Advent III: Isaiah 35: 1 – 10; Psalm 146; James 5: 7 – 10; Matthew 11: 2 – 11
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Today is “Stir Up Sunday”……
“Stir Up Sunday”, you say….Where did you get that idea?
From the Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, which prays:
So, today is “Stir Up Sunday”, a title I first heard from the Rector of my seminarian parish.[1]“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, world without end. Amen.”
“Stir up thy power, O Lord” seems to be at the root of the puzzling question John the Baptist asks Jesus, heard in our Gospel today, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”…If we were to characterize it somehow, we might say that John is asking Jesus to “prove his identity”…. “’Stir up your power’ and prove to the world that you are the one we’ve been waiting and looking for”, John might be asking Jesus.
John’s question is puzzling…For we - 21st century readers - know who Jesus is, so surely we might be tempted to think, John the Baptist - who baptized Jesus - ought surely to know who He is as well.
But remember, we today have the advantage of what is called “the reader’s perspective”…that is to say, we can stand outside the story and see the entirety of it….the announcement of Jesus’ birth, His baptism by John in the Jordan, His temptation, teachings, miraculous healings, His betrayal, suffering and death, and most of all, His glorious resurrection.
But John the Baptist, asking through his own disciples this question of Jesus, does not have our perspective….His encounter with Jesus was new and fresh. It was an encounter with the “new thing” God was doing in Jesus Christ….no wonder John asks, “Are you the one who is to come?”
No, John’s fiery message (heard in last week’s Gospel), “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near” is born of John’s burden for God’s people, who may have become callous[2] to God’s call for repentance that comes from the heart.
And although John (in last Sunday’s Gospel) says, as part of his message, “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me”, John does not identify Jesus as being that one.
Go forward into chapter three of Matthew a little further[3] from last Sunday’s passage, and we read of Jesus’ baptism by John….Notice that John tells Jesus, “Do you come to me? It is I who need to be baptized by you.” Apparently, John was aware of Jesus’ uniqueness, but was unsure of much else, it seems.
And so now, John has been cast into prison (see Matthew 4: 12) at the hands of King Herod Antipas[4]. In prison, John had been able to send and receive messages through his followers. Hence, today’s question of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”[5]
Perhaps John sensed that the end of his life was near….if so, then John’s question has an urgency to it beyond wanting to know if his statement about the “one coming who is greater than I” was to be fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
Maybe John wanted to be certain, as his life drew to a close, of the sort of person Jesus was…..
If Jesus was the promised one, maybe even the Messiah, then was Jesus to be the sort of figure who conquered and restored Israel’s fortunes to that of King David 1,000 years before?
Or, was Jesus to be a one who would restore God’s people to a time of peace and prosperity of the sort promised in today’s reading from Isaiah? Isaiah 35 (read today), promises a time when “the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped”, a time when “the lame will leap like a deer, and the dumb shout aloud.”
Could Jesus be linked to a restoring of God’s original intent for humankind of the sort that Isaiah chapter 11[6] promises, when “the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid”?
Military conqueror, the restorer of peace and justice, or the messenger of God’s promised dominion over all peoples and all of creation….all of these concepts about the “promised one of God”, the “Messiah”, were circulating in the world that John the Baptist knew among the God’s people.
So John asks Jesus to “stir up his power” and “come among us”, if, indeed, you (Jesus) are the one we have been waiting for.
John’s situation is our situation: If we are to live with understanding, to know God’s purposes for our lives and to have fullness of life, both here in this life, and in the life of the world to come, then we must know the answer to the question John asked, “Are you the one who is to come?”
So now we turn to Jesus’ answer:
Notice that is an indirect answer…..they often were, as we read Holy Scripture…. Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Essentially, Jesus then offers the proof of His ministry, which points to who He is…. “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 recounts for John’s disciples the miraculous deeds that He has done, as Matthew records them in chapters eight and nine.
In many of the cases, Jesus’ healings restored those who were the religious and social outcasts of His day….Remember that, according to the Law of Moses, those with physical deformities and impairments were often outside the worshipping community of Jesus’ day, unable to enter the Temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
We should pause for a moment in our consideration of John’s question and Jesus’ answer to recall that Jesus was very inclusive….Reaching out to the lame, the blind, the deaf, the lepers (and in other places and cases, to the prostitutes and the tax collectors), Jesus was very inclusive, a trait of Our Lord’s that people are fond of remembering these days. But if we are to be complete in our assessment of Jesus’ inclusiveness, we also have to remember that the purpose of Jesus’ association with those who were on the fringes of society, or even outside of it, was to heal them, to move them from where they were to fullness of life in God, not to leave them where they were, telling them (in essence), “you’re OK with your situation.” No, an encounter with Jesus never left them (or us) where we were when we first encountered the Lord.
The effect of Jesus’ healings was to restore these persons to wholeness, to allow them to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy, made some eight centuries before (Isaiah 35: 9 - 10), “And 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 come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 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.”
Those who were outside of God’s fellowship, outside of the community of God’s chosen people, had been redeemed and restored to wholeness of life and to the worshipping community.
That is the net effect of Jesus’ work, and it is a fulfillment of God’s ancient promises, made through His prophet, Isaiah, so long before.
“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
We stand in need of God’s movement among us…. “Stir up thy power”, we pray, for restoration and for wholeness of life, for we are sorely hindered by our sins, which alienate us from God’s presence, casting us again to the outside edges of an intimate relationship with God.
Stir up thy power, O God, for we are hindered by the confusion of life, which casts doubt on Jesus’ identity and His role in our lives.
Stir up thy power, O God, for we are hindered by our unwillingness to continue to search for a fuller understanding of your revelation in Jesus Christ.
Stir up thy power, O God, for we are hindered by our reluctance to trust the proof of your continued power to heal broken bodies and lives through the power of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Stir up thy power, O God, and with great might come among us, for we are sorely in need of your saving grace and mercy.
AMEN.
[1] Christ Church, Port Tobacco Parish, La Plata, Maryland
[2] This was the theme of last Sunday’s sermon, callousness.
[3] Matthew 3: 13 - 14
[4] A son of Herod the Great.
[5] Matthew records John’s imprisonment and eventual martyrdom in chapter 14: 1 – 12.
[6] Also read last Sunday.
