Someone Else?

Someone Else?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 11, 2016

Scripture: Psalm 146:1-6; Matthew 11:2-16

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So we’ve come to the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday whose Advent theme is joy. That’s why today’s Advent candle is pink not purple. Purple was originally the color of Lent. It signifies royalty, but it also represents suffering. Advent is later adaptation of Lenten traditions set before Christmas, so it took over Lent’s purple color. That’s why I’m wearing a purple stole. Eventually the church sought to moderate the original Lenten tone of Advent, so it changed the candle for the third Sunday to pink, pink being, I suppose among other things, the color of joy.

Doing that seems quite appropriate to me. After all, in Lent we prepare first of all for Christ’s crucifixion and only after that for the joy of Easter. In Advent we prepare for the birth of Jesus, an event of great joy with, if anything, only a vague foreshadowing of his suffering to come. We don’t have to go through tragedy and loss to get to Jesus’ birth the way we do to get to his resurrection. So maybe all the Advent candles should be pink, except of course Jesus hasn’t been born yet. We’ve still got waiting to do, and purple is also the color of waiting. But today, though we still wait, we get a foretaste of the joy to come on Christmas Day.

Now, maybe it’s obvious to us why we should feel joy at Christmas. Yes, if we’re lucky we feel joy at the opportunity to spend time with friends and family. Maybe we enjoy exchanging gifts around the Christmas tree. Maybe we enjoy sharing in meals that are great feasts. There are lots of reasons to feel joy at Christmas, but of course these things are not the real reasons, not the most significant reasons, to feel joy at Christmas. The real reason for joy at Christmas is of course that on Christmas Day we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. You probably have heard that corny old saying “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Well, like many corny old sayings, this one speaks an important truth. Jesus is the reason for the season, and he is the reason we can and should feel joy as we first await, then celebrate his birth. Without Jesus there would of course be no Christmas. Without him this time of year would just be cold, dark, and dreary. With him it becomes a time of joy. Thanks be to God!

I think maybe it’s because we are preparing precisely to celebrate the joyful event of Christ’s birth that I was struck this week by one line in the reading we just heard from Matthew. In that reading we hear that John the Baptist is in prison. We know that that doesn’t turn out well for him, but for now he’s still alive. He sends disciples to Jesus to ask a specific question: Are you the one who was to come, or should be expect someone else? Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, doesn’t answer directly, but he pretty clearly indicates that yes, I am the one who was to come. Only the one who was to come, that is, the Messiah, could do the things I’ve been doing. So yes, I am the one who was to come. Don’t go looking for someone else. I’m the one you’re looking for.

And of course that’s why we feel such joy at Jesus’ birth. He is the one God sent. He is the one who comes bringing salvation. He is the one who comes bringing a new revelation of God’s will and God’s ways. He and no one else is Emmanuel, God With Us. We Christians don’t need to look for someone else because we have Jesus, the one who was to come, the one whom God sent. Jesus didn’t give John’s disciples  direct answer to their question, but we can. Yes, Jesus is the one who was to come. No, you don’t need to expect anyone else.

I am convinced to the marrow of my bones that Jesus is the one. That we don’t need someone else. That there won’t be someone else to displace Jesus. So I really wonder: Why do so many of us Christians keep looking for someone else? Because we do, you know. Oh sure. We may call that someone else Jesus Christ, but we spend an awful lot of time actually looking for someone other than the Jesus God really gave us. If that statement puzzles you, let me explain.

I think we Christians look for someone besides Jesus in many different ways, but I’m only going to mention two of them this morning. The first is that we turn the Jesus we have, that is, the Jesus of all four Gospels, into a Jesus we want. Into a Jesus we like better than the one we got. Some Christians do that by reading only, or at least primarily, the Gospel of John. That’s the Gospel in which Jesus is clearly God Incarnate, the Word made flesh, God walking around in human form telling everyone that they must believe that that is precisely who Jesus is in order to inherit something called eternal life. Many of these Christians misunderstand what the Gospel of John means by eternal life, but that’s a subject for another day. What matters today is that these Christians, and there are a lot of them, tend to ignore the other three Gospels. Those Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, call us less to believe in Jesus than they call us to work to create the Kingdom of God here on earth. People don’t like that, so they turn to John’s Jesus and ignore the Jesus who calls them to something they don’t like.

Then there are the Christians who tend to read only, or at least primarily, Matthew, Mark, and Luke and who tend to ignore (or even intensely dislike) John. For them Jesus becomes only a man who proclaims the Kingdom of God, a man who is all about social, political, and economic relationships and who is hardly at all about spiritual health. These Christians, and I know a lot of them, misunderstand Jesus as much as those who rely only on John do. For the Jesus whose birth we now await is the fullness of God. He brings both the way of spiritual health and the way of right social relationships. He does both, and so many Christians want him to do only one of the other. They seek someone else, not the Jesus whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

The other way in which we Christians look for someone else that I want to mention briefly this morning is one that hits pretty close to home for me. People of faith, and not just Christians, do this one all the time. We know that the ancient Hebrews did it because we hear them being warned against it in the reading we heard from Psalm 146. This way of looking for someone else has people looking for salvation not from God or Jesus Christ but from some mere human. Psalm 146 says: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save.” This is the temptation to look for a human savior not a divine one. I must confess that I am sometimes guilty of this one. I think that’s why I took (and take) the result of our recent presidential election so hard. I tend to put my trust in princes, or in politicians, which amounts to the same thing; and they always disappoint. The ones I don’t like disappoint and, more importantly, even the ones I do like disappoint. They are as fallible as I am, yet over and over again I put my trust in them, only to be let down. I look for someone other than Jesus, and it just doesn’t work.

Perhaps you have other ways in which you look for someone other than the Jesus we got. Maybe you do that by pinning all of your hope on a second coming of Jesus rather than the first coming that we really have. In any event, in this Advent season, let us not expect someone other than the Jesus we actually got. We don’t need someone else, and no one else will do. Psalm 146 says blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his or her God. For us Christians that means whose help and hope are Jesus Christ. So let’s get clear on just who that Jesus is. He is indeed the Word, or if you prefer the Son, of God Incarnate. He is Immanuel, God With Us. He is the one in whom God comes to us to reveal God’s ways to us and to call us to follow those ways. Those ways are the ways of faith and spiritual health. When we turn to God in and through Jesus Christ God meets us and helps to make us whole. He is the one in whom we find salvation for our spirits in this life and our souls in the next.

But he is also the one who calls to a radical transformation in our thinking about how things are supposed to be in this life. He calls us to turn the ways of the world on their heads. He calls us to honor the poor not the rich. He calls us to include the ones the world excludes. He calls us even to love our enemies, and boy would the world be a different place if enough people would do that.

In all of these ways Jesus is the one. He is the one who was to come and who came to us from God so long ago. And he comes to us from God even now, every time we turn to him in prayer. Every time we lay our troubles at the foot of his cross and pray for help. Jesus comes to God’s people every time they commit themselves to do good work in the world, when they feed the hungry and when they try to figure out why so many people are hungry in the first place and try to do something to change that tragic reality. Jesus is the one. We don’t need to expect another. We don’t need to look for another. So in this Advent season let us prepare to welcome the who comes, the one who came, the one who is enough. Thanks be to God! Amen.