SHALL WE LOOK FOR ANOTHER?
Matthew 11:2-11

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
December 12, 2004 / Third Sunday of Advent

When I was in high school I didn't always do very well with the assigned readings. But one author I really liked was Charles Dickens. I can remember being mesmerized by A Tale of Two Cities. When we were given a choice of what to read, I would pick Dickens, even though some of his books are a bit too long.

A few years ago I decided to go back and re-read a Dickens' favorite. Immersed in the center of the book and its vivid images the thought went through my mind: "My does this fellow know how to write!" Well, of course. Why was I trying to read it again anyway?

Dickens is alive and well in Providence. Every Advent Trinity Repertory Theatre is able to fill up not one – but two – productions of A Christmas Carol. People never seem to grow tired of it. So many Rhode Island children have seen A Christmas Carol on the stage, not to mention in the movies or on the television, that I have begun to wonder if Bob Cratchett and Ebenezer Scrooge have become better known characters than Mary, Joseph, and the baby? For that matter chain-rattling ghosts seem more attuned to the sensibilities of modern youth than the more benign presence of a feather-winged angel.

You remember, so much so that I don't have to remind you, Scrooge's ghost-led journeys through the verities of time: Christmas-past, Christmas-present, and Christmas-future. In the land of Christmas-past Scrooge is reminded that there is a part of himself that was happy, could laugh, dance, and even fall in love. In Christmas present Ebenezer is shown the good company, fellowship, and forgiveness that people he knows are experiencing. He sees from a distance a pleasantness he has excluded himself from. And he sees how a family, threatened with the ill-health and disease of a child, still stretches to joy and hope. Finally – in a chilly apparition of what might be Christmas-future, Ebenezer is haunted with death, punishments, and a belief in hell.

Dickens, however, breaks the cycle of despair by waking up Ebenezer in the possible present and offering a door to transformation and hope. "God bless us, every one!"

It is a great story. Go see it if you haven't.

But it has occurred to me this year that the Bible has a character perhaps just as austere, just as frightening, just as transforming as Mr. Scrooge. I am thinking about John the Baptist. As the synoptic writers tell us his story, they even write it in three scenes: John in Christmas-past, John in Christ's present, and John frightened about possible futures.

In Christmas-past we do well to remember that John is Jesus' relative. Mary is apparently the cousin of John's mother, Elizabeth. When Mary, newly pregnant, goes to visit Elizabeth, now six months along, Luke tells us that when Elizabeth hears Mary's greeting and news, that the baby – John the Baptist in Elizabeth's womb – leaps for joy. Now you may have a little trouble with that exactly that way. But what Luke is surely saying was that when John was a baby he was happy. He was ecstatically happy, he leaped for joy. And that he was most happy about the good news of Christmas which he heard about and which he knew. John indeed must have had a wonderful childhood. His father was a priest and his mother was a great woman of prayer. His mother even wrote the "Hail Mary," which has become part of the rosary, and is prayed by so many Catholics every day. Can't you hear his mother saying to him: "It's all right. It's all going to be all right. A world full of grace is blessed." So John grew up as this happy baby in a religious home actually leaping!

There was joy in Christmas-past.

But by the time John gets to meet Jesus as an adult by the River Jordan, John has matured – perhaps a little too much. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, John the Baptist has learned about the harshness of life, and is quite capable of throwing a temper. John, like Ebenezer, knew how to pontificate, and tell you where to get off at, "you brood of vipers." But the way Matthew tells the story, Jesus helps John to see the good going on in the Christian present. John can see Jesus' innocent hopefulness. John says to Jesus, "I need to be baptized by you, why do you come to me?" John in the present tense, has been able to retain much more of his religious upbringing than cruel old Ebenezer. John tells people that "whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food would do likewise." Zechariah and Elizabeth would be proud. And Jesus encourages John to go ahead with the baptism "to fulfill all righteousness." That means basically "to do the right thing." And for doing the right thing, John even gets to see doves descending from the sky, and hearing heavenly voices. Not bad for a Christian present.

