This week our advent journey takes us back to John the Baptist and the peculiarity of what he does. Last week John was the ‘voice in the wilderness’ calling us to confess our sins, now we see John acting like us. John, and those who follow him are seeking to become disciples.
As we consider John’s message, and ‘his seeking,’ I want to place John in conversation with Mary’s words from Luke 1 where she praises the Lord for the blessing that He has bestowed upon her following her visit to cousin, Elizabeth.
In our work to be disciples, as we seek to follow Jesus, we all face the same problem. When Jesus does not respond, in the way we want Him to, it can be hard to keep seeking Him. It can be hard to find a voice that wants to praise the Lord.
But that is reality of our lives, Jesus seldom responds or acts the way that we insist that He should. Unfortunately, this choice by our Lord, well. . . it is infuriating that God is not acting like we want. But that realization is part of being a disciple too.
But we will get there. . .
Move 1- John’s question
Our story begins with the Baptist sending some of his followers to Jesus with a most peculiar question: Are you the one to come?
It is strange at one level because we would think that witnessing heaven and earth open at Jesus’ baptism, the faith of John’s followers would be locked fully into place. No doubts left to fester. But apparently the miraculous baptismal act of Jesus was not enough to accomplish this.
In Matthew 11 John is in prison, and he sends his followers to inquire of Jesus. They need a bit of reassurance—it’s a strange thing, but John does it anyway.
The strangeness is compounded by the fact Jesus answers them plainly (something he often does not do in the gospel) . . . But more than simply answering, our Savior responds in a way that is basically, well, not Messianic. And here is what I mean. And let me say right from the beginning, we will be jumping around the gospel narrative a bit.
When Jesus begins his earthly ministry in Luke’s gospel, Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2 to the people of his hometown of Nazareth. Now you will recall that after reading this text, these people will get angry and attempt to throw him off the hill on which the town sits. Something set them off.
These are the words that Jesus reads before he preaches:
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,[1]”
I bring this up because this text from Isaiah is where Jesus states clearly why He was sent by God to us. This is as clear as it gets. This is Jesus’ mission statement. After he reads these words, the next thing that Jesus says in Luke 4 is: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” That is plain as Jesus gets in the gospel when He says why he is here. Again… this is his mission.
Now back to Matthew 11. When the followers of John come to Jesus and ask him for proof that He is the one who was sent by God and that they do not need to seek another, it stands to reason that Jesus would offer them the words from Isaiah 61 that are clear and precise. . . But Jesus does not do this.
Further, the story from Luke 4, where Jesus uses Isaiah 61 has already taken place by the time Matthew 11 is recorded. So why not repeat the message and remind us of His mission?
Instead, Jesus uses these words that make up verse 5 of todays’ text:
“The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleanses, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel reached to them.”
We like these words. We nod at these words. We say, ‘Yes, this is why Jesus is here.’ But those words come from two places in Isaiah… 28 and 35 and neither are part of any Messianic passages that Isaiah writes for us.
Again, Jesus not giving us what we want and not responding in a way that we would like him to. He tells what He wants to tell us and it not always what we want to hear.
Move 2-
You see when God does not respond in a way that you like, when you think you know what you want to hear, and you practiced the prayer, and write out the script either in your heart or on paper, you’ve prepared the speech as John’s followers did in Matthew 11, and then Jesus does not follow it and uses words from a different part of the prophet that no one anticipated, in that moment it can feel very hard. . . very confusing. . .. It can feel almost impossible to locate the faith in your heart . . . to speak like Mary in Luke 1.
It can feel almost impossible to find any place in your heart to offer a word of praise to God when it feels like God is not offering you want you wanted to hear from the Lord. And that is the challenge for us today as it was also the challenge of John’s disciples in Matthew 11, and the challenge of Mary following her time with Elizabeth in Luke 1, and as she processed the message from the angel who told her that she would bear the Son of God.
It can be hard, in the moment, to remember that God choose to dwell with the weak and the lowly when we want to hear that God is going to sweep down among us and make it all right. . . right now.
In his thoughts on Mary’s Magnificat Bonhoeffer said this:
“God is not ashamed of human lowliness [and weakness] but goes right into the middle of it, chooses someone as [an] instrument, and performs the miracle right where they least expect. God draws near the lowly, loving the lost, the unnoticed, the unremarkable, the excluded, the powerless, and broken.”[2]
And I would add. . . God dwells with those who come to Him with struggles, with questions, when they find that God is not answering them in a way that they expect, and when we feel confused by the whole thing. Mary tells us again, “God helps His servant.” These two stories tell me, they tell us, that God is there—that God is here—for anyone who continues to seek the Lord in that moment. Even if their questions are unnecessary and speak of a lack of faith and a lack of understanding, God is there.
And especially if the answers from Jesus feel confusing and those answers seem to defy our expectations of who Jesus is supposed to be and how He is supposed to respond. . . Jesus is here for us. These two stories tell us this clearly. And that is the miracle for us today on the third week of Advent.
Move 3- the Miracle
The miracle is that knowing all of this, and how it can feel uncertain, and even if it feels unhelpful at times, young Mary, seemingly insignificant Mary, is able to say, ‘my soul magnifies the Lord.” What a response.
So, can we be like Mary as a church and like families?
Can we take our place among the lowly, the least, and at times the lost and see how God is with the lowliness as a child in the manger? For He has done a mighty thing this season. He has shown us mercy and given us His presence as he did with the followers of John in Matthew 11 who should have known better than to ask what they were asking. And Mary teaches us this as well in the reading from Luke 1.
Where people see despicable and messy, God brought forth blessing to us. This is something you and I can offer to those who come to us in what remains of the advent season, as the followers of John did to Jesus with questions that confuse and confound.
For they come with so many questions, and while those questions seem unnecessary to our hearts at times, and we wonder if they have ever been listening to a single thing we’ve said or read to them from God’s Word, and the answers that we give them from God’s word seem clear to us. . . to them it just feels more confusing.
We are called to point people once again back to Jesus as John did even if the message seems lost or cloudy to us and as Mary sang about to God as well.
Conclusion
I know that each of us comes to Jesus with questions. But can we put those aside and simply worship God? The questions will still be there. The struggles will wait. For today it is enough to remember that God chooses to be with the weak, the lowly, and anyone who has a question that seems to have no answer, because in that place Jesus is already there with us.
DM
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