3rd Sunday in Advent
Matthew 11:2-11
"A child, A Messiah"
"Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind? Why then did you go out? To see a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, those who wear soft raiment are in kings’ houses. Why then did you go out? To see 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 thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee.’ Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Matthew 11:2-11, RSV.
Grace and peace to you from the one who is coming. Amen
Are you the one? Are you the one? That was the question John the Baptist posed of Jesus, Are you the one? Are you the Messiah, are you the one who I was preparing would come and, destroy the evil one; would preach the wrath of God and sinners would be blasted out of their complacency.?
That was the kind of question John was now asking as he was in prison. He still had the freedom to speak to his disciples, to know what was going on in the world around him. John wonder why there was not terror in Jesus’ words which was the sure device he thought people jump to the side of justice and purity. Jesus was not preaching, the wrath of God, the judgment of God, as I had, thought John so is he the one. There was no fire and no brimstone, so John asked his disciples to go and see, to check it out, to find out if this guy Jesus was truly the Messiah, the. one who is coming in the name of the Lord, whether this Jesus was the one who John had prepared the way, or whether another was still coming?
So John sent a group of the disciples to see to ask Jesus if he was the one, or whether there was still another one to come? ;
The disciples go and ask the question to Jesus, and notice the answer of Jesus, he doesn’t really answer it, but ’he says, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me." What the disciples saw and heard was not the wrath of God, but the grace of God.
Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples was: Go back,. and don’t tell John what I am saying: tell him what I am doing. Don’t tell John what I am claiming: tell. John what is happening.
Jesus is saying that he has come not with the wrath of God to drive people away from God, but he was coming with love to attract people, to attract them with love and with mercy.
Frederick Buechner says the following in his book, Peculiar Treasures: "Where John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain, Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host at a marvelous party or a father who cannot bring, himself to throw his children out even when the spit in his eye. Where John said people had better save their skins before it was too late. Jesus said it was God who saved their skins, and even if you blew your whole bankroll on wild living like the Prodigal Son, it still wasn’t too late. Where John ate locusts and honey in the wilderness with the church crowd, Jesus ate what he felt like in Jerusalem with as sleazy a bunch as you could expect to find."
One of the favorite hymns of the Advent season is the hymn entitled "What Child is This"
What child is this, who lays to rest,
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the king
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring him praise,
The babe, the son of Mary.
Christ the King is the child who we worship during this season of Advent and Christmas.
A king that is far different than any other earthly king. A king who comes with grace, mercy and forgiveness.
A child king who comes not to condemn the world but to free the world from sin.
"Christmas is a time of wonder.
But what is the focus of our wonder?
Where is the child who was born?
The child born in poverty, in Luke’s account, because all the best places had been taken at the inn?
The child, who grew to be a man whose teachings about life and about God cut through the lies and the distortions so that we humans might come to the truth?
The child born to die, so that we could get it through our heads that the end of all things is not death, but life?
The child whose name is God with us’?
The child is
wherever greed is overcome by generosity;
wherever hatred is squeezed out by love;
wherever war is overwhelmed by peace;
wherever despair gives way to hope.
Here is the child, who is named Jesus, because he will save the people from their sins." 1
John preached about one who was coming with the wrath of God, but the one who came, came with the love, grace and mercy of God.
John’s disciples came with a question about what Jesus was saying and Jesus says don’t look at my words, look at my deed. Jesus was telling them, "Look around you at the evidence, and decide for yourselves. What does the evidence show? Have the blind received sight?" What about the blind man Jesus met on the road? Making a paste from the dust in the road Jesus touched his eyes and his vision returned. Ask him, "Is he the one?"
Jesus gives a warning to John and to us at the close of the first section of our text when he ’Says,And blessed is he who takes no offense at me"
Blessed. is he who does not stumble and fall, Blessed is he who is not trapped y me.
Jesus is saying Blessed is he who can trust in the signs of today, and trust that in due time the others will follow just as these are now being done.
Jesus is saying to John to trust in me.
Jesus says, maybe I am not doing the things you expected me to do. But the powers of evil are being defeated yet they are not being defeated by irresistible force, but by unanswerable love.
Jesus is warning John and us that he will do things His way and that way is not the wrath of God but the love of God.
What Child is this, the child king who came not to beat the world into submission, but to love the world to death. What child is this, the child king who came to save the world from itself by dying on a cross so that he might rise and so that we, too, might rise one day to all of his glory.
What child is this can be seen in the closing story of love.
The story is told of a brand new pastor and his wife, that arrived in suburban Brooklyn in early October excited about their opportunity to reopen a church. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, and whatnot. And on Dec 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished.
On Dec 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days. On the 21st, the pastor went to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder and hangers to put the tablecloth up as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was as white as a sheet.
"Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?" The pastor explained how he had found it at the flea market. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were her initials, and she had made this tablecloth 16 years before, in Austria. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. She was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, feeling that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve! The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.
The man asked him where he had gotten the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike? He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again.
The pastor asked him if the man would allow him to take him for a short ride. They drove to Staten Island, to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.2
What child is this? A child king who brings reconcillation to this world in marvelous and strange ways.
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale December 6, 2004
1 from a sermon by Glenn Cooper
2 [This story is called "The Ivory and Gold Tablecloth,î written by Howard C. Schade. It is found in "Alice Gray’s Christmas Stories for the Heart" (1998), and it reportedly first appeared in the December 1954 issue of "Readerís Digest."]
