3rd Advent 2022 / Ish. 35.1-10, Mt. 11.2-11 / St. Clement’s Church, Oxford
The promises of Isaiah’s chapter 35 – ‘the wilderness and the dry land that shall be glad’, ‘the redeemed of the Lord that come to Sion with singing’, ‘sorrow shall flee away’ – these promises ask us to call to mind various historical situations: the people of Judah in Isaiah’s own time, hard-pressed by the Assyrian empire, fearing for their homes and families; the people of Judah, over a hundred years later, this time exiled in Babylon, hoping to return to their homeland, to rebuild what was lost; the Jewish people of the first-century, suffering under the occupation of the Romans, looking for God’s promised Messiah who would set them free and restore Israel; and we today, of course, with the wars, injustices and turmoils of our own, waiting for that time when God will finally eradicate evil. Empires and kings rise and fall, often accompanied by fear and violence, injustice and oppression. These words of Isaiah, then, travel through many exiles, many wars, rulers and oppressive regimes and yet still, somehow, earthly power’s the same – more or less deaf to truth and blinded to its own limits, always transient.
Into all these different historical situations Isaiah spoke and still speaks his word of hope: “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.”
Isaiah’s prophecy, spoken into many contexts and situations, also has many fulfilments, one fulfilment opening towards another, yet more complete fulfilment, like a range of mountains, each peak higher than the other: the miraculous rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrian invaders in Isaiah’s time; the return of the exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the city; the coming of God’s Messiah in first-century Palestine; and finally, the ultimate fulfilment – the return of Christ, the Messiah, on the final day when all will be made new, and all sorrow and sighing finally flee away.
You see, the word of God – unlike our words – does not simply state things, but it also makes things. The Word spoken by God is a creative word, word that has the power to bring into existence what it promises, word that spoke the universe into existence. The word of God is after all, alive and active: always, as it were, ‘being spoken’, always already in movement, seeking hearers. It is always a new call to hope in the God who fulfills his promises, the God who will restore his creation, the God who saves. Always, therefore, also a new call to not just hear the Word but do it: to join in with what the Word is doing in the world, to join with God in his mission to bring life and salvation into his creation.
It is into this world of promise, the world where God’s active word is at work in the midst of all the confusion and turmoil, that we enter also in our Gospel reading today: John, the last of the prophets, the one who announced the Messiah’s coming has been imprisoned by Herod Antipas, the local ruler who didn’t like what John had to say about him taking his brother’s wife as his own. Again, something familiar here, perhaps, with rulers abusing their power to silence those who refuse to bend, like a reed in the wind, to please, to say anything less than the truth, even when threatened with imprisonment and death.
So, John is in prison and his disciples bring him news about ‘the works the Messiah was doing’. In response, John sends his disciples to ask from Jesus, ‘are you the who is to come or are we to wait for another?’ This is, admittedly, a somewhat strange question coming from the man who proclaimed Christ’s coming as the promised Messiah just a few chapters ago. The early Christian commentators were somewhat confused by this as well, as Gregory the Great put the question: “It seems as if John doesn’t know the one he had pointed out, as if he didn’t know whether he was the same person he had proclaimed by prophecy and by baptizing!” Most ancient commentators chose to get around this difficulty by reading John’s question not really as his own question but as a question he asks on behalf of his disciples, for their sake, so that they might come to realise that Jesus is the Messiah.
There is perhaps some truth to this: in some sense, John’s question voices the shared Messianic expectations – and confusions – of many Jewish people of his time. But I also rather like the more human picture of John this question gives us: is it possible, maybe, that John had begun to doubt his earlier convictions while in prison? Had he become uncertain whether Jesus really was the Messiah? Perhaps he, too, needed reassurance? Is it possible that Jesus’s words then – “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” – are a gentle rebuke directed at John’s lack of faith?
Either way, John’s question – “tell me, are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” – appears to me to be the kind of question asked by someone who might be uncertain but is ready and willing to believe, open to believe. So, even if it would be motivated by some doubt, it’s still a question asked by someone who is ready to hear and follow.
Jesus’s answer to John’s disciples is to go and tell John ‘what you see and hear’: look at what’s happening, Jesus says, the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear – just like Isaiah said. Jesus is asking John to place the events of his time within the world of Israel’s Scriptures, the world of promise and fulfilment, the world where God’s word is active at work, and in so doing recognise Jesus as the Messiah – as the fulfilment of God’s word.
