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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This fall I took my younger niece to see the movie “Pitch Perfect”. I knew she wanted to see it, but I knew very little about the movie itself, and what I knew made me think that I would not enjoy it very much. I was pleasantly surprised. Internet Movie Database users currently give the movie only a 7-point-3 out of 10, but I think the fact that my expectations at the time were so low allowed me to enjoy the movie. Often, the opposite is our problem, especially around the holidays. Unreasonably high expectations or expectations that are or wrong in some other way end up unmet and so leave us frustrated and depressed, maybe even doubting ourselves or others. Wrong expectations are a theme common to the two, related parts of today’s Gospel Reading. In the second part, to drive home His point, Jesus three times asks essentially the same rhetorical question: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” I have recast His question as the theme for this sermon, titling it, “What or Who have you come to see?”
In last week’s Gospel Reading we heard John the Baptizer call for fruits in keeping with repentance, and in this week’s Gospel Reading we hear him ask questions of Jesus. In between the two Gospel Readings, St. Luke tells about both John’s baptizing Jesus and John’s being locked up in prison by Herod, whom John reproved for his evil deeds. As we heard today, John’s disciples report Jesus’s ministry to John in prison, and John sends two disciples to ask Jesus if He is the Coming One or if they should look for another. After performing more miracles, Jesus tells them to report to John what they have seen and heard, and, after they leave, Jesus speaks to the crowds concerning John.
Admittedly, we do not know how long John the Baptizer had been in prison at that point, nor do we know what all he had heard from his disciples, nor do we know precisely why he asked the questions he asked. But, John knew Who Jesus was, and John had God’s Word, so he should have interpreted what he heard in that light and trusted God on the rest. John still has faith, for he asks Jesus the questions and seems willing to wait longer. Yet, nevertheless John seems to doubt in some way and to some extent. Apparently Jesus was not meeting John’s expectations. Maybe John expected Jesus to do things on a different timetable, such as sooner rather than later. Maybe John expected Jesus to do different things, such as preach grace less and judge more. Maybe John expected Jesus to get different results, such as setting John free from prison. However John’s expectations may have differed, John can be taken as trying to impose his will on Jesus.
We can only imagine—if we can imagine at all—the kind of grief the people in Newtown, Connecticut, are experiencing, after twenty first-graders and six school staff members died there Friday, all from multiple gunshot wounds. Like John the Baptizer, in the aftermath of that massacre, some believers, likely have their own doubts and questions for God, related to their expectations of when He does things, what He does, and the results He gets. Yet, we do not need a massacre like that to have doubts and questions for God. Our expectations of Him can become an issue in other ways each and every day, as we, like John the Baptizer, try to impose our will on God. We likely have unmet expectations regarding the world, this country, our jobs, our friends, our families, and our own health; such unmet expectations can leave us not only frustrated and depressed but also doubting ourselves and even God. And the same is true when it comes to expectations of the Church. As Jesus in the Gospel Reading questioned the crowds who went out to the wilderness to see John, so I ask this morning, “What or Who have you come to see?” Are you here looking for teaching based on opinion poll results? Are you here looking for a splendid and luxurious life in this world? Or, are you here looking for the forgiveness of sins from a God Who does not have to answer to us for when or how He does things or the results He gets?
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus uses His three questions to help properly identify John the Baptizer for the crowds, especially for the Pharisees and experts in the law not being baptized by John, who thus had rejected God’s purpose for them. In properly identifying John for the crowds, Jesus also properly identifies Himself for the crowds, even as He properly identified Himself for John’s disciples. John the Baptizer was more than a prophet because he was God’s chosen messenger to prepare the way for the Coming One (the Messiah, the Christ), as described by the prophet Malachi, quoted in today’s Appointed Verse and also in the Gospel Reading. If John is that chosen messenger, then Jesus is that Coming One, even if he does not meet everyone’s expectations of Him. Jesus does the things God’s Word promised the Coming One would do: graciously giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, cleansing the lepers, making the deaf hear, raising the dead, and preaching the good news (or Gospel) to the poor (that is, to those who “realize that they are spiritually wholly empty and destitute”). Such preaching of the Gospel to the poor (or humble) is the greatest on the list! All of the physical ones would restore a Jew to fellowship with the worshiping community, but the preaching of the Gospel restores believers to fellowship with God! The Gospel is the good news of the God-man Jesus’s victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil for them, as for you and for me. Jesus won that victory by completing the way John prepared: the way to the cross. The good news of that victory (the Gospel) itself brings into effect the salvation Jesus won. So, we come here to let that Gospel in all its forms have its way with us.
You cannot tell from the English Standard Version of the Gospel Reading, but twice St. Luke uses the Greek word that gives us our English word “angel”—John’s disciples sent back by Jesus to John are such “messengers”, and, in the Malachi quotation, John himself sent by God the Father is such a “messenger”. Not balls of light in canoes or other such apparitions, but true, Biblical “angels” at least appear as men sent by God to proclaim the Gospel. So, pastors, too, are such messengers of the Gospel, purely preaching it and rightly administering it in its Sacramental forms: Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. We may only see and hear water, words from a pastor, and bread and wine, but we understand them as God’s Word interprets them: as the washing of regeneration, as the forgiveness as from God Himself, and as Christ’s body and blood, given and shed for you and for me for life and salvation. In such ways the prophecy of today’s Old Testament Reading is fulfilled: the Lord Himself is present and takes away our judgment. When we are poor (when we repent and believe), then the good news of the Gospel in these ways forgives us our sins—our sins of wrong expectations, our sins of trying to impose our will on God, or whatever our sins might be. These ways are intended to forgive us by creating and sustaining in us faith in Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus told the messengers He sent to John (and He also tells us) that the one who is not offended by Him is blessed. In other words, the one who does not fall away is blessed, or the one who believes is blessed. Now is the time of salvation, and the two possibilities are belief in Jesus and unbelief in Jesus. There is no middle or neutral ground; there is no separate category for the undecided or for agnostics. God’s Word and the signs He gives us still today are all that are needed for faith (and for the right expectations that ideally result). We do not know John the Baptizer’s response to the message Jesus sent to Him, so in effect the emphasis is on our response. What is your response to Jesus’s claim? “What or Who have you come to see?”
I know someone who Friday was quite excited to be going to see the movie “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. I warned him that the critics were giving it mixed reviews, and I suggested he might benefit from lower expectations, as I did when I took my niece to “Pitch Perfect”. Today, the Third Sunday in Advent, is more joyful than the others, and so we lit a pink or rose-colored candle on the Advent wreath instead of blue like the others. The Introit, Gradual, and Epistle Reading all speak of our “joy and expectation … expressed in a life lived according to the Spirit of Christ,” no matter the circumstances. We can endure whatever God permits, because He is in control, working all things together for our good in the end. We may need to lower or otherwise correct our expectations for life in this world (country, jobs, friends, families, health—and even the Church), but it is hard to imagine God not exceeding our expectations of the life to come, no matter how high those expectations are.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +