Advent 3, Year A
Matthew 11:2-11
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
December 15, 2019
Jonathan Hanneman
“What are you waiting for?”
John sits in his lonely prison cell, losing time in filth, stillness, and hunger. Last week we saw the charismatic preacher in the prime of life, drawing hundreds—even thousands—out to the wastelands near the Jordan River. His message of repentance had become the viral number one hit of its day. People flocked to the marshy shallows to hear it live and then professed eternal fandom through their baptisms. Things were going so well! Just after last week’s reading, John had even identified a successor to keep the movement going in case anything happened to him, someone whose career path looked ready to outshine John’s like the sun outshone the moon.
But a lot can change in a few weeks. John’s suspicion had proved true: no one can ultimately separate politics and religion. Shortly after Jesus had joined the Baptizers, King Herod sent troops to clean up the growing “insurrection” down by the river. Things were looking ominous, but John turned himself over before the guards had a chance to rough up more than a few of his most aggressive and outspoken disciples. Satisfied with their primary quarry, the soldiers ordered the rest of the people to disperse without inflicting further violence or casualties. But now the longtime outdoorsman was trapped, isolated in a dingy stone room with hardly any light, much less space to move. Had he been there for weeks or months now? Hours and days had melted into an unending, gray blur.
“What are you waiting for?”
But prison wasn’t always the same. Every once in a while a guard would swing open the leaded door and guide him to a vast hall, where Rome’s Puppet King himself would tell him to start preaching. Somehow or another, the prophet’s message had become Herod’s earworm, so John would occasionally be brought out as some sort of confusing entertainment. Like a tone-deaf fan, the King would listen for a little while and then, convinced he remembered the tune, start to sing along in an unrelated key before sending John back to his cell.
But John’s movement had been popular enough that even in the palace he discovered some adherents. They would whisper snatches of news to him as he passed them in the halls. Despite some opposition, Jesus had kept the movement afloat, and the message of repentance—the warning to turn around and head toward the Kingdom of God—appeared to be seeping out from the Jordan Valley into other parts of Israel. Things were changing at a grassroots level, but progress was slow. At this pace, the nation’s purification could take decades, if not centuries.
“What are you waiting for?”
With nothing but the sounds of rats and bugs scuttling in the darkness to occupy him, John was growing impatient. He’d built a pathway straight to success. All his protégé had to do was follow it. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe Jesus wasn’t the right man for the job. Had he been deceived? He was also starting to fear that Herod was growing bored with his message, and he was pretty sure the King’s attention was all that stood between him and the chopping block. During one of his rare castle excursions, John found just enough time to have his disciples take Jesus a message:
“What are you waiting for?”
A few days later—or was it weeks? It was impossible to tell in the darkness—John heard a familiar voice whispering from the cell door. One of his disciples had snuck down to the prison, sharing fantastical stories about healings and cleansings—even a resurrection? It was hard to hear her through the door. But what he could make out sounded like one of the heroes of the ancient myths had returned—like a genuine god had come down to walk among the people! And she had a personal message from Jesus:
“What are you waiting for?”
What are we waiting for? Today we find ourselves a little over halfway through Advent. The big day is only a week-and-a-half away. The lights are up. The trees are decorated. And various cards and packages are working their way across the country toward our relatives and friends. (Unless, like me, you don’t plan ahead so well.) Even if we aren’t completely ready for the holiday this moment, the end is in sight: Christmas is coming. Soon we’ll take down our stockings, open our gifts, and then…what? What happens when all the excitement is over? What are we waiting for?
I didn’t grow up with much awareness of Advent in my church tradition. All I knew was that it was the first twenty-four days of December. Each morning I would add a tiny ornament to my pine tree wall hanging until on Christmas I finally reached the top and stuck on the angel. Advent was a time of waiting, but my sister and I were really just waiting to open the presents taunting us in the living room.
I have to admit that, even as a priest, Advent still confuses me. It’s a season of waiting, but…what are we waiting for? We know the end of the story: God engages humanity as the baby Jesus, who grows up to show how God wants us to live and ultimately to offer himself to death so Creation can be reconciled to God. We’re over two-thousand years into this thing. There’s no surprise for us in the tale. So what are we waiting for?
A whole lot of the Christian world seems to be waiting for a miracle, for God to suddenly appear, definitively prove us right, and instantly fix all the planet’s problems to our liking. We’re similar to John and his disciples in that way. Their world was going haywire, too. Economic inequality was at an all time high. People couldn’t keep food on their tables. The government—headquartered thousands of miles away with little awareness of or connection to the realities of life in their little corner of the empire—only seemed to be looking out for itself. The nation was straining under oppression proclaimed as peace, and something had to give. The people themselves could do nothing, so they once again turned to their most desperate solution: God. “God can fix it! Surely, before the world ends, God, you’ll fix it? What are you waiting for?”
John knew the Hebrew Scriptures. He knew (or at least suspected) that he was “preparing the way.” Maybe—hopefully—if he could get everyone to turn to God and really start living as a holy people, the Promised One would come to make things right—preferably starting by kicking out the Roman occupation. The prophets all made the Day of the Lord sound so sudden, so powerful, so…magical. John had done his duty. He prepared the way. He proclaimed the Coming King. And then…he waited.
Jesus was no slouch, but he didn’t move with the same urgency that John felt was necessary. He was matching up with the prophets’ predictions in miraculous ways, but he just wasn’t what John had expected. Israel’s transformation wasn’t magical or instantaneous. Jesus was running a very slow-going, ho-hum sort of revolution, one more focused on lifting the people from their pain and misery than overthrowing the established world order.
Even though we’ve known the story for millennia, we haven’t learned much from it. Jesus keeps missing our expectations today just like he missed John’s. John anticipated a new king but received a servant. He was watching for a Sinai-style theophany, but like Moses, he never quite reached the Promised Land. God came to live among the people, but he kept doing things at an eternal, unhurried pace. He just didn’t live up to the hype.
So maybe we should stop focusing on our amped up expectations and embrace the reality before us. Jesus has come. He’s fulfilled the Hebrew prophecies. But he did it in a way that no one saw coming. The people expected a grand entrance, but he was borne into Bethlehem on the back of a donkey. They wanted him to take his seat on David’s throne, but they found him lying in a feeding trough. They were preparing for a God of War who would crush everyone they hated, but they received a fragile baby instead.
We aren’t so different from John and the other people of the Second Temple era, are we? How might Jesus shatter our expectations today? What are we waiting for? We hope for a quick fix to cover up our problems, but Jesus only ever showed us a slow road through them. We think being right or “#winning” is most important, but Jesus showed us the bounties of love and service. We’re willing to embrace War in order forge an ironclad peace, but Jesus shows us a way of submission and suffering as the path to God’s Kingdom. We want Jesus to come back and fix everything, but the Bible tells us that we are the body of Christ. In some ways, we are an expression of the Second Coming.
With that in mind, how many of us really want to make the changes necessary to follow Jesus, to serve as his still-wounded hands and feet in this world? Are we truly willing to take up our own crosses, following God’s path through death to life? Do we really want to do what it takes, day in and day out, to make our world a better place?
Then what are we waiting for?