“What Are You Expecting?”

Matthew 11:2-11

December 12, 2004

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

I heard the story again this week. It is not the first time that I have heard it. In fact, I may have even told a version of it from this pulpit. If I have, I hope that you will excuse me for telling it again. It is a perfect start, I think, for our sermon. It is the story of the four year old boy who went to church on Christmas Eve with his mother and dad. Their church had a wonderful Christmas Eve worship service every year. It was a late service. It did not begin before ten o’clock. The family arrived early. By the time that they did, there were few seats in the sanctuary. They took their place in one of the back pews that had room for the three of them. Then they waited. The four year old started looking around with amazement. He saw his church’s Chrismon tree with it’s symbols and thousands of lights. He saw that the altar was decorated complete with a white cloth, burning candles, and the manger scene. The white cloth hiding the communion elements was also there. He saw the Advent candles, lit four strong, waiting for the middle candle, the white candle, the Christ candle to be lit. Surrounding the altar and on the steps leading up to it were red poinsettias. To him the flowers appeared to be a sea of red.

He looked beyond the altar to the choir loft, where the bell choir members were in their places ready for their first note of music. Along the outside pews, taking their place in the niches in front of the stained glass windows were more candles, lit, and covered by hurricane lamps. Then one of their church’s musicians took his place on the organ bench. With his cue from the music minister he began to play the opening bars of the first hymn, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The choir, who usually came in through a side door, came streaming down the church’s center aisle. To the four year old, they looked like an army with their flowing red robes and with their hymnals and music folders in their hands. The church stood, even those who had not been successful in finding a place in a pew, stood and began to sing, “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him, born the King of angels; O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord. The two preachers, in their black robes, with their decorative white stoles followed behind the choir, processing sometime in the middle of the first stanza of the hymn.

Church, you will know this. There is something magical, musical, maybe even spectacular about a Christmas Eve service. You can feel it in the air. I think that that is what that four year old felt that night. He was standing on the pew, beside his mother, her arm cupped around his waist so that he would not fall. He leaned towards his mother as she was singing and whispered these words with as much excitement as he could while using his church voice, “Mom, I think something great is about to happen!”

Besides the magic of a Christmas eve worship service, there is something inside all of us that truly believes that with the coming of Christmas morning comes new possibilities, maybe even a new life. I am not quite sure what it is. Maybe it is the fact that Christmas day and New Year’s day are just a week apart. Still there is this belief that this child whose birthday we will celebrate in less than two weeks can change us and the circumstances of our lives.

He is not four years old. He has not positioned himself in a church, standing next to his mother on Christmas Eve, singing a great Christmas hymn. At one time he positioned himself in the wilderness, near the River Jordan. He, of course, is John the Baptist. John, too, believed that something great was about to happen. He believed that the Messiah was coming. He was excited about it. He preached his heart out telling others that it was about to happen. He told them that they had to turn their lives around, go down the right paths, and change their ways. When John first began to preach, he did not have any of the details of the Messiah. He did not have the Messiah’s name or a description of what he looked like, but he was sure that a new world would be carried on his shoulders. Fast forward a bit in this gospel and you see of a time when John found out who the Messiah was. He was sure that Jesus was the one; he discovered him in the waters of the chilly Jordan. Jesus comes to be baptized by John. Matthew is the only gospel writer who records John’s protest. He says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” That day, John put a name and a face to the Messiah. That day, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was the Messiah. John also knew his Bible. He knew that prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah had prophesied with words like these: “A fire will come out against the house of Israel. If any nation will not listen, then I will completely uproot it and destroy it.” He knew those passages, so he preached with fervor. He had seen Jesus. He had baptized him. He had seen the heavens open up. He was sure of Jesus’s messiahship.

But by the time that we catch up with John this morning, in Matthew’s eleventh chapter, John is not sure of anything. He is in prison and has been since the fourth chapter. He is there because he has spoken out against King Herod. This imprisonment will lead to John’s beheading. By the way, that story comes up in the lectionary every three years. I always avoid it and find another passage from which to preach. Can you imagine going home, inspired, after hearing a sermon about that? So John is there in that dark and damp prison cell, unsure about his future. He is also uncertain about his past. John could have had an easy life, I suspect. He could have ended up anywhere but a prison cell. He now has doubts about his life. Questions flood his soul. He asks: “Have I wasted my life? Have I been spinning my wheels? Is it possible that I was wrong? Is Jesus really the Messiah, God’s sent one? If he is, he isn’t acting very, well, messianic!” So John sends for his disciples, his followers. They come to his cell and leave with the instructions to find Jesus and to ask him the question that Matthew wants all of us to answer: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” I can imagine the delegation finding Jesus and asking Him that question. I can imagine the glimmer in Jesus’ eyes as he looks at them and says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” John would have recognized those prophetic words not just from Jesus but from great prophets, like Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied that one day such things would happen. Here is the problem. John’s idea of the Messiah was wrapped up in his belief that the one sent from God would bring fire and uprooting. He has looked and listened, and he has seen no fire and has heard of no uprooting. So now he is unsure of Jesus.

