Is Jesus the Coming One? Luke 7:19

In the name of Jesus
Dear brothers and sisters baptized into the name of Christ:
Why aren't the pews filled on this third Sunday in Advent? Why aren't there more people to hear all the true and clear answers the Church has for faith in this life and the life to come? A big part of the answer is the fact that people aren't asking any of the questions the Church has answers for. That's true of Christianity in general and the Lutheran Church in particular. Martin Luther was, by God's grace, led to re-discover the Bible's answer -- God's answer -- to the central question, "How can I stand and survive before a holy and righteous God?" But people today are not asking that question. It's completely off their radar.
Modern western civilization has convinced itself -- with the help of TV evangelists and today's pop Christianity gurus -- that everyone is basically a good person. And when it comes to our little personal frailties, God just winks and pretends none of our fallen thoughts, words, and deeds every happened.
So either the Church caves in and starts preaching and teaching what the world and our fallen human nature wants to hear (what the world and our sinful nature has already convinced itself of) or the Church continues to be misunderstood and judged out-of-step, and increasingly irrelevant with the modern world and modern men and women in it.
That's no more apparent during two seasons of the Church year: Advent and Lent.
Santa Claus never needed someone to prepare his way (unless you count Rudolph's shiny nose). The Easter bunny never needed someone to get people ready for an egg roll and chocolate.
In any spiritual approach that turns God into nothing more than a jolly ol' man who threatens coal in your stocking but actually never follows through on his empty threats to uphold a clear distinction between good and evil, sin and righteousness -- for any of us who have morphed the God of Holy Scripture into an Aladdin's lamp or a divine vending machine that can be manipulated with a few coins -- there is no place for our friend John the Baptist -- or his message or his baptism -- or his coming Lord.
John was sent to prepare each of our hearts for -- as I have said before -- a Messiah we neither desired nor deserved, a Messiah that could not be domesticated with milk and cookies placed next to the fireplace.
"Are you the Coming One, or should we wait for another?"
Even John the Baptist and his disciples struggled with the Son of David born in a Bethlehem manger. In that respect he was no different that any of us here this morning.
Advent is a time to allow God to give each of us strength in our struggle between what we think Christmas and the baby Jesus and the angels and shepherds should be all about -- what our old nature thinks of December 25th -- and the reality of God's promises and the reality of God making good on those promises all in the person and work of his only-begotten Son.
"Are you the Coming One, or should we wait for another?"
"Can this Jesus of Scripture, can this Jesus that appears in weakness really be the Coming One -- the Messiah -- the Christ? Shouldn't we move on and look for another?"
That's not only the question the sinful,doubting, worldly nature of John the Baptist asked, that's the question our old nature asks, and will continue to ask until Christ comes in power to end the madness of this planet and put an end to all sin.
A part of each of us loves the sentimentality of the Christmas season. It loves a reason to jump with abandon into the excesses we see going on during any holiday season. There is a part of each of us that can only think of the gifts and glitter, the glitz and glam, the giddiness that attempts to erase -- or at least forget, for a while -- the chronic, spiritual disease that threatens to overtake our faith and our life.
So how does John -- and ultimately, Jesus -- fit into the next eight days? And how do we know it's the real John and his real voice and his real Lord we hear and heed?
As, daily, the darkness of the days of winter increases, it reminds us of the future of a world that will have less and less to do with the Christ of the Scriptures and the ones who are sent to announce his coming. (One example: Newsweek's annual Christmas issue this year attempts to suck out all the religious content of the occasion by focusing in on the relationship between December 25th and "family values.")
So the light of God's Word made flesh comes again this next week to call us to three God-pleasing things in these final days of Advent.
The collect, the prayer of the day that commemorates the death, the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptists reads like this:
Almighty God, you gave your servant John the Baptist to be the forerunner of your Son, Jesus Christ, in both his preaching of repentance and his innocent death. Grant that we, who have died and risen with Christ in Holy Baptism, may daily repent of our sins, patiently suffer for the sake of the truth, and fearlessly bear witness to his victory over death; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
Did you catch those three things? They are quite different than the triad of "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Daily repent, patiently suffer and fearlessly bear witness, all for the sake of giving glory to the God who sent the Coming One, the Christ, born to accomplish all by giving himself upon the gift-bearing, life-giving, heart-changing tree of Calvary.
