Luke 7:18-28
The Perfect Plan. Anne and I had a perfect plan last weekend. It involved new window shades for the windows on our staircase. It was a plan that was a long time in the making. For months, Anne lurked in the tall grass of the internet. Waiting for the perfect storm of sale price and coupon. And then, with viper-like speed and precision she struck, at JCPenny.com. 50% off plus a coupon, plus free shipping. It was the trifecta of savings, the holy grail of online shopping, beautifully executed.
Then, last Saturday, came my time to contribute. And that proved to be the only variable that Anne didn’t account for. The husband factor. Anne took Killian to go get some groceries, and I dragged the step ladder to the landing with the windows. It didn’t exactly fit on the landing, but that shouldn’t stop me from trying, I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a step ladder unstable on a staircase? Well, about 10 minutes in, we found out. The ladder tipped over and jammed into the wall, and I tumbled down the steps. Not pretty.
The big savings plan didn’t work. We got the shades at a deep discount, but add on the cost of 1 new ladder, plaster patch, putty knife, 3 boxes of bandages, and a large bottle of advil, and… well, you get the picture. Things didn’t go according to plan. And just so I don’t forget any time soon, I have some great bruises and scabs to remind me. We wanted so badly for everything to go perfect, but it went off the rails.
Maybe you can relate. Maybe especially during this time of year. There is a certain hope that we have when we unpack Christmas boxes and start decorating our houses. “Maybe this will be the year everything goes EXACTLY according to plan! This year, maybe what I see and hear will match up with the scene I have in my head!” But inevitably, as if it’s a law of nature, it doesn’t. The tree is too big, someone put the turkey in the oven, but never bothered to turn the oven on. The ornament you can’t find, the family member who can’t come over, the Pastor who doesn’t put the right hymns in the service, the one light that takes out the whole strand! SO MUCH CAN GO WRONG! There are all kinds of ways to mess up Advent and Christmas, it’s not even funny.
And I’m going to say, “good.” That’s right, “good!” I can’t think of better Advent and Christmas lesson for us to learn than what we learn in those moment. The moments when things don’t go the way we expected, or our plans don’t work out the way we wanted, or when reality doesn’t match up with finely painted fantasies about the season. Good.
Because Christmas and Advent aren’t celebrations of fantasies, or wishes, or even our best laid plans. They are celebrations of a very real Jesus, born into a very real world. And a Jesus who does his ministry in ways that often surprise us, sometimes confuse us, and let’s be honest, even frustrate us at times. It’s good for us to be shaken out of our self-focus and be confronted by a God who has his very own ways, and means and methods. Ways of operating that are always higher, and better and more significant than our own. And ways that very rarely match up with how we think things should be, or how we would do things, or according to the ways we thing things should work.
Is anyone unhappy with me yet? We’re not supposed to talk this way during this time of year are we? But we can’t get around it. Everything I just said is written write there in the Gospel lesson. We have to talk about it. John the Baptist cannot be avoided. Not last week, and not this week either. But before we talk about this particular passage, let’s go back and talk a little about who John the Baptist is. First off, he’s not Baptist. He’s not Lutheran either. But he was a guy of whom the prophets had been foretelling centuries before he came.
If you go all the way back to 1 Kings, you will meet a prophet named Elijah who confronted Kings and the establishment of the day. His message was one of firey judgment and redemption. In the first chapter of 2 Kings we read about how he dressed, “He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.” We read about how Elijah was taken up to heaven on a chariot of gold, but the Bible makes it clear that this isn’t the last time someone like him will walk on the earth. At the end of Malachi, the last prophet, we read these stirring words:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
Now this doesn’t mean that God is going to take Elijah down from heaven and send him back to work, that would be cruel! What it means is that someone like Elijah, with his same kind of spirit and power would come and prepare the way, prepare people’s hearts to receive the Messiah. And this promise is fulfilled in John the Baptist. We read about this in Luke 1. The barren Elizabeth miraculously becomes pregnant by her husband, and then God tells them who their son will be: And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” So John has the mantle of Elijah, and a mission from God himself, and when the time comes, he explodes onto the scene like a stick of lit dynamite.
John goes out into the wilderness like Elijah, and takes on the establishment, and preaches a firey message of judgment, and even wears the same getup, camel hair and leather belt. And with this spirit and power, people come out the woodwork to respond. Thousands repent of their sins, and are baptized in the Jordan River, and the highway for the Messiah is prepared. Then one day Jesus comes to John to be baptized. John calls him, “The Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world.” God the Father calls Jesus, “My Son, whom I love, and with whom I am well pleased.” And the starter pistol is fired to begin Jesus ministry. The Long anticipated activity of the long awaited Messiah.
But then something funny happened. This Jesus, this Messiah, doesn’t do things the way anyone would have expected God’s Chosen one to do. The first thing he does is disappear into the desert for 40 days. This is important, as Jesus is fasting and facing the temptations of Satan himself, but whether or not John knew that or not we don’t know. Then Jesus starts preaching in his hometown, where the people decide to try and kill him. There are some wonderful moments too. Jesus begins to heal people, and preach in other Synagogues and soon great crowds are following him. And just when it looks like Jesus’ ministry could really just take off, he goes and chooses some very odd people to be his disciples; fishermen, and tax collectors, and the like.
It had to be kind of frustrating for John the Baptist to see all this. Jesus Ministry wasn’t just a blazing comet of success (according to earthly standards), there were ups and downs, and unexpected twists, and odd decisions. And then, to make matters much worse, John finds himself in jail, his only crime being speaking the truth. We read about this in Mark 6:17-18, “Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did it because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. For John had been saying to Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”
Flavius Josephus, a Jewish Historian who lived around this time tells us a little more, “Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise a rebellion… sent him as a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Mancherus, the castle I already mentioned…”
So John goes from preaching to the masses, and seeing thousands of people confess their sins and be baptized, and then seeing the start of the ministry of Jesus the Christ. It looks like everything was going exactly according to plan! Who knows what John pictured happening with Jesus ministry, but it’s safe to say, as he sits in prison, and knows that Herod’s new wife wants him dead, he has some serious questions. We can hear it in the question he sends a couple of guys to ask Jesus, “The disciples of John reported all these things to him. And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And when the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”
Two simple questions. Are you the one who is to come (are you really the Promised One)? Shall we look for someone else (should I start looking somewhere else for hope)? You can hear the hurt, and the heartbreak, and the utter disappointment. “Jesus, what is going on here? Jesus it isn’t supposed to be like this! Jesus, I trusted you.” This is so uncomfortable, isn’t it? If you were going to make up a story about the one who would come and save the world, you wouldn’t include something like this. But that’s just it. That’s why these questions of John are so important. Because this happened in real life. And these questions are the kinds of questions we ask sometimes when real life happens to us.
Have you ever found yourself asking questions like John’s? God, what are you doing? God where are you? God how can this be happening to me, or to my loved one, or to the world? God, I’m not sure how long I can hold on. God it’s not supposed to be like this. God do I need to start looking somewhere else for hope? What is your reaction when these questions come to the forefront of your mind, or even out of your mouth? Fear that God will get angry? Shock that you have questions? Stifling the hurt, and putting on a happy face?
If so, I have news for you. It’s OK to have questions. It’s OK to be upset with God, and to struggle with him. It’s OK to say that you are disappointed, and that your faith is struggling at times. It’s OK, God can handle it. See how he answers these pointed questions of John. First off, he redirects John’s attention to all the ways in which the work of the promised Messiah is happening, “In that hour he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
How often do we neglect to notice, or to see the wonders of what God is doing right in front of our eyes? We get mad because he doesn’t answer our prayers for a certain need the way we want, and we focus on this, instead of seeing God’s impact on our souls. We challenge God according to our plans, instead of thanking Him for his plan of salvation, for dying on the cross to pay for our sins. For rising from the dead to show us our hope, for an eternity without concerns, or pain, or disappointment.
The next thing that we need to see, is how Jesus speaks of John, even after John has laid his soul bare before God, and openly asks the tough questions, and admits that he is struggling. Jesus doesn’t love him any less, or think of him with any kind of distain. In fact, Jesus has high regard for his servant. Listen to how he describes him, “A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.” I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John.”
This is a great comfort for people who have real struggles with God. We may have doubts, we may have real questions, we may do some real wrestling with God, and his Word, and his plans. But this NEVER changes how God feels about us, or how much he loves us, or how much a part of his family we are, or his willingness to fulfill the promises he made to you to be forgiven, and to be with him in his house as his family forever. God doesn’t have questions, or doubts, or struggles when it comes to you.
God answered the ultimate question for us on the cross. Does God care, does God love me, what is God’s plan for me? There is a great quote about this from a book called Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey, "To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son’s suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.”
We don’t know how John responded to Jesus answer to his questions. We don’t know if he continued to struggle with doubts and disappointments. We do know that things didn’t end well for him in this world. Herod’s wife eventually got her way, and John was beheaded, and his head was displayed on a platter. Not an image you will find on any of the Christmas cards that you send out. But we know something else about John. Things didn’t end well for him. In fact things didn’t end at all.
He prepared the way for the Messiah, and even though he struggled with deep and vexing questions, and was uncertain at times of God’s plan, it didn’t stop the Messiah from loving him, and preparing the way for him to be in heaven in the presence of God for all eternity. When Jesus died on the cross, he died for John, he died for you, he died for me. He died for people with struggles, he died for people with doubts, he died for people who have moments of weak faith, and sins, and disappointments. And with his resurrection, he shows us that there will be a time when none of our questions matter, when we will never again know disappointments, or lack faith, or have any reason for doubts.
In the meantime, go ahead and ask. Go ahead and struggle. Go ahead and be honest with God. His love for you, his plan for you, his forgiveness of your sins won’t change a bit. So have a blessed Advent, and get ready for Christmas. I hope they are great, but not perfect. Because that perfect celebration will come one day, in the presence of Christ himself. And you will know it, because John the Baptist will be there at your side.
AMEN
