St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent (December 16, 2007)
Liturgical Color: Blue
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
"Seeking a Savior"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Advent is the time of waiting and watching.
This morning we find John the Baptizer waiting and watching in the gospel. He is in prison and looking for a sign—a sign that the long-awaited Messiah has truly arrived. It's a bit ironic. John the Baptizer is the one who first proclaimed his coming. But much has happened to him since the time of his preaching and baptizing people in the wilderness, and now he isn't so sure about things.
You remember John's message: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It burned in his soul. He proclaimed it to religious leaders and royalty alike—even to King Herod himself. And that is how he comes to be in jail.
It's worth noting that this is not the King Herod who ruled at the time of Jesus' birth; this was his son, Herod Antipas, who turned out to be worse than his father. He married his brother's wife, after killing his brother.
For his forthright speech condemning the king's behavior, John is sent to prison. And he realizes that his days as a prophet will soon end, as will his life. So there is one thing that John wants to know for certain before he dies. He wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt if Jesus truly is the Messiah. And so he sends some of his followers to find Jesus and ask him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
It isn't easy, all this waiting and preparing and looking. Things weren't going as expected for John, nor do they for us—perhaps especially at we look towards Christmas. It is not an easy time of year for many. That "December" for John the Baptist finds him languishing in Herod's prison and gripped with doubt.
To be sure, John grew up with a very different set of expectations about what the messiah would do. He was a product of his time. He expected the same kind of Messiah everyone else expected—one who would drive out the despised Romans and establish the kingdom of God. In prison, John must have wondered why more wasn't happening, why Jesus wasn't overthrowing the Roman occupation forces and beginning his reign on earth.
John was looking for the messiah. He thought he had found him, but what he found didn't quite fit. "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
We too now wait for the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. We wait, we look. But for what? For whom? "Is this the one who is to come or are we to look for another?"
Jesus' answer to the question from John's disciples applies to himself what he said of others, "By their fruits you shall know them." "Go and tell John not what I am claiming, but what is happening; not what I am saying, but what I am doing." This is still Jesus' appeal to us today—look and see what is happening in the lives of those who love and trust him.
People have been asking John's question for some time, and through the generations there have been Messiahs galore to answer it. For example, there is Prem Rawat, known also as Maharaji, born in 1958 in India and worshiped as "Lord of the Universe" by those who belong to the Divine Light Mission, both here and abroad. If we asked him what he had been doing, this would be his answer: "I own 45 retreat houses in the United States, a luxurious estate in Malibu, a fleet of racing cars and limousines, all bought with tax-free money. I married my American secretary and declared her to be the incarnation of the Durga, the ten-armed, tiger-riding goddess. I broke the rules of the religion I preached. My mother tried to kick me out of my Messianic office, but I sued her." An appalling Messiah, but one who continues to attract followers even today.
Then there was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho before his death in 1990, the Guru who had his commune in Oregon. What was he doing? He was teaching people that desires can never be fulfilled. When he was running away from prosecution, he was caught in North Carolina, arrested and deported. He left behind immense wealth, several women devotees and ninety—yes, that's right—ninety Rolls Royces, paid for by followers seeking a Messiah.
And remember Sun Myung Moon, who recruited teen-age followers and turned them into panhandlers? They sought their Messiah in this Korean man. His wealth is beyond counting, his teachings a corruption of the gospel.
People have looked for other Messiahs-political, military, ethical, but nowhere in history has there been one who could give the answer that Jesus gave to John's disciples: "Go tell what you hear and see." "By their fruits you shall know them."
John the Baptist poses the question that we might ask ourselves during Advent: "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?"
Is this Jesus the one for whom we look, or do we seek another?
Or perhaps we look for no one at all. Is it just business as usual, blindly following everyone else to the mall, single-mindedly finishing off our Christmas list of gifts to buy?
When Moses led the people of Israel on their path to God, he went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. When he came down, he found that his people had melted their jewelry and made a golden calf. That is what they really worshiped, and we think of them as foolish. We imagine that their idolatry is about as far from our idea of worship as anything could be.
But is it really so different? An article entitled "America's Golden Calf" traces the development of the historical St. Nicholas into the mythical Santa Claus. We know only two facts historically about St. Nicholas: He was a Bishop in Myra, Asia Minor, about 325 A.D., and in 1087 Italian merchants and sailors set out to take his body from the tomb and place it in a new shrine in Italy. Out of that has come Santa Claus—according to the article, America's golden calf. It is made from our gold; to many people it is the central figure of Christmas, whose jolly laughter is the jingle of the cash register.
Christmas is fraught with idolatry in these days. Many seek something other than God's message of the Advent and Christmas seasons. They want the superficial. They want business as usual; nothing profound, nothing too earth-shaking. They can become distractions from seeking a savior, looking for the beautiful message of Christmas—the reminder that God still so loves the world that God becomes one of us.
John the Baptist poses the question that we might ask ourselves this Advent: "Is Jesus the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?"
Is Jesus the one for whom we look, or do we seek another?
For the early church, the words "Come, Lord Jesus!" had a sense of urgency. We need to recapture that urgency, that sense of eager anticipation as we ponder the one for whom we look in this season.
Some look for the coming of a baby. I suspect that there are people who come to Christmas services just because they like all the talk about babies and new beginnings. A baby does come—but there is much more to it than that.
Some look for a delicious family feast. School vacations come, we get in the car, and head out to see those we love. That's nice too, but it's not all there is.
For whom or what are we looking? Let's be honest about it. Some of us who are small enough to run under a table without damage to their heads are looking for loot. In fact, many of us who have grown up a bit not only rejoice in their looking for loot, we encourage it. "And what would you like for Christmas?" we ask, strengthening, consciously or not, the tie between Christmas and gift-getting.
Our text reminds us that we look for the one who ushers in the Kingdom of God. We look for the one who will free us from our sins. We look for the one who marks the dividing line between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. Our culture pushes us toward the baby end of the business. Our text reminds us that those of us who follow the Christ look for more than a baby, we look for a Lord.
John the Baptist poses the question that we might ask ourselves during Advent: "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?"
This Jesus is the one for whom we look, and we need seek no another.
This Lord has stood the test of time. As someone has written well: Without privileges of a prince's palace, he won the homage of kings. Without the army of a Caesar, he captured the hearts of humanity. Without any beauty that people should desire him, he so stimulated human imagination that painters have never tired of depicting his virtue, and musicians have never wearied of composing for his glory. He never wrote a word, except with his finger in the dust of a Palestinian road, yet no one's words have been so widely translated and so frequently quoted. He was mocked and spit upon, yet through the years he has dignified common people, released slaves, emancipated women and freed the oppressed.
Jesus paid a tremendous tribute to John, but pointed out his contrast with those in the kingdom of heaven. John could know the holiness of God. He could declare the justice of God, but the love of God in all its fullness he could not know. Because John didn't know the whole story. No one could call John's message a gospel—good news. It was basically a threat of wrath and destruction. It took Jesus to show us the length, the breadth, and the depth of the love of God.
That's why, as Jesus says at the end of our text, that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater that John. It is possible for the humblest of Christians to know more about God through Christ than through any other means. For us, the looking, the waiting, and the seeking are over as soon as we know Christ.
This Jesus is the one for whom we look, and we need seek no another—not just a baby, but our Lord, our savior, our door to the kingdom of God. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.
