"are you the one?"
Isa. 35:1-10; Ps. 146:5-10 or Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matt. 11:2-11
Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor
December 16, 2007
A red Mercedes convertible heading west pulled to a smart stop at the corner of Jackson and Government. The sun drenched driver with equally red lips and long blond hair was wearing dark glasses. Her Florida vanity plate read: R U The 1. And I, if ever so briefly, imagined, “Oh, to be young again.” The light changed and then she was gone.
Actually, I’m making this up but it could’ve happened, not that it did, but it could have happened—R U The 1?
Did you see where Houston Nutt left Arkansas for Ole Miss? Do you think Houston’s the one? Will he restore glory to Ole Miss? Bobby Petrino left the Falcons to take his place. I wonder who’ll go to Michigan. Do you think Saban is the one for Alabama?
It’s college football’s silly season, isn’t it? And not just football—the Iowa primary is not far way, another silly season. Who’s going to be the one—Hillary, Obama; Rudy or Mitt? Who’s the one?
“Are you the one, or should we wait for another?”
There was a time when John the Baptist thought Jesus was the one, a time when he had no doubt that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. John was preaching in the wilderness. Tons of people were going to hear him—“the people of Jerusalem and all of Judea”—big crowds, thousands of people. “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
That was John’s sermon. If you went to hear John, that’s what you heard. “I baptize you with water . . . but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand . . . he will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
And who shows up, who is the Reaper? Jesus from Galilee. He goes to the Jordan and is baptized by John. John wanted nothing to do with it. “You baptize me,” John said. Jesus prevailed and when John baptized him “the heavens were opened” and “the Spirit of God descended.” There was a voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The fourth gospel tells us that when John saw Jesus down by the Jordan he said of him, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And “this is the Son of God.” The fourth gospel also tells us that when John saw Jesus the next day, he pointed out Jesus to some of his own disciples and John’s disciples left him to follow Jesus.
John thought Jesus was the one. He was “it,” the Redeemer, the Savior, the long-awaited Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Beloved. John thought Jesus was the one. And then John got arrested. John went to jail.
Luke says John was “shut up” in prison. King Herod arrested John and threw away the key. That’s when John asked, “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?” That’s what John wanted to know, “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another.” John had second thoughts.
According to Luke, John was Jesus’ cousin. As a matter of fact, Luke tells us that even before John was born he thought Jesus was the one. You remember John’s mother is pregnant with him. And Mary is pregnant with Jesus. Mary goes to visit Elizabeth and when the two women meet, Elizabeth’s baby (that would be John) “leaped in her womb.” John knew Jesus was the one even before either of them was born. John and Jesus went way back. But then John got arrested and he started having doubts, “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”
I can sympathize with John, can’t you? Have you ever been “shut up,” locked down, pushed out? Have ever you been discouraged? I got “shut up” in the prison of discouragement a few weeks ago. I said to a friend, “Sometimes I just want to walk away from it all. When I retire I’m not sure I’ll even go to church.”
I meant it too. At the time, I meant it. I mean, sometimes, the church is so ineffective. We have so little influence. We make so little difference in the course of things. And we can get so off track about the dumbest things. The church excels in straining gnats and swallowing camels. The world can be going to hell in a hand basket and we’re worried about whether the basket is pink or blue.
I’ve been disappointed by the church, haven’t you? I told my friend I was disappointed because the church so often seems no different than the world. Our values, our standards, our practices are hardly any different. I told my friend that I’d been a minister for 30 years and that for every one of those years the Presbyterian Church lost 30,000 members, over a million people in 30 years.
I was really down on the church ‘cause the only Christianity we seem able to swallow is a watered down variety, one that expects precious little, hardly the cross-bearing kind found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I told my friend, “Sometimes I think we’re only fooling ourselves, that we need a god, so we find one.”
Have you ever been “shut up” in the prison of discouragement? I understand John, don’t you? “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”
Part of the problem I think is that the Bible puts expectations way up here and so often reality is way down here. Consider Isaiah, “They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God. . .”
Isaiah was preaching to exiles. He was preaching to political prisoners, to captives of the powerful Babylonian Empire. And what does he tell them, “[God] will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you . . . the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; and they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
And the exiles said, “Yeah, right. What’s God going to do? I don’t see any highway in the desert. All I see is desert.”
And what does John see from prison? He sees hard times. He sees Herod getting away with murder. He sees cold, iron bars. And eventually he sees his own head on a platter. “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”
Much ink has been spilled about Mother Teresa, you know, about her doubt, her crisis of faith. Apparently the crisis was long running. It wasn’t a passing phase, but rather something that plagued her daily. Reading her diary makes you wonder what kind of saint she was. She died at age 87. Mother Teresa smiled a lot. Fifty years ago she wrote, “My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains . . . if they only knew. . .”
In one letter she wrote, “The damned of Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. . . In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”
I think Mother Teresa understood John’s question, don’t you? “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”
While John had doubts, Jesus didn’t shame him. And I don’t think he shamed Mother Teresa. I think he told Mother Teresa what he told John: “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.”
By the world’s standards that doesn’t sound like much. And it hardly sounds like “vengeance” much less “terrible recompense.” But then Jesus wasn’t big on “recompense” and “vengeance. Some days I wish he was. Some days, I wish he’d show up and let the bad guys have it. You know, a really big show of power, real power, power like the world knows. But then Matthew tells us Jesus rejected that kind of power.
Early on, when Jesus was first starting, he rejects power as we know power. Go back and read again the temptation story. It’s all there—economic power, political power, even the razzle-dazzle of religious power. Jesus rejected it all. Jesus could have had it all—economic power, political power, even what passes for religious power—but he rejects it all.
And it’s there too at the end. Matthew’s very clear about it. A large crowd comes to arrest Jesus. They’re carrying swords and clubs. Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. The guards arrest Jesus and someone, Matthew leaves the follower unnamed, someone draws a sword and cuts off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Jesus tells the disciple to put his sword away and says, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”
I don’t know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but there were up to six thousand soldiers in a Roman legion, so I guess Jesus could have called in 72,000 angels. That’s a lot of angels. But it wasn’t his way. Jesus rejected worldly power and instead chose the cross. Funny thing is or not so funny, when Jesus rejected calling in the avenging angels “all the disciples deserted him and fled.”
“Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus is hard to figure. Even though he had power or access to the kind of power we consider real power, he rejected it. Jesus could have solved a lot of problems with those angels. He could have installed God’s regime. He could have eliminated poverty, oppression, injustice. And I expect he could have converted the whole world with a wink and a nod of religious power, but he doesn’t do it. Instead he chose a cross, which I suppose is why Jesus didn’t fault his friend, John, or his fleeing disciples. And if he didn’t fault them then I imagine he doesn’t fault us.
I think he tells us as he told John, “Your labor is not in vain. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. Yes, I am the One. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Amen.