Third Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2022
/What kind of Messiah are you waiting for?
Matthew 11: 2–11
Now John had heard in prison what Christ was doing and he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?’ Jesus answered, ‘Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, those suffering from virulent skin-diseases are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life and the good news is proclaimed to the poor; and blessed is anyone who does not find me a cause of falling.’ As the men were leaving, Jesus began to talk to the people about John, ‘What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swaying in the breeze? No? Then what did you go out to see? A man wearing fine clothes? Look, those who wear fine clothes are to be found in palaces. Then what did you go out for? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet: he is the one of whom scripture says: Look, I am going to send my messenger in front of you to prepare your way before you. ‘In truth I tell you, of all the children born to women, there has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.”
Music Meditations
- Come Thou Long Expected Jesus—Chris Tomlin
- People Look East-Marty Haugen
- Come thou Font of Every Blessing— with lyrics by Chris Rice or by Elenyi Music
- O Come O Come Emanuel—Enya
- The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns
Opening Prayer
Jesus, we talk of your coming, of your coming again. But you have never really gone away. You have been with humanity since the beginning of time, have been with us throughout history, and are with us now and forever. Help us to remember that and live in the “now” of your presence, and help us to live truly in your presence, modeling our very lives after the humility and selflessness, the forgiveness and compassion which was your true self.
Companions for the Journey
From “First Impressions” a preaching service of the Southern Dominican Province:
Boy, a lot has changed in the life of John the Baptist since last Sunday’s gospel! He has been center stage for us these two middle weeks of Advent. Last week he was out in the desert, the fiery preacher and precursor for Jesus. Remember his warning about “the one who is coming” after him, the one who would have a winnowing fan in his hand to clear out all the chaff from the threshing floor and burn it in unquenchable fire? Well, that was then, in chapter 3—this is now—in chapter 11. A lot has happened since John’s earlier preaching. Jesus has taken up his ministry of preaching and healing and John has been arrested for speaking out against Herod’s marrying Herodias, the wife of Philip, Herod’s brother.
Now John is in prison and he sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” What happened to that sure-fired preacher we met earlier? He seemed pretty sure he knew what God had in mind and what the one to come would be like. Initially John was quite taken by Jesus and when Jesus came to him to be baptized in the Jordan, John demurred, “I should be baptized by you, yet you come to me!” (Mt. 3: 14) We sense, in the question John sends through his disciples to Jesus, that John is disappointed or confused in how his successor Jesus is following the game plan John initiated. Why was it taking Jesus so long to purge the world? Where was the judgement on the world and the fire for the chaff John promised in last Sunday’s gospel? Why didn’t the religious leaders embrace Jesus? Others would have been disappointed as well. Jesus wasn’t pulling the country together along nationalistic lines, wasn’t organizing the people to fight for their freedom from the Romans.
Sometimes when people go through a life-changing religious experience and they come to a deeper and more personal experience of Jesus in their lives, the initial moments are quite rosy. (Many people, when they recall their childhood faith, also have similar memories of a time when they felt they had stronger faith because they questioned less.) After a major faith awakening there is a sense of illumination, daily life takes on new meaning and having a sense of Jesus ready and present to their prayers gives a great feeling of companionship. But as life goes on, that sense of immediacy often fades, especially in the harsh light of the daily grind or at moments when we are jarred out of our routine by the harsh realities of life. Where, we ask, is Jesus now that we need him? Why isn’t he helping us solve our current problem? Isn’t our faith in him supposed to protect us from the difficulties we are now facing? Were we wrong to have put so much trust in him at the start? Faith doesn’t take the shape we think it should—or rather, if today’s gospel is any indication–Jesus doesn’t always fit our preconceptions. Besides the personal issues Christians face there are larger ones we face as a community of believers. Where is Jesus’ power in the world these days when we are experiencing so many manifestations of darker powers? What difference are we making to bring about a world of peace? Do our individual and communal efforts at reconciliation make any difference? So, we may find ourselves asking at worship today the question John raises, “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” Are we being asked to trust this Advent that God is really at work in our lives, though in often less obvious or “impressive” ways? “Lead us not into temptation...” we will pray today before we receive the eucharist. Is our temptation to be disappointed in God’s pace, timing and manner of response to our urgent prayers?
What answer will Jesus send back to allay John’s doubts and reinforce his faith in prison? Jesus doesn’t impatiently dismiss the emissaries from John—and that was good news for John and comforting to us as well. We are not ignored in our faith struggles to understand who Jesus is for us at this stage of our journey. Jesus does respond to the question John sends, though at first, it seems indirect. Wouldn’t a simple “yes” or “no” have been appropriate to such an urgent question? Instead Jesus refers to Isaiah 35: 5-6 (“Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the dumb will sing.”) and 61: 1 (“God has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the broken hearted.”)