And more than that – Jesus is not simply the one who, as it were, matches the description of Isaiah, does what Isaiah said the Messiah would do. Rather, He himself is the Word of God, the flesh and blood embodiment of God’s word. He is the one who was promised, and the one promising; he is the one who was spoken and the one who speaks. He is the Word of God in human form: the Word through which the universe was created, the one who still holds the cosmos together, in whom all things hold together. He himself is the active, creative Word of God, moving in our world, calling John – and us – to be hearers, doers of the Word.
It is in this Jesus, the Word made flesh, that John the Baptist is seeking to have faith in, despite his doubts and questions, so it appears to me. John’s faith, complex and maybe wavering at times, seems real to me, something I recognise. I, too, have my doubts, my reservations, my unanswered questions. I, too, look at the world and wonder what the fulfilment of God’s promises – of renewal, justice, peace, joy – might mean in this world we know. In fact, sometimes when I – for example – watch in the news Ukrainian children trekking through muddy fields towards some hope of safety, refugees, all their belongings contained in the plastic bags they carry, I quite spontaneously find myself exclaiming: “God, what’s the plan here? When will you fix this world of yours? How long still?”
I don’t always know what do with all these things that trouble me, but maybe John’s example is useful: perhaps despite my fear and doubt, I, too, can be ready to believe still, and bring my questions to Jesus. Struggle towards him and with him, rather than away from him. Perhaps God’s answer to my questions, then, would be something like Jesus’s answer to John’s question: look around you, God might say, I’ve already started. Will you join me? Will you place your doubts and questions in the context of my Word that is alive, creative, active? Will you join what that Word is already doing in the world? Will you hear it, will you obey it, will you follow it, will you hope in it even with a wavering, imperfect faith?
The next time, after our passage today, John appears in the Gospel of Matthew is in chapter 14 where we learn of his execution. Although it is not recorded in the Gospels, I’d like to think that John’s disciples brought Jesus’s answer to his question back to him. I imagine John his prison cell, words of Jesus entering into his darkness, gently like the light at dawn: he has not laboured in vain or spent his strength for nothing, his eyes have seen the coming of his God. He can go in peace.
It might take some looking and some learning, but I believe that we, too, can learn to see God at work in our world, in our lives, God’s coming in the midst of us: our ears can be opened, our eyes, too. Indeed, it is the theme of the Advent season: to learn to behold ‘the One Who Is Coming’. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened; the ears of the deaf unstopped” at the coming our God.
‘The One Who Is Coming’ is actually a Messianic title of Jesus, ὁ ἐρχόμενος in Greek. During this season we pay attention to God as the ὁ ἐρχόμενος, as the One Coming, as the One approaching us: he is the one who came as a child in the midst of us, the Word made flesh; he is the one who is coming to us today, especially in the bread and the wine, to be present in our lives and to make himself known in the world through us; and he is the one still to come, to finally and completely fulfill his word, his promises of renewal and salvation.
“Strengthen the weak hands”, Isaiah says, “And make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’ Here is your God.”
Although we in our faith might not always be like John the Proclaimer – unbent, steadfast, strong – but maybe more like John the Prisoner – a little afraid, tired, spent, bothered by doubts, weighed down by sin, maybe – it is also said of this Coming One that “a bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out” but “in faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth”. In his faithfulness and love he also comes to us, giving what is lacking, supplying what’s needed, strengthening what’s weak. In this promise we can hope, and so receive him with joy.
For the coming of our God is, as Isaiah says, a matter of joy – the kind of joy that’s promised into a world like Isaiah’s and John’s, a world like ours where there is injustice, hardship, loss, and sorrow. This joy is not something that would trivialise these, but but a more complex kind of joy, the kind that’s somehow deeper than always feeling happy, maybe something that comes close to wonder and gratitude, an attitude more than a feeling, a joy that fits our beautiful, confusing world.
I’d like to encourage you therefore during this season of Advent and Christmas to seek that joy in God’s coming in the midst of us, to see where he is already at work in the world around you, both in things big and small, like helping someone in need or paying attention to the gift God has given you in other people. For God’s Word is active at work in the world – creating something new, calling us to join in with wonder and gratitude.