A Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent

Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?
—St. Matthew 11:3

 
            John the Baptist, from his prison cell, sent two of his followers to Jesus to ask him:  “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?”

             It is an extraordinary question for John to ask.  After all, John was Jesus’s cousin.  It was John who leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when she greeted Mary, who was then pregnant with Jesus.  It was John who told the crowd on the bank of the Jordan River:  “This is he who, coming after me is preferred before me,” and, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world.”  It was John who, pouring the river water over Jesus at his baptism, heard a voice from heaven say:  “This is my beloved Son.” 

             Only a year or two later John has been arrested for insulting the king, and is being held in prison.  In his prison cell, John has heard of the work Jesus has been doing, even of miraculous cures Jesus had effected.  Even so, a doubt seems to have crept in.

             It is, perhaps, a bit surprising, that Jesus did not simply reply (as he did to the Samaritan woman at the well:  “I am he.”  Instead, Jesus said to the messengers:  “Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them.”  The messengers were to report to John about changed lives and about a new order of things in the world, and John is to make up his own mind.

             The world in which we live today is asking John’s question, without even knowing that it is John’s question:  “Is Jesus the one, or do we look for another?”

            Sometimes, when the question comes up, there are alternative messiahs on the horizon:  Buddha, Zarathustra, Mohammed, Joseph Smith.  The rival messiah may not be a “religious” figure at all, there are surely enough would-be political messiahs:  Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro, Uzama bin Ladin, Saddam Hussein, Mohandas Gandhi. 

          Or maybe the alternative messiah is not a person at all.  What is it that promises all of the answers to life’s problems, what gives meaning to one’s life:  power, sex, drugs, fame?  Most often it seems, at least in our own time and place, it is money. 

             And so the people of our world ask:  “Is Jesus the one?  Or should we look for another messiah?”

             Now, they don’t know it, but they are asking us:  the few of us here at Our Lady’s mission in Corona, the few of us traditional Anglicans.  They are asking Christians to answer on Jesus’s behalf:  “Are you the one?  Or should we look for another?”

             How shall we answer?

             Our answer in the twenty-first century must be like Jesus’s answer to John.  A simple “yes” will not satisfy.  We have to be able to show transformed lives; we have to be able point to a new order of  things in the world.

             When John sent his messengers, they were able to speak to Jesus face-to-face.  They were able to see Jesus’s hand touch the sick and crippled and handicapped and restore them to health.  They were able to hear Jesus preaching the good news to the poor.

             In the twenty-first century, when someone wants to ask, “Is Jesus the one, or do we look for another?” they have to direct the question to Jesus’s body, the Church.  That is, they have to ask us.  And when they look around to see whether lives have been transformed by Jesus’s touch, they have to look at our lives, both individually and collectively, as the Church.

             Jesus could say to John’s messengers, go and tell John what you have seen and heard.  He was confident that they would tell John that the sick were healed, the dead raised to life, and the poor comforted. 

             What observations would today’s messengers make?  What could they tell about what they see and hear? 

             What does the world see when it looks at us Christians?  Does it see the fruits of the spirit:  peace, love, forgiveness, generosity?  Or does it see itself, the world, reflected in us, does it see the works of the flesh:  strife, hatred, spite, greed?

             Do we live as if our lives have been transformed by Jesus’s touch?  Do we show forth in our lives a new order of things in the universe?  If Jesus is the one, the messiah for whom the world has been waiting, has his advent made those who know him different from those who dwell in the world around us?

             Mother Teresa said that the reason why the people of India did not all become Christians is that they saw how too many Christians behave.  She meant that too many Christians do not live up to their calling.   When we Christians do not live up to our calling, we are, in effect, telling people that Jesus is not the answer, that they must look for another.

             This is also at least part of what Saint Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians that we must be accountable as “the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.”  We who know Jesus have been entrusted with a great responsibility.  It is required of a steward that he be found faithful.  Have we been faithful to the responsibility with which we have been entrusted.

             Not the least of that responsibility is to be—not just to speak, but to be—the answer to the question:  “Is Jesus the one, or do we look to another?”

Church of Our Lady of Walsingham
Corona, California
14 December 2003