Br. John Forbis, OHC
The Third Sunday of Advent, Year A - Sunday, December 15, 2019
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
So it’s three candles now, and I suppose I have to get with the program. As we draw nearer to Christmas, more and more is being promised. All of these passages are quite bold in their claims. Isaiah writes with brazen certainty:
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For Isaiah, the future is determined and established.
Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew purports that the above events have and still are happening now at the present time. The blind do see. The deaf do hear. The lame do walk. The lepers are cleansed. The dead are raised. And as if that isn’t enough, the poor have good news brought to them.
If the religious and political authorities are witnessing all of this, Jesus might be doing this against his better judgment. Jesus is becoming a dangerous man, as John already knows.
James encourages us to endure and wait patiently for the coming of the Lord. Part of that enduring is to live in community, not just membership to a particular association or club but true, honest, relationship. The coming will change everything, and we’re answerable to how we live into those relationships.
James seems more realistic, more appropriately cautious than Isaiah and Jesus. Yet, he still challenges us to wait for what will come. He points us to the prophets like Isaiah.
After all of these predictions, I have to confess to you that I’m skeptical. Doubt is my default position. I come to doubt much easier than an acceptance or even recognition of the marvels happening all around me and within me. My bold claim is that there isn’t much proof of what these three men are talking about.
But what did I go out into the wilderness to look at? What did I go out to see? Glory, majesty? Or a foreshadowing of the whipping that Jesus will receive from a reed? The kind of prophet James points me to … who will so soon be beheaded?
I can afford to doubt. Doubt can be a luxury. I’m not blind, deaf, lame, marginalized. I don’t I think I need the Good News brought to me as much as the poor do. Waiting isn’t desperate for me.
If there is one thing I thought I would have learned by now, is that for so many of those who are suffering and marginalized and really need Good News spoken to them, faith is all they have, all that is left for them. Anything less would be cause for despair. Even hope may not be enough to sustain the gruelling endurance and patience required to await the coming of God. As Isaiah demands, “strengthen the weak hands; make firm the feeble knees; Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
"Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come and save you."
Thus, the author of Isaiah offers nothing less. The future is a fait d’accompli. Jesus is the fulfillment of this future making it present. This power of God manifested in Jesus is so assured that James compels a transformation of the past of grumbling, division and destructiveness threatening to tear down a community to a present anticipating the Coming of God to be among us and even one or all of us. This Coming will also hold us accountable to our conversion of heart. By our love toward each other, we are loving God. “The Judge is standing at the doors.” Furthermore we have a role model and an inspiration for our faith. If we really want to know how to increase it: “take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”
Yet, John the Baptist was once so sure of who Jesus was. As the voice cries out in the wilderness after seeing Jesus coming toward him, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’” And at another time John says, “He must increase but I must decrease.”
John’s brash, prophetic presumption is tempered by a sobering omen hinting at his own demise. Now that he is in prison with the possibility of his own death looming over him, he sends his disciples to ask the heartbreaking question to Jesus, “Are you the one?” He questions; he doubts for all who are blind, deaf, lame, unclean, marginalized, in prisons of either their own making or physical incarceration.
Yes, he doubts, but he also seeks out the Messiah and longs for Jesus, about whom he has heard so much, to be the one. Was it all worth it? Was his whole life of being the messenger for a purpose or is his death just another senseless, meaningless execution based upon the whim of a capricious ruler? Is John to yet wait longer for another when he is decreasing? He has no more time to wait.
As Christmas comes near, time becomes more and more one, as past, present and future magnetically pull toward each other and collide. Or the known, the uncertain and the unknown converge into the manifest, incarnate NOW! Doubt falls into the spaces between these forces trying to keep them apart. Yet, faith endures, faith waits, faith is patient.
We have just lit candle number three. Advent imposes itself. It’s fiercely implacable, relentless, uncompromising. The suffering will not just see, hear, walk, be clean. They are. It’s done. We have, shall and do wait for the coming of God … some of us so much longer than others. She will, has and does save us.
But what did you, Jesus, go out into our wilderness to look at? Did you go out to see and hear singing, joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing are fleeing away? That we have, will and do prepare a high way called the Holy Way for God’s people; so that the redeemed – all of us – will walk upon it?