Let me bring this a little closer to home for us. Friends, there are two things that I want you to go home with this morning, two questions to ponder. The first one is John’s question of Jesus. Are you the one who is to come, or should I wait for someone else? Are you the one who is going to change my life and my circumstances? Are you the one who can make my husband love me more? Are you the one who is going to take my weariness away, my doubt away, my fears away? Or do I need to put my hope and my trust in someone else, maybe even something else? I want you to see this. Matthew does not tell us what John says when the delegation returns to his prison cell. The question that starts out being John’s question ends up being one that we all have to answer: “Are you the one, Jesus?” The second question that I want you to go home answering this morning is a cousin of the first one. They are closely related. It is hard to answer one without answering the other. Here is the second question: “What is your idea, what is your perception, what is your expectation of this Jesus?”

Jesus wanted to make sure that John understood that he was a different Messiah than John had been expecting. Listen again to his words, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” No offense, John. I know that you expected more. I know that you expected fire and judgment and uprooting and power. My power is different. I find power in feeding hungry people, clothing naked people, grating rest to the weary, giving hope to the discouraged, comforting the broken hearted, and blessing those who understand that real happiness is a relationship with God. No offense, friends. I know that you expected more. I know that you expected God to be more vigorous in punishing evil, more swift in granting justice, quicker in answering our prayers, and speedy in changing the world. I guess, in a way, John represents all of us who have been disappointed in Jesus because He has failed to meet our expectations.

Can I ask you, friends, if Jesus is who you expected Him to be? We come to this time of year waiting and remembering. We hear the stories of his birth and imagine what it must have been like in that stable in Bethlehem. The world was waiting for a Messiah, a great ruler. No one dreamed, no one expected that he would come the way that he did. Nor did they expect that he would do the things that he did or say the things that he said. They expected more. I think that we expect more, too. We will wait until December twenty-fifth. We will celebrate it with our Christmas traditions of church and family. And on Christmas morning, we will get what we have been waiting for. I know that you expected more. Our expectations of Jesus are often wrapped in our prayer lives. Look at the things that we pray for. We pray for healing and wholeness. We pray for success and peace. We pray for those having surgeries and those struggling with life. We lift our expectations heavenward and say to God, “Here’s my prayer, please answer it immediately.” And when it is not, aren’t we disappointed? Is that the way that God works?

A preacher friend of mine told me about the Christmas season when he went to have lunch at the school near one of the churches that he pastored. He sat around with the boys and girls in his church and with other kids in the neighborhood. As he ate, my friend asked the elementary boys and girls sitting near him what they wanted for Christmas. He got the answers that he expected. He heard how they wanted things like dolls, video games, and bicycles. They all wanted those kinds of things, except one. One little boy said this, “For Christmas, I’m asking God for a better year. This year has been a tough one on my family. My grandmother died this year. My dad struggled with his job. My brother has been in trouble at school. For Christmas this year, I am asking God for a better year.”

Hearing that tugs on your heart strings, but it does something else. It makes you realize that what we are called to celebrate is not just Jesus’ birthday. I will have another birthday in February. You can mark it on your calendars. No one celebrating with me will think about the day that I was born. I hope that they will celebrate that I am alive and well. That is what we are called to do in less than two weeks. Emmanuel means that God is with us. Sometimes we forget that. We have our expectations of this Savior and sometimes we are disappointed. Sometimes we want more. Sometimes we want to open up peace and hope like we would a present under a tree. I wish it were that way. But here is what I know. God surrounds us with people and uses people to touch our lives. God gives us small victories and times of hope. He gives us nudges and peace. Now I know you expected more. I know that you want it to be different. But I do want you to know that Jesus is the one. You don’t have to wait for anyone or anything else. Go home with the questions on your heart. Is he the One? And what should we expect out of this savior. I asked Bryan if we could sing the words of the song Star Child to close our worship service. Listen now to the words, “Grown child, old child, memory full of years, sad child, lost child, story told in tears. This year, this year, let the day arrive when Christmas comes to everyone, everyone alive.” Emmanuel, God is with us. Let us pray.