Advent 3 2022

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

John the Baptist asks a poignant question in today’s Gospel reading, via some messengers he sends to Jesus. He has to send messengers because he’s in prison. He’s offended King Herod by challenging his incestuous marriage to Herodias, formerly his half-brother’s wife – and the half-brother was actually also her half-uncle – so the whole set up was not only monumentally complicated, but also very definitely illegal under Jewish law. John’s challenge would eventually cost him his life, though, and he must have realised that.  However strong his faith, however strong his passion for justice, there must have been times when he wondered whether speaking truth to power was worth it, whether he shouldn’t have chosen a quiet life instead, kept his head down, and his opinions to himself.

 

John the Baptist’s central message had been that the Messiah, the chosen one of God, who would bring in a new kingdom, a new age of justice and peace and integrity, had arrived in the person of Jesus. He had staked everything on that, but in the darkness of his prison cell, facing death, he seems to have wobbled, and wondered, could he have been mistaken?

That’s the background to John’s question. Have I got it right? Is what I have laboured for worth it?

It’s a question we probably all ask at some point in our lives. It’s at the heart of many a mid-life crisis, that moment when people look at their lives, and wonder what would have happened if they had taken a different route, whether the life they have built over many decades really makes any difference to anyone. Is this it? They ask. Young people aren’t immune to this sort of question, though. It can paralyse  them as they try to choose their path through life, their education, career, relationships. Is this the right thing to do with my life, my “one wild and precious life” in the words of the poet Mary Oliver? They can end up like the donkey who starves to death between two bales of hay because it can’t choose which one to eat, unable to commit themselves to anything, in case they get it wrong. 

At the other end of life – and this is perhaps saddest of all – sometimes people are haunted by “might have beens” or decisions they regret, but can’t do anything about. 

No life can ever be perfect, because we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world, and the trouble with hindsight is that we never get it until it’s too late, but I think we all need to feel that we are doing, or have done, something that matters to us and to others, whether that is in our work, or in our family, in our hobbies and interests, or, as in John the Baptist’s case, in the things we stand up for. I’m sure the same question plagues those today who are imprisoned for their beliefs, like those challenging the regime in Iran, and suffering for it. In John’s case the question that ate away at him  was whether he’d been right to back Jesus, to acclaim him as God’s Messiah?

The idea of a Messiah was much debated in Jewish society in the first century. Some people thought God’s chosen one would be a military leader, some a priest, some a great teacher, some a member of the ruling elites. Many thought he would come in power with obvious fanfare, but few people, it would seem, had their money on him being a carpenter from Nazareth, born to a humble family, with no connections to the ruling classes, no army to support him. Few would have thought he would care so little about his own fame and fortune either, apparently content to associate with people on the margins who would never be in a position to offer him anything in return. John had felt certain at the beginning, but being stuck in prison, with only your own thoughts for company probably has a way of amplifying any doubts and fears you might have.  It’s no surprise that John wondered whether he had really been right to point to Jesus, and tell his own followers to follow him. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  he asks. In answer, Jesus doesn’t give him a theological lecture or a political statement. He tells John’s messengers simply to report back what they hear and see. “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.” 

Jesus’ message tells John about the real people – this person, this person, and this person - whose real lives are being transformed as they meet Jesus, people who have found in him something they were desperate for, something which brings them healing and hope.

It's a distinctive claim of Christian faith that God came to us in a particular person, at a particular moment - the “Word was made flesh”, as the famous words from Johns Gospel put it. Christianity isn’t, fundamentally, a religion of ideas– though it has often become that – but of experience. In the person of Jesus, those who met him felt that they were meeting God, seeing God at work, and that was enough for them to start calling him the Son of God. What, exactly, they meant by that has kept theologians busy ever since, but it’s important that we realise that pinning down concepts wasn’t the main concern of the first Christians. It was people who mattered. As soon as we make faith a matter of understanding ideas – incarnation, atonement, salvation the Trinity – we start putting the cart before the horse, letting the tail wag the dog. Fundamentally, for the first Christians, their faith was about knowing a person, who had changed them, who had made “the wilderness and the dry land” of their lives rejoice, the “desert blossom” in Isaiah’s words.  

What does it mean, after all, truly to know someone? We can never plumb the depths of someone else, whether they are the son of God or just Joe Bloggs who lives next door. Human beings are a mystery. There’s no way to pin someone else down, to explain completely who they are and why they act; there is always more to discover, they can always surprise us. If we want to tell others about a friend or family member they haven’t met, we don’t reach for philosophical concepts or psychological profiling. We tell stories about them, and the things they have done for us, the real practical encounters we had.  It was the same with Jesus. He wasn’t a concept to be grasped with the mind, but a person, who loved and healed and blessed those he came into contact with. Ultimately, it is the impact he had on those around him which matters, and the impact he has on us. 

And that brings me back to where I started. We don’t know how John the Baptist felt about the answer he received – we can’t even be sure he did receive it, though I really hope he did, because I am sure it would have given him comfort. But if we, like him, are wondering about our own choices and commitments, as we pick our way through the maze of life, perhaps we can draw inspiration from this story. Are we following a path which brings good news to those who need it, freedom to those who are oppressed, welcome to those who are excluded? If we are, whether our work goes seen or unseen, rewarded or unrewarded in this life, we can know that we are walking in the company of Christ, on Isaiah’s Holy Way, the way of everlasting joy.

Amen