John would certainly be familiar with the prophet Isaiah’s description of the one God would send. Guided by the Jesus’ Isaiah reference, John would also have learned that Jesus was going to put aside the more militaristic messianic anticipations some of the people had and was going to be the kind of gentle messiah the prophet Isaiah had anticipated. However, Jesus did not give a thundering response to John’s question, did not draw down lighting or cause the Jordan to stop flowing to reassure John’s doubts. That would have coerced faith. Instead, John like us, was invited to draw his own conclusions and then decide whether to put faith in Jesus. John was urged to see God at work in Jesus’ reaching out to those in most need, bringing healing to the sick, forgiveness to sinners and preaching good news to all who had come to hear him. Jesus was God’s sure sign that God had heard the cry of the people and had come to address them definitively!
Let’s not overly spiritualize Jesus’ statements to John’s disciples about the blind, lame, lepers, deaf and poor. They are very real among us, their numbers grow daily in the economic downturn our world is experiencing and the loss of jobs due to the terrorists’ attacks. (“Food for Survival,” one of New York City’s major food pantries just made a report that one million people, one out of eight New Yorkers rely on the city’s food pantries to help them fight hunger. NY Times, December 2, 2001) Jesus really did help the forgotten and those in need. His actions on their behalf were a proof to John that God was working through him, for they were the ones God has always shown concern for and considered precious. Though forgotten by a world distracted by war, possessions, fashion, glamor and high tech, the poor are noticed by God. Jesus is the undeniable proof.
Weekly Memorization
Taken from the gospel for today’s session…
What did you go out to the desert to see?
Living the Good News
What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?
Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:
Reflection Questions
Meditations
A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:
Imagine that you are John the Baptist, the prophet who convinced people to change their hearts in advance of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Now you are in prison, put there by Herod who feared your popularity among the Jewish people, (After all HE is king, and any popular figure is seen as a threat) Look around you: what is this prison like? Is it hot and stuffy or cold and damp? Is it clean or filthy? What do they feed you? How do the guards treat you? Sitting in your cell, you look back on your life, trying to piece together how you got here in the first place. So you reminisce: What was your childhood like? When did you realize that you had a special calling from God? Why did you go out into the desert and live as you did? What was with the clothes and the locusts and wild honey? Remember what it was like at the river Jordan when people came in droves to hear you preach and to be baptized? Try to imagine the arrival of the Pharisees and Sadducees on the scene. How did they react when you called them out for assuming they were special because they were descended from Abraham? Do you remember when you called them a brood of vipers? Did you seek out confrontation, or did confrontation seek you out? Jesus was all grown up and just beginning His ministry when he approached you that day by the River Jordan. When you hesitated to baptize Jesus, and when He insisted that you do so because it was what “uprightness” demanded, were you still a little reluctant to do so? Did you hear the voice from heaven calling Jesus God’s beloved, or was it only Jesus who heard? If you heard the voice of God, why, now that you are in prison, do you have such concern about what people told you that Jesus was doing and saying that you send some of you own disciples to talk to Jesus himself? Was it frustrating to be locked up and away from any ability to interact with Jesus directly? Specifically, does His message seem a little too “soft” on repentance and a little long on compassion for your taste? Do you ever hear back from your disciples? If so, what do you think about what they told you upon their return? Do you agree with what Jesus said about you? Just how DO you view Jesus?
Now project yourself into our time and place where we can only know about Jesus from what others have told us. Does what I have heard give me hope? In what way am I called to advance the message of Jesus as John did? What sacrifices might Ï be called upon to make to advance the coming of the Kingdom of God?
Poetic Reflection:
The late Stanford poet Denise Levertov ponders two approaches to the coming of the kingdom. Which do you prefer?
“Sparks”
In today’s mail a poem quotes from Ecclesiastes: Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might: for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. A letter with it discloses, in its words and between them, a life opening, fearful, fearless, thousand-eyed, a field of sparks that move swiftly in darkness, to and from a center. He is beginning to live. The threat of world’s end is the old threat. “Prepare for the world to come as thou shouldst die tomorrow” says the Book of Delight, and: “Prepare for this world as thou shouldst live forever.”
Poetic Reflection:
Is the poet speaking of the first coming or the second coming?
“Advent Calendar”
He will come like last leaf's fall. One night when the November wind has flayed the trees to bone, and earth wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud's folding. He will come like the frost. One morning when the shrinking earth opens on mist, to find itself arrested in the net of alien, sword-set beauty. He will come like dark. One evening when the bursting red December sun draws up the sheet and penny-masks its eye to yield the star-snowed fields of sky. He will come, will come will come like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child.
—Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Poetic Reflection:
What is my part in creating a “new Eden”?
And then all that has divided us will merge And then compassion will be wedded to power And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind And then both men and women will be gentle And then no person will be subject to another’s will And then all will be rich and free and varied And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old And then all will nourish the young And then all will cherish life’s creatures And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.
—Judy Chicago
Closing Prayer
From Karl Rahner:
Behold, you come. And your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfillment. Now it is the one single hour of your Advent, at the end of which we too shall have found out that you have really come. O God who is to come, grant me the grace to live, now, in the hour of your Advent, in such a way that I may merit to live in you forever, in the blissful hour of your eternity.