We are the voice crying out in the wilderness. We are the messengers ahead of Jesus; who prepare the way for each other before us. We are prophets. This is God’s brazen faith in us.
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For Isaiah, the future is determined and established.
Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew purports that the above events have and still are happening now at the present time. The blind do see. The deaf do hear. The lame do walk. The lepers are cleansed. The dead are raised. And as if that isn’t enough, the poor have good news brought to them.
If the religious and political authorities are witnessing all of this, Jesus might be doing this against his better judgment. Jesus is becoming a dangerous man, as John already knows.
James encourages us to endure and wait patiently for the coming of the Lord. Part of that enduring is to live in community, not just membership to a particular association or club but true, honest, relationship. The coming will change everything, and we’re answerable to how we live into those relationships.
James seems more realistic, more appropriately cautious than Isaiah and Jesus. Yet, he still challenges us to wait for what will come. He points us to the prophets like Isaiah.
After all of these predictions, I have to confess to you that I’m skeptical. Doubt is my default position. I come to doubt much easier than an acceptance or even recognition of the marvels happening all around me and within me. My bold claim is that there isn’t much proof of what these three men are talking about.
But what did I go out into the wilderness to look at? What did I go out to see? Glory, majesty? Or a foreshadowing of the whipping that Jesus will receive from a reed? The kind of prophet James points me to … who will so soon be beheaded?
I can afford to doubt. Doubt can be a luxury. I’m not blind, deaf, lame, marginalized. I don’t I think I need the Good News brought to me as much as the poor do. Waiting isn’t desperate for me.
If there is one thing I thought I would have learned by now, is that for so many of those who are suffering and marginalized and really need Good News spoken to them, faith is all they have, all that is left for them. Anything less would be cause for despair. Even hope may not be enough to sustain the gruelling endurance and patience required to await the coming of God. As Isaiah demands, “strengthen the weak hands; make firm the feeble knees; Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
"Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come and save you."
Thus, the author of Isaiah offers nothing less. The future is a fait d’accompli. Jesus is the fulfillment of this future making it present. This power of God manifested in Jesus is so assured that James compels a transformation of the past of grumbling, division and destructiveness threatening to tear down a community to a present anticipating the Coming of God to be among us and even one or all of us. This Coming will also hold us accountable to our conversion of heart. By our love toward each other, we are loving God. “The Judge is standing at the doors.” Furthermore we have a role model and an inspiration for our faith. If we really want to know how to increase it: “take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”
Yet, John the Baptist was once so sure of who Jesus was. As the voice cries out in the wilderness after seeing Jesus coming toward him, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’” And at another time John says, “He must increase but I must decrease.”
John’s brash, prophetic presumption is tempered by a sobering omen hinting at his own demise. Now that he is in prison with the possibility of his own death looming over him, he sends his disciples to ask the heartbreaking question to Jesus, “Are you the one?” He questions; he doubts for all who are blind, deaf, lame, unclean, marginalized, in prisons of either their own making or physical incarceration.
Yes, he doubts, but he also seeks out the Messiah and longs for Jesus, about whom he has heard so much, to be the one. Was it all worth it? Was his whole life of being the messenger for a purpose or is his death just another senseless, meaningless execution based upon the whim of a capricious ruler? Is John to yet wait longer for another when he is decreasing? He has no more time to wait.
As Christmas comes near, time becomes more and more one, as past, present and future magnetically pull toward each other and collide. Or the known, the uncertain and the unknown converge into the manifest, incarnate NOW! Doubt falls into the spaces between these forces trying to keep them apart. Yet, faith endures, faith waits, faith is patient.
We have just lit candle number three. Advent imposes itself. It’s fiercely implacable, relentless, uncompromising. The suffering will not just see, hear, walk, be clean. They are. It’s done. We have, shall and do wait for the coming of God … some of us so much longer than others. She will, has and does save us.
But what did you, Jesus, go out into our wilderness to look at? Did you go out to see and hear singing, joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing are fleeing away? That we have, will and do prepare a high way called the Holy Way for God’s people; so that the redeemed – all of us – will walk upon it?
We are the voice crying out in the wilderness. We are the messengers ahead of Jesus; who prepare the way for each other before us. We are prophets. This is God’s brazen faith in us.
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