"Patience" - Advent 3A

Isaiah 35:1-10
Saint Matthew 11:2-11

One of my favorite scenes in my all time favorite musicals “The Music Man” is when the townsfolk first get sight of the Wells Fargo Wagon. 

In last summer’s production at The Goodman Theatre it was staged perfectly.  A little wagon could be seen moving from left to right at the back of the stage.  Then as the song continued the wagon got larger and larger as it moved back and forth closer and closer to the anxious crowd.  Finally a life-sized wagon appeared stage left with Professor Hill and the long anticipated band uniforms and instruments inside. 
 

The excitement is so much that little Winthrop, who has not spoken a word since his father died and has a lisp finally sings out: “O-ho the Wellth Fargo Wagon ith a-comin' now, I don't know how I can ever wait to thee. It could be thumpin' for thumone who is No relation but it could be thump'n thpethul.  Just for me!”
 

The uniforms come and the band instruments are there but still they wait for a band.  The remainder of the play is spent waiting for Professor Hill to produce something that even looks like a boy’s band let alone sounds like one.
 

Almost the entire play is devoted to the themes of waiting, anticipating, wondering, “Will I get what was promised.”
 

We are in that time of the church year.  We wait and wonder if this Christmas will be as good as last year?  Will it live up to all the hype be, like Professor Hills band,  something less than expected?
 Chief among those who wonder and wait is John the Baptist.

Last week he was all bluster and bravado with his “the judge is coming and I here to serve subpoenas.” You remember his message:

“And even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised to chop down every unproductive tree. They will be chopped and burned. [S]omeone else is coming  . . .  He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He will separate the chaff from the grain, burning the chaff with never-ending fire and storing away the grain.”1

John the Baptist was all judgement all the time.  His Wells Fargo wagon would have been filled with explosives to destroy all that was evil.

People like that kind of stuff.  They like to hear that some people and in and other people are out of the reign and rule of God.  They would like to separate the world into good guys and bad guys.  They want God to judge and judge harshly any with whom they would disagree.  And, most of all, they are sure that God was is their side.  And sometimes these people can draw big crowds.
 

I think it may have been the crowds that got John carried away.  He looked around and might have thought that with all those people flocking to him he could do anything, say anything, get away with anything he wanted.
 

But crowds can disappear as fast as they appeared and now he is in jail having been placed there by Herod, the personification of all that is wrong in the world. 
 

Herod’s problem with John was not so much his preaching or the crowds he was drawing out into the desert but when, as they say in the south, “he stopped preaching and got to meddling.”  John called King Herod’s adulterous affair with his sister-in-law into question. That he even spoke of it out loud wasn’t such a good idea.  Herod didn’t take kindly to John’s scandalizing his private life so he had him jailed and eventually sentenced to death.
 

Locked behind prison doors John had to be wondering what happened to the fire? What happened to the judgement? Herod was clearly chaff and John surely believed he was wheat. What happened to the vision?  Maybe this Jesus isn’t the guy we have been looking for after all.

“John was called to run ahead of Jesus, to prepare a way, to make room for the Messiah.  So it makes sense that John would be quite concerned that his work not be in vain.” 2
 

John had been hearing reports about Jesus and what he hears in not exactly what John expected. Jesus was not the fundamentalist prophet of certain doom and judgement that John had been talking about because instead of harsh words and deeds that separate one group from another John is hearing something else entirely.  John hears that Jesus is welcoming everybody!  With Jesus all were welcomed.  Period! While cooling his heals in his prison cell John wonders: “Is Jesus the one I was talking about or was I wrong? Should I be looking for another.”

Messengers are sent and Jesus tells them to look, and see, and listen and then report their findings to John.

“Go and tell John what you see and hear -—that blind  . . .  are recovering their sight, cripples are walking, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, the dead being brought to life and the good news is being given to those in need. And happy is the man who never loses faith in me.”3

 That is a coded message that John’s captors would never understand but John and John’s followers would know by heart.  Dr. John Buchanan paraphrased it this way.

Remember, John, as you sit there, in that cell—- cold, hungry, thirsty, waiting for your inevitable execution - remember the promise that came to our people at the darkest, most frightening moments in their lives, the worst moment in our history, when a cruel and powerful enemy was about to attack and kill and defeat and imprison and exile. Remember:

They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. . . .
Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,"Be strong, do not fear!"4

That is the word John needed to be reminded of in his prison cell and we need to be reminded this Advent especially as the life of our country has not been this divided since the Viet Nam war.  Then we fought on principal - war versus peace - now we fight on personality.  Facts are of no consequence only labels are and we wonder if we will ever hear the  message of Jesus again speaking over the din of divisiveness.  

 Dr. Mike Lindvall wondered: 

Does it work, Jesus’ way?  Does it work, his way of love and compassion?  Does it work, his way non-coercion and kindness?  Does it work, his way of service and sacrifice?  In the short run, sometimes.  In the long run (maybe the very long run) always.  That’s the promise of the gospel.5

Dr.  Fred Craddock, in his book of collected sermons described what was going on this way.

Every beautiful story they knew began not with ‘once upon a time’ but with the words ‘when the Messiah comes’ 

To every blind beggar, seated on the street, hallow eyes gazing over an empty cup, “I’m sorry, friend, but when the Messiah comes...”  To every cripple with twisted body folded beneath him, “I’m sorry, friend, but when the Messiah comes...”  To every prisoner, straining for that one little ray of light through the narrow window, “I’m sorry, friend, but when the Messiah comes...”6

 We believe the Messiah has come and what of it.  Is it just another Wells Fargo wagon full of instruments and band uniforms that no one will use.  We believe that the Messiah has come but the world is just as cruel, and mean, and unforgiving as it ever was.
 

We wait to celebrate his birth even as we are afraid that whoever is coming to Christmas dinner will have opinions so different from ours or another guest that the china will fly and there won’t be a safe place to stand in any room of the house.
 

The disciples and John the Baptist and the early Christians were faced with the same dilemma and here, says Dr.  Craddock, is what they concluded.  “It is not that when the Messiah came there would be no misery but rather that wherever there was misery there was the Messiah.”
 

Jesus, like John would not be found in a palace wearing robes of fine linen but rather in the streets bringing comfort where there was misery.
 

That’s the promise of the Gospel, it is the promise of all of Scripture, that there is another way “it shall be called the Holy Way and it shall be for God’s people; no travelers, not even fools, shall go astray.”
 

In Advent, at Christmas, in every season of the year Christ is calling us: “Hey follow me!  Down this Road!  It’s the Holy Way!  It’s a way where not even fools can get lost."
 

The Wells Fargo wagon is coming only the sign on the side reads Jesus who really is  something special, just for you and me.”

__________

1.  St.  Matthew 3:10-12.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]

2.  Brian L. Cole,  “The Gift of Doubt”  Day 1. Accessed December 13, 2019. https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5de917456615fbba28000035/bishop-brian-cole-the-gift-of-doubt.

3.  St.  Matthew 3:4-6.  (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, New Testament in Modern English. London: Fount, 2000.

4.  John M. Buchanan,“Fear Not.” sermon.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois. December 16, 2001. http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2001/121601.html.

5.  Michael L. Lindvall, “Shall We Wait for Another” (sermon, Brick Presbyterian Church, New York, NY, December 13, 2013),  http://www.brickchurch.org/Customized/uploads/BrickChurch/Worship/Sermons/PDFs/2013/12152013.pdf

6.  Fred B. Craddock, The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock.  (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) p.  85.