Third
Sunday of Advent
December 16, 2007
Sermon by Pastor Joy Bussert
The Holy Gospel according to St.
Matthew. (Matthew 11:2-11)
When
John the Baptist heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by
his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to
wait for another?” Jesus answered them,
“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. And
blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
As they went away, Jesus began to speak
to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look
at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal
palaces. What then did you go out to
see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a
prophet. This is the one about whom it
is written,
‘See, I am sending my messenger
ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before
you.’
Truly I tell you, among those born of
women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the
kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Please join me in prayer.
Our loving and gracious God,
we pray for the Advent of your love.
Bless our waiting,
that we may prepare our hearts for you.
Amen.
If I could give a title to a sermon
about John the Baptist, it would be, “NOT THIS, NOT THAT, NOR THAT.” John the Baptist, a strange character who is
always the rough draft or runner-up of the season; when people come to John
asking him who he was—a prophet, Elijah, the Messiah—he says, “Not this, not
that, nor that.”
Today in our text, he is no longer in the wilderness;
he is in prison. And he sends word to
Jesus asking if he is the one, or should the people go on waiting for
another? John the Baptist seems to know
that we must wait for something other than what we are looking for.
Poet T. S. Eliot wrote this about waiting:
I said to my
soul, be still, and wait without hope,
For hope
might be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love
might be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith,
But the
faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Not this, not that, nor that.
We learn from our study of Isaiah
this season that a good portion of the first half of the prophetic utterance is
about waiting with profound pathos. The
people who walked in darkness, Isaiah spins out, were people exiled in
Not this, not that, nor that.
“Aren’t these texts kind of gloomy
for this time of year?” people often ask.
Yes, they are, until you stop and look around. After all, late December is the time of the
winter solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year. It is a time in which the sun sets well
before the day is done. And we awaken
again in the morning shadows, only to return home again at night to the light
of street lamps lit up against the dark winter sky. The darkness that surrounds
us is a deep darkness, literally a dread in the bones from the absence of
light. And we yearn for the light to
come again. Yet, wait we must, for there
are also many other kinds of darkness that the poets and the prophets insist
that we see before we can see the light coming into our world again.
There are people this year who will
celebrate the season without a loved one for the very first time. Grief is always dark and difficult, but we
know that it is especially difficult at holiday times, when there is a
particular vacuum created by the loss of a loved one, an empty place around the
table. There are people this very day,
homeless people, put out in the street, living dangerously under construction
sites, huddled together, lighting bonfires just to keep warm. There is war, and rumors of war, and violence
at every turn. Not this, not that,
nor that.
“Waiting is difficult,” Chuck Lutz, editor emeritus
of the Metro Lutheran, wrote. “It is tough when the church says wait, in a
world that says hurry, not many days left; when thousands of nativity sets on
front lawns already cradle the child, yet the manger is still empty here; when
we’re asked to be vigilant and watchful at church, but endure a series of loud
and noisy parties everywhere else; when we sit in darkness, waiting for the
light of the world, and try not to be blinded by the dazzle of commercial
lights of the season. Not this, not
that, nor that.
Waiting is tough. Yet wait we must, not only because of the
poets and the prophets but because of the compelling and solitary figure of
John the Baptist, half mad with indignation at the desert that he sees in
people’s lives. And, like most prophets,
truly one of those rare personalities born and destined to live with an unusual
and heightened sensitivity to what has gone wrong. And as is so often the case, the one who
looks and sounds crazy is really the one who is sane. The people have forgotten to care for the
world, the creation, the orphan, the widow, the stranger around them, and he
tells it like it is.
I heard a commentator on MPR this
season speak of a tiny house in the Frog Town district of St. Paul, a house
with shabby siding and a falling fence, with a broken gate. But there was a string of small white lights
encircling the doorway, and the light burned through the night, even while the
residents of the house slept. The
journalist was coming home from somewhere late, and he saw those lights and
thought of the budget the people in that house must live on, a budget that
accounts for every penny, and yet the budget included the light. And walking by in the darkness, he was
grateful and certain that he was not alone, waiting for not this, not that. He tells it like it is.
Waiting and watching—that is,
practicing paying attention year after year—then has profound meaning. To look around you this season attentively is
a wise thing to do, because even if you’re doing fine this year, others who sit
next to you may not be. They may be just
down the street from you; they may work in the cubicle next to you. To look around you attentively is a wise
thing to do, so that when your year of hard times comes you will know how to
recognize it and be prepared to find your way through to the light again. And so this season, we remember the sorrow of
a friend, the less fortunate, the shivering, the unemployed, those who
mourn. To not overlook others is to be
attentive in the waiting. And what do we
get as we listen to the word that comes to us this Third Sunday of Advent? A poet, a prophet, a song, and a
promise. That’s what John the Baptist
is, not this, not that, nor that, but a witness to the light that is
coming into the world.
Isaiah hints at a desert that blossoms where it
seemed there was no life before. And
already we can hear and see the light in Mary’s face as we hear the song of
Hannah and the song of the Magnifcat tucked in there this Sunday right between
Isaiah and John. Already there is a hint
of promise. “I said to my ‘Soul, be still, and wait without hope.” Wait we must, amidst the clamor of a noisy
and desperate world; wait for a hint of light, for a hint of promise, for the
faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Amen.