Even though the present tense John could look like an old-meany and say a big "Bah-humbug," he still caught wind of the Jesus-spirit, and his present Christmas is much happier than Scrooge's. You probably also have some relatives who say "bah-humbug" about Christmas, but then let their spirits melt.

But that being said, a happier Christmas present, doesn't take away the dark clouds of John's Christmas future. John gets arrested. He spends much of his life in prison. And John knows there are people in the palace – Herodias and Salome – who are plotting to kill him. This is worse than a bad dream, it's the real thing. So John in prison writes Jesus a letter, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?" Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another? I suspect that there is a time that most everyone of us that has taken on the Christian journey has written that letter to God. Once upon a time it all seemed so easy, so positive, so hopeful. But then it got difficult. Something we really wanted got blown away. Death, disease, despair pushed their way into our reality. And on some long sleepless night our hearts scribble out this message to Jesus, "should we look for another?"

While Jesus sends a letter back to John, the Gospel writers, unlike Dickens, never give John the opportunity to wake up from his nightmare. John does stay in prison. John does get beheaded. So is there any letter that Jesus could write which could be bearable in an unrelenting dark night of the soul? Some may say there couldn't be. But Jesus sends a message anyway.

And Jesus' letter pulls John away from his moods over the difficulties of the future back into the present tense. Jesus says, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense in me." Yes you may be caught in some horrid prison right now, and you may be convinced it is going to get worse, and it may – but look over here.

You know, everything that Jesus tells John is going on now, when I think about it, I have to admit is happening in my own time, our own time.

"The blind receive their sight." Maybe not everyone, but think of the new operations recently invented, and the progress made in preventing blindness. I think of the charitable programs that collect old eye-glasses and distribute them to those in need. And I think of metaphorical blindness falling away. I think of a Rhode Island representative who told me that serving on social service committees in the legislature has opened her up to so much more understanding about how difficult it is to be poor. "Blind see."

"The lame walk." I saw in the paper this week the photo of a soldier injured in Iraq walking on an artificial limb developed by a doctor at Brown.

"The lepers are cleansed." In Greek this actually means all kinds of diseases. But did you know that the greatest breakthrough in the cure and halting of leprosy in the Twentieth Century happened in a hospital supported by our Global Ministries Board and Our Church's Wider Mission? Because of a Board members of this Church helped found, and because this Church and others continued our gifts, lepers are cleansed. Really.

The deaf hear. Not only with hearing aids, not only with microphones, not only with surgeries, but metaphorically those who closed their minds, who put wax in their communication devices are melted by love, and opened by patience, and redeemed by hope.

The dead are raised: in hospitals, yes; in our opinions of each other, yes; in our vibrant memories, yes. And in heaven – I believe that too.

"And the poor have good news brought to them." I attempt it every day, don't you?"

"Blessed is anyone who takes no offense in me." In Jesus, in the One who is to come.

I once learned a choir anthem which I really enjoyed. It went something like this "Go and tell John what you see and hear, go and tell John what you see and hear, go and tell John what you see and hear, that the blind recover their sight. Go tell John. Go and tell John what you see and hear, go tell, go and tell John what you see and hear, go tell, go and tell John what you see and hear, that the lame are able to walk."

Go and tell. Go and tell John. Remind John that he is the person who used to leap in his mother's womb. Remind him of his mother who said "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." (T. S. Eliot) But also go and tell John who is in prison and anyone who is in prison; tell anyone who is in an emotional prison, or a prison of a job, or a prison of a relationship, go and tell what can happen. Go and tell John. But also go and tell anyone who is facing death; anyone who is facing despair; anyone who is cast in a nightmare of a Christmas past, or is surrounded by noisy ghosts in their Christmas present, or is deathly afraid of their Christian future, go tell. Go tell. Go and tell them how they used to leap. Go and remind them how they once heard heavenly voices. Go and tell them that the dead are raised and the poor hear good news.

Blessedness and hope are real! Go tell!

Amen.