THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT A

[cappie]

What are you like at waiting? As one person said: “I’m no good at waiting, but one day as I stood in line at a local supermarket, I realised I was waiting. Waiting! I was doing what Advent is all about.”  

That’s what John the Baptist, is doing in this week’s gospel. Waiting in prison for news of the Messiah, wondering is this the one he’d been expecting?   John the Baptist has a question, too, and it’s quite clear that he wants a “yes” or “no” sort of answer. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

We can’t blame John for wanting to know. He has given his whole life over to this question. He has been made wild and holy by the yearning of this question. He has become stricken by the weight of this question. And ultimately, he will die for the implications of this question.

Because to ask whether Jesus is “the one who is to come” is,  the One will be the answer to every question and the remedy to every wrong. And so, of course, as his own days dwindle down in captivity, John desperately wishes to know if his waiting has been in vain.

He, too, is asking: What have I made of my life? Am I alone? How long ‘til God makes all things new?

And yet, as is so often the case, Jesus does not answer John’s question directly. 

 Jesus replies to John in this moment with images and with an invitation to look closely at them. Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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.

In other words: John, the answer is all around you. It is not found in simplistic assertions of identity or authority. It is in the shapes and patterns of healing and life and justice that come forth wherever love reigns. 

Anyone can claim to be a messiah or a king—and goodness knows many have done so. But only God can bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom within us and among us. Only God can transform our wildernesses into a sanctuary. Only God can show us how to be the answer rather than just wait for one. 

This is the essential paradox of the Messiah we are shown in Jesus: he is the expected one who will not conform to our expectations. He is the one who has come, and yet he points away from himself the moment he arrives. He does not respond directly in part because he refuses to succumb to the idolatry of easy answers. And it is perhaps in this refusal—in Jesus’ rejection of the deceptive simplicities of our lesser gods—that we begin to know that he is the Son of God. For only Truth would be content to let the results speak for themselves. 

So what does this mean for us—we who, like John, are still captive to the world’s many ambiguities and are still hungering for a clear and piercing response to our questions?

It means, quite simply, that we must reorient our search for answers. The things we are seeking to understand as followers of Jesus are not insights locked away somewhere, reserved for the especially wise or powerful or pious. The answers, instead, will always be found in the living enactment of the good news: the practice of love and righteousness in our churches and communities and homes. The real answers are to be found in doing the same things that Jesus did: listening, healing, reconciling, liberating, giving thanks, and letting go. And if we do these things, then we will look back one day and say, Oh, yes, I see: there it was. There was my answer. There was all of the answers, to every question.

It means, too, that we should be wary of any institution or figure—political, religious, or otherwise—who claims that they alone have the answer or, even worse, that they are the answer. In the face of such assertions, we must resist and remember that even Christ himself was loathe to claim his identity as the Messiah. He was most concerned with helping others find their own inherent dignity, not with them worshipping his. Let that be a benchmark for the ones whom we entrust with authority. 

And finally, hopefully, it means that perhaps we can rest a bit, in the midst of all our Advent anticipation.  The point of our lives is to become more Christ-like and discover our ‘greatness’ in him. In doing so ‘the least in the kingdom of Heaven will be greater’ than John is. We rejoice that we’re invited to help build up the kingdom and to enable this we must learn to be patient. As the second reading says, waiting in expectation of the Lord’s coming, for he will come and is already present among us, not attempting to force God’s hand. 

In Advent, we’re preparing a way for the Lord, realising, once again, that God so loves the world.