What is your prayer on this third Sunday in Advent? Maybe it is the prayer that God would save you from a Christmas of your own making, from a Christ Child manufactured by the world and our own fallen nature.
John and his disciples were down-right confused. They had gotten dangerously close to giving in to the temptation of giving up on Jesus. Jesus fit less and less into their notions of what the real Coming One would look like or sound like or act like. How could Jesus begin his ministry at Nazareth preaching release to those held in bondage and still allow John to continue suffering in Herod's prison? How could the same Jesus who proclaimed the setting free of prisoners allow his servant John to die at the hands of evil men?
Maybe you're asking a similar question this morning. "I thought Christ came to bless me and rescue me and change me and make something great of all the junk in my heart and in my life. But I still suffer. I still struggle with my faith. I still fear and fall and flee from what I know pleases God and benefits my neighbor."
"Are you the Coming One, or should we wait for another?"
There is one indispenseable element given graciously by God that makes sense out of an Advent season that calls for fasting before the feasting, confession before rejoicing, listening to the Word of God before speaking a word to God, or to our neighbor. It isn't complete obedience and it isn't perfect submission and it isn't our sincerity or good intentions or good works.
It is God-given -- God-created and God-sustained -- faith. Faith is what the world needs now, but, sadly, will never understand or receive.
It is faith that says, "Despite appearances that tempt me to give up on my struggle with sin and doubt and rebellion, I will trust that the Son of God and Mary's Son is the Messiah, come to save.
Despite appearances, I will not give in to the temptation to believe that Jesus was mere example or mere coach or cheerleader on the sidelines of my life. By faith I will believe what God declares in his Word: the Coming One has conquered death by his own death and opened the gates of everlasting life to all who would but confess him, and place their souls into his merciful care.
Despite appearances, I will not believe the world's verdict on the CHristian Scriptures and Christian Baptism and Christ's own Supper. I will fight against the temptation to see them as empty symbols and dead rituals of an out-of-step religious tradition. I will, in faith, stake my life and my eternity on the clear Word of this Jesus, this manger clad infant revealed by heaven through a camel-hair clad prophet named John.
Pastor William Cwirla writes:
From Herod's prison John would ask the six million dollar messianic question, "Are you the One we were expecting, or do we look for another?" Jesus was simply not the kind of messiah anyone was expecting. Who expected the messiah of God to be rejected by his own people, by their religious leaders? Who expected the messiah to hang out with tax collectors and all kinds of sinner and criticize the religious for their hypocricy? Who expected the messiah to be handed over first to the religious court and then to the political court, be tried and convicted and crucified between two terrorists? I can assure you, there wasn't an Isaelite alive and breathing at the time of Jesus -- not John, not the disciples, not even Mary -- who expected the kind of messiah Jesus turned out to be.
And thank God for it! Thank the Lord that he rearranges our expectations and turns them on their head and spins them around until they are dizzy. We'd be putting a band-aid on this problem, and a patch on that problem. We'd be inventing religions to try to reach up to God, to get closer to him, to bribe him and win his favor. But Jesus takes all our religious expectations, all the things we lay on God, all the ways we have for remaking God in our own image and likeness, and he crucifies them. .... there in [Jesus'] dark death, there in the broken man of the Cross is God's messiah, his Christ, the strength of his arm to save you, me and the world from the enemies of sin, death, the devil and the Law.
Christ is the Coming One. In his birth he has linked his destiny to ours. He has come to be that Lamb of God who takes upon himself in weakness our sins that he might do his almighty work of clothing us with his perfect righteousness.
Almighty God, you gave your servant John the Baptist to be the forerunner of your Son, Jesus Christ, in both his preaching of repentance and his innocent death. Grant that we, who have died and risen with Christ in Holy Baptism, may daily repent of our sins, patiently suffer for the sake of the truth, and fearlessly bear witness to his victory over death; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen