The phone call went something like this: “She’s a nice girl,” I said. “She says we’re soul mates.” “You’re not soul mates,” said my friend. “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure.” A couple of years later, another phone call with my friend: “She dumped me,” I said. “I thought she was the one…I was fairly certain she was the one.” By the way, this one, that I thought was the one, isn’t the one who said she was my soul mate. The friend I was talking to, the one I was pouring my heart out to, turns out she was The One.
There had been a long line of would be Messiahs, revolutionaries, and prophets before Jesus, the most famous and perhaps the most disheartening was Judas the Galilean. Most of them preached liberation from Rome and the coming Kingdom of God (as a political and ethnic reality); all of them ended up imprisoned or dead. The people were crying out for their soul mate to arrive; they were looking for The One who would finally set things right, but in each case they walked away thinking, “I thought he was the One…I was almost certain he was the One.” And so John and his disciples look to Jesus as possibly being the One, but his actual signs look different from the signs they want, so they wrestle with these questions and bring them to Jesus: “Is he the One?” “Are you the One…the One we’ve been waiting for? The One we’ve been expecting? Or do we keep waiting?”
And if you think about it, most of the people walking into churches these days are asking the same questions. In the pluralistic world we live in, people are looking to have their questions answered. Is Jesus The One? As much as I am not a fan of the idea of a religious marketplace, we have to come to terms with the reality that people are looking for something that works as much as they are for something that feels right. In the years I’ve spent leading congregations, so much of how we spend our time is marketing one congregation against another or one style of worship against another…and what we’re missing are the questions, the deep and searching questions, that people are bringing with them—even if they’ve been in the church for years—some of you probably have them today. So many people are wondering if Jesus is the One that is worth giving up everything for, if he’s the one they’ve been waiting for.
Sometimes the questions about Jesus really being who he says don’t occur until a crisis, though. When John sends the questions--something has changed. Something has changed between the baptism of Jesus and now, when John begins asking questions. Now John is in prison. As one pastor says, “It’s easy to believe in God int he bright sunlight when all is joyful and free, but let the iron doors of difficulty slam shut, and doubt is there in the darkness. ‘Are you for real, Jesus?’ ‘Can religion matter in my case, in my condition, with my concerns, or has it reached the end of its usefulness?’”
I was talking with someone this week who said to me, “I wish I could believe in religion or God because then, at least, there would be something stable in my life.”
These questions are real. And, sometimes, these questions are a matter of life and death, a matter of clinging to hope rather than giving in to despair.
When the disciples of John come, asking those questions, listen to what Jesus has to say to John’s disciples. “What do 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.” Jesus invites John’s disciples, and us, to look at the way he is touching and changing lives, especially the lives of those who are on the margins. Look for the proof; listen for the testimony of those who have been made whole.
My Christmas hope, my prayer, is that Jesus will be better reflected in my life each day in the coming year, that he will be more visible in your lives in the year to come. My hope, my prayer, is that through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, set free people who are paralyzed by guilt, shame, fear and sin, that more of the “poor” (in material, and in spirit) will experience good news.
Because, really, what do we come to Advent and Christmas hoping to see? Do we come so we can stand at the manger and think, “Aww, look at the beautiful baby…so cute…so precious…” Or do we come looking for the God who has come to proclaim that we are free, we are beloved, we, who were once no people, are now royalty.
Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah one more time…the words that Jesus is referring to when he talks to the disciples of John:
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
This message from Isaiah, that Jesus says he embodies, that I know he does! This is a message for the hurting and for the broken. This is a message for people who are weary from carrying heavy burdens, for a people whose feet are blistered from burning sand and rough wilderness wanderings.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. And the proof of Jesus being the one, is that those who have met him, and have allowed themselves to be known by him, they are free. Free to love and to be loved. Free to forgive and be forgiven. We leap like a deer and our voices go up with shouts and songs of joy. And not only is the proof in us—it’s in the ones we help get to freedom, in the ones we help to sing songs of joy, whose blistered feet we tend, whose parched thirst we allow to be quenched.
Again, my hope, my prayer is that in the Church and through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, heal more lives, may this be our prayer together. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
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