people suffer. Some loved ones die. Where is
God, the one we hope in? We are left wondering about Jesus…
Doubt is
not a sin. I was once told that to doubt is to begin to seek to understand.
Doubt fuels the search for answers. Paul Tillich points out that God does not
stand aloof, apart from our questions; rather God is in the struggle of doubt,
making himself known through it. Doubt is therefore a vital part and element of
the faith which justifies. Our faith is not a faith without doubts, but a faith
within doubts. Not the answers we possess but who possesses us. We may doubt
God, but God never doubts us. This is the love that never lets us go.
What kind of Messiah do you want?
The answer John receives may not have satisfied his
doubts. Jesus replied to John through the disciples, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive
sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (11:4-5).
Is this
what you wanted to hear, John? I think what John wanted was something we also
want – we want a Messiah who answers our questions, fulfills our longings, and
is powerful to solve all our troubles. What kind of Messiah do you want?
Jesus’
answer is completely biblical. The Psalmist wrote that the God of Jacob “…upholds the cause of the oppressed and
gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free, the LORD gives
sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves
the righteous” (Ps. 146:7-8).
The
prophet Isaiah echoed these signs when he said, “Behold, your God will come…Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like deer, and the
mute tongue shout for joy” (35:5-6).
Then
when Jesus began his ministry in Nazareth, he read from Isaiah 61:1-3. This was
a Messianic prophecy foretelling what the anointed One would do when he came.
Jesus told the audience in the synagogue at Nazareth, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21). He
might as well have set off a bomb, it so shocked the people.
These
are the signs that accompany the Messiah. What do you notice about these people
who benefit from the advent of the Christ? They are outcasts, social misfits,
cripples… Jesus comes to the blind, the deaf, the lame, the poor, the
prisoner…Jesus is preoccupied with freaks and geeks. These are not the people
John would have chosen to bring revolution. These are not the movers and
shakers of the world. These people aren’t going to change anything.
Wait a
minute John, what do these people remind you of? They are all in need. That’s
something that John has in common with them now that he is in prison.
John,
the popular desert preacher, full of charisma, commanded a large following. Yet
despite his incredible faith and service to God, he finds himself in a position
of absolute need. He can relate completely with the needy, the poor, the
outcast, the prisoner, who can boast of nothing except their dependence on
God’s grace and mercy. If I were John though, I would find it painfully ironic
that Jesus came to set the prisoners free, but I’m still in prison. Something’s
off here.
While
John often fasted, Jesus feasted – and he ate with sinners, tax collectors and
prostitutes. While John preached hellfire for sin, Jesus preached love and
forgiveness. John was flummoxed. And you will be flummoxed too if you long for
a Messiah of your own making.
Are you offended by Jesus?
The final thing Jesus wants to tell John speaks to the
heart of John’s expectations. “Blessed is
anyone who does not stumble on account of me” (11:6).
The word
“stumble” can also be translated “offense.” It comes from the Greek word scandalon, from which we get our word
“scandalous.” Scandals can take down Presidents, ruin marriages, and destroy
careers. Scandals are offensive to the general public. Those who have been
scandalized will find it very hard to come back to a position of
respectability.
What
Jesus tells John then, is that the person who does not find Jesus scandalous or
offensive will accept him as the Christ.
Was John
offended? Perhaps. John may have only grasped half of the truth concerning his
cousin. John preached the gospel of divine holiness and destruction; Jesus
preached the gospel of divine holiness and love. So Jesus says to John, “Maybe
I am not doing the things you expected me to do. But the powers of evil are
being defeated, not by irresistible power, but by unanswerable love.” If a
person is offended at Jesus it might be because Jesus cuts across one’s ideas
of what religion should be.[i]
But
think of the scandal that is Jesus Christ. He was conceived of by an unmarried
teenage girl. Her husband wanted a divorce (an annulment of their betrothal).
When Jesus was born, this “king” was born in a stable and slept in a feeding
trough. Jesus was raised as a common carpenter – a laborer. Finally he was
killed like a criminal, executed on a cursed tree.
And the
things he said…well! Jesus told crowds to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
When great crowds followed him, he turned on them and said they should take up
their crosses (those hated instruments of death) and follow him. He criticized
the religious; he rebuked the rich; he ran from the crown.
Are you
not offended? Do you not find this Jesus to be utterly scandalous? And yet,
isn’t this exactly what you need in a Messiah? When your life is rocked with
scandal, when you realize that you find yourself among the needy and identify
with those who depend on God and throw themselves on his mercy, in this moment
we find in Jesus a God who is, once and for all, for us.
Paul
quoted Isaiah when he summed up the two choices concerning Jesus, “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men
to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will
never be put to shame” (Rom. 9:33). You can fall over Jesus and be crushed
by your failure to confess your sin and need, or you can fall on Jesus’ and
find the mercy you are looking for.
How is
this a Christmas message? In this advent season we remember the hope and
expectancy of a God who would draw near. He came near in the flesh and blood of
a helpless baby to experience our existence, our plight. He is Immanuel, “God
with us.”
Matthew’s
account of John’s doubts fits with our Christmas experience quite well. At this
time of year we are filled with hope. But we are also filled with a feeling of
being stuck between God’s promises made and God’s promises kept, between
Christ’s first coming at Bethlehem and his second coming with Glory.
When it comes to Jesus Christ, what were you expecting?
What
would Jesus say to us in our doubts, our disappointment with God, and our
disillusionment with the so-called “happy endings” that elude us?
He might
say to you and I “Hang on to your faith in me. I know you are suffering; I know
you are hurting. I know I haven’t been what you expected Me to be. You think I
have let you down somehow. But the problem is not me. The problem is the
expectation you have laid upon me. You need to understand that I am much
greater than the box you have put me into. Remember that I am not yours to
command. Repent of your expectations. Believe what the Scriptures say about Me.
Trust me to do, not to do what you have expected me to do, but what I have
promised to do in my Word for you. And if you trust in My Word, the promises of
Scripture, I will never disappoint you. No, you will find that I have done
everything I said I would do and more than you can imagine. You will find that
you will be eternally satisfied in Me.”[ii]
Jesus
might say something like that, if we are allowed to put words in his mouth. Or
he might simply say, “You say I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,
not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I
counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may clothe
yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your
eyes, so that you may see…Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears
my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he
with me” (Rev. 3:17-18, 20).
AMEN
