"Who Are You Looking For?"

A sermon preached by Matthew B. Reeves
Parkville Presbyterian Church, Parkville, Missouri
The Third Sunday in Advent, December 15, 2002

Texts: Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-15

Among the faithful of God, John the Baptist ranks up there with the best of them. He holds his own among pillars of the faith: Abraham, Moses, Rahab, David, Elijah, Ruth, Mary, John the Baptist. When you start mentioning those whom God used to bring about salvation, John the Baptist is bound to come up.

John is a biblical superhero of sorts, complete with a special camel-haired costume, an insectivorous breakfast of champions, and a mission to clean up the riff raff of the world. But that is to say nothing of John’s faith: bold, fiery, forward-looking. In every single gospel, John has pride of place among humans when it comes to telling about what God is up to in the world. "Repent, the kingdom of God has come near."

"Among those born of women," Jesus says, "no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist." Which is why it is so stunning that it is John who sends his disciples to Jesus with this question: "Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?" It’s not a bad question. In fact, it is precisely the right question. But we wouldn’t expect it to come from John—the one who prepared the way of the Lord, the one who himself baptized Jesus at the Jordan.

The kind of Messiah recognition skills we’d expect from the Baptist are more like what we see in the Gospel of John, as John the Baptist sees Jesus come traipsing by the Jordan and declares, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" But in Matthew’s Gospel, the one who immersed Jesus into solidarity with us isn’t so brash by the time we reach chapter 11. "Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?" The voice of one crying out from a prison cell speaks not in bold, with italics, and an exclamation mark, but in the font of ordinary humanity, and a question mark.

Now it’s not that we ought to file John’s faith under chapter 11, as though landing in jail has bankrupted him of trust in God. He isn’t asking a faithless question. He’s being honest, and any honest question is full of faith. "I have heard about what you are doing, Jesus, and I need to know: I need to know if you are The One, or do I keep looking?" John tells the truth, and he is nothing, if not honest.

These questions of faith are no small thing. John’s whole life is wrapped up in this question, "Are you the one?" There must have been some terror even in his asking it. But as one who lived searching for the coming of God, it was a question that needed asking. John’s question needed answering no more than many of ours: "How are you at work in the lives of my children? How do I handle workplace ethics with Christian integrity? What is to come after the next round of treatments? Where is your presence in the midst of marriage struggles?" It is the honest questions of God, and the waiting for honest answers that can teach us the most about faith. It is the honest questions that lead to the opening of our eyes.

We shared a moment of honesty as we sat around the parlor table. Call stories of pastors, and deacons and elders-elect bore witness to the activity of God in the lives of individuals who dare to follow Jesus even though they don’t have the answers to all their questions. Things were said such as, "I realized that my joy in life was not my time at the campus newspaper, but in leading the freshman Bible study." "I can’t say exactly why, but I sensed God calling me to participate in this community of faith." "I am still wondering if I can do what I am being called to do, but I believe that God is asking me to serve."

Those who we ordain and install as church officers this morning swapped stories of how they were being awakened to the activity of God lives, of how their eyes were being opened to the need of the church and the world, of the way they had listened to the call of Christ coming to them through Christian community. Their stories and questions were those of Holy Spirit blown and Son shone lookouts that live from the crow’s nest of faith—lookouts for the activity of God over the sea of life.

And for those who are looking, those with eyes to see and ears to hear, honest questions receive honest answers. Because we get down to it, our life with God is not about the questions we ask, but the response God gives. "Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?" It’s a great question. But the passage is really about the response from Jesus.

"Go and tell John what you hear and see," Jesus tells John’s messengers. "The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the lowly of the earth learn that God is on their side. Is that what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!"

It’s a laundry list of all that Jesus has been up to from the time he took his first sopping steps from the Jordan to the time the messengers deliver John’s question. Matthew says that John had heard in prison all that the Messiah was doing. Yes, John was a superhero of the faith, but still couldn’t quite peg Jesus as The One. John was the first to announce that the kingdom had come near, but his kingdom vision still wasn’t quite 20/20. Even John had to look twice to see the activity of God, to recognize it for what it truly is.

The great authors and painters, photographers and poets aren’t masters because of skill. They are great because of what they see. They are the ones who walk the same streets as the rest of us, see the same sunrises and sunsets, have the same conversations, live the same struggles, but can see something in them that most of us don’t notice. They are the ones who look twice, and so capture the butterfly struggling from the cocoon. They listen again, to hear the unsaid words of yearning behind an offhanded comment.

Jesus says to John, "You want to know if I bring in the kingdom? What have you heard and seen? Look again. Listen twice. Do you see? Do you hear the kingdom in what I am doing, John?"

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways says the Lord." The words of Isaiah are the tale as old as humanity, that were we to paint our own rendition of God’s reign it would be like an artist commissioned to paint a flower, but whose masterpiece depicts an elephant.

We who long to see and live into the way of God need to be instructed in what God’s way looks like. We who have the near-sightedness of sin need corrective lenses to have kingdom vision. Indeed, John Calvin called the scriptures the spectacles that show us the true God. When Jesus wants to tell the bleary eyed Baptist that he is indeed the one to come, he summarizes the scripture of our Old Testament lesson: "Here is your God. He will come and save you. The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then the lame leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy."

God is up to something big, John, Jesus seems to say. The work of salvation is happening. Have you heard—I mean truly heard—enough scripture to see when it happens? Those small groups and Monday night Bible studies, those early morning and late evening personal devotional times, the Wednesday morning prayer services, they’re trips to the spiritual optometrist. These are the appointments when Holy Spirit slides a more powerful lens before eyes of faith, so we can recognize the work of God when we see it.

God is up to something big, right here and right now. That is the operating assumption of those who live the life of faith. The world is teeming with the work of God. And following Jesus means being willing to have our minds changed about what that work looks like. It means that we are not the designers of God’s kingdom, and that God’s kingdom is not what we make of it—but what it makes of us.

The deacons and elders and pastors this congregation has elected, they’re not called to create ministry. They’re called to look out for it. That’s what ministry group meetings are: lookout posts, times when we come together prayerfully to discern the ministry into which God is leading us. When church officers are ordained and promise that they will fulfill their office in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of scripture and the guidance of the confessions, they are putting on the glasses of faith. They’re given a high calling, a crow’s nest ministry of looking and pointing at where God is at work.

And to be sure, it’s this life of ministry to which we’re all called—a life that looks remarkably like that of John the Baptist, who came saying that there is one who is coming. Be on the lookout! But even John didn’t have it all figured out. Sometimes it is the simple, honest questions that reveal the integrity of our faith: Where does my life need to look more like the life of Jesus? What changes in life am I afraid to make? Where do I need to recognize that you are at work in me? John’s work took place on the cusp of God’s kingdom. Our ministry takes place in the middle of it. It is a joyous world into which the Lord is come, and is coming. But until that day, let’s watch and listen for what God is doing—so we can go and tell the world what we see and hear.

Amen