“ARE YOU THE
ONE?”
|
A sermon preached at the Readings: James
5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11 |
Mt 11:2 “Are you the one who is to come, or are we
to expect someone else?”
There are those who equate doubt with weakness and
faithlessness –
But of course it is not so –
doubt is the way we have of questioning our half understood truth
and refining it to get nearer the whole truth.
This week I came across this piece from a Jewish
prayer book –
“Cherish
you doubts for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge,
it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,
for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth,
it is the acid which eats away the false.
Let none fear for the truth; that doubt may consume it;
for doubt is the testing of belief.
For truth, if it be the truth, arises from each testing stronger, more
secure.
Those who would silence doubt are filled with fear;
the house of their spirit is built on shifting sands.
But they that fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on a rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge;
the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
it is to the wise as a staff to the blind;
doubt is the handmaiden of truth.”
[From “The Gates of Heaven: the New Union Prayer
Book” by the General Conference of American Rabbis 5735,
quoted in Elizabeth basset, “Interpreted by Love” DLT 1994 p.88]
What words of encouragement to those of us who time
and again find ourselves saying
“Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief”
-
What a powerful recognition that God can lead us,
precisely by virtue of our thoughtful questioning and uncertainty,
into new and deeper truth.
And in our reading today we hear about John the
Baptist,
·
John who had been so sure and confident in the desert
about who and what the Messiah and his Kingdom was to
be and look like.
·
John now in prison-
John perhaps realising that Jesus’ coming Kingdom was more complex
than he had thought in the desert,
·
John forced to reassess and ask questions:
Are you the one who is to come, or did I somehow misunderstand?
I guess many of us, like John, have know those points
in life
·
when the foundations on which we have built our lives
seem to shudder (intellectually or emotionally)
·
when we find ourselves suddenly bereft
of all old certainties and assumptions.
·
When the shades of the prison house,
morally, mentally and spiritually, begin to gather around us….
That may well be a time of doubt and questioning –
but that doubt and questioning can be a very creative process.
It may also be for us (as it must have been for
John)
a time of physical and mental suffering –
but remember -
our Lord meets us supremely on the cross when all is darkest and most difficult
–
and that is when we often find we know him most powerfully present with us -
Listen to another prisoner.
Lt Gerald Coffee was imprisoned by the Vietnamese for 7 years:
“During his second Christmas in that rotten hellhole of a camp
he made an amazing discovery.
He had been stripped of everything by which he measured his identity:
rank, uniform, family, money.
And yet, alone in a cramped three by seven foot cell,
he began to understand the meaning of Christmas.
Removed from all commercial distractions,
he was able to focus on the simplicity of Christ's birth.
Although he was lonely and afraid,
he realized that this Christmas could be his most meaningful,
because now, more than ever before, he understood the event.”
“The Blind See” by Fr Jerry Fuller http://www.spirit-net.ca/sermons/a-ad03-fuller.php
When life takes away our intellectual certainties,
or when life takes away our emotional supports,
when things are at their darkest –
then so often does the babe of Bethlehem,
the man of Nazareth
and the shadow of the Cross,
become most real to us.
And here is another prisoner
–
Fr Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, was imprisoned by the Nazis.
Writing just before his
execution in 1945,
he recalls an incident a couple of years before –
someone had given him an angel for Advent.
“The angel bore the inscription ‘Rejoice for the Lord is near’
The angel was destroyed by a bomb.
A bomb killed the man who gave it to me”
Fr Alfred says he feels that the man who was killed was like an angel for
him.
He goes on, writing in his cell awaiting death:
“The horror of these times would be unendurable
unless we kept being cheered and set upright again
by the promises that are spoken.
The angels of annunciation,
speaking their message of blessing into the midst of anguish,
scattering their seed of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night,
call us to hope….
…These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfilment….”
Rather, they come quietly, inconspicuously. Into our hearts …”
They bring God’s questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God,
for whom nothing is impossible.
Alfred Delp, The Shaking
Reality of Advent, in “Watch for the light: Readings for Advent and Christmas”
Plough, 2001
So
if you are feel imprisoned or oppressed, sad or
confused, this advent time,
listen for those quiet advent angels who bring the gentle but persistent light
of hope
into the darkest prison cell.
And a final thought -
perhaps this is a time for you to be an angel your self!
John asked the disciples of Jesus
if he was the one who was to come –
He does not reply directly –
he simply tells his disciples
“Go back and report to John what you hear and see:
The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”
(Mt 11:4-5)
Christ is to be found and recognized for what he is
in the ongoing work of the Kingdom.
And of course, it is our calling to do that work,
to care for the deaf and dumb and lame and dying –
Perhaps somewhere there is a
man or a woman in the darkness
asking Christ if he is after all the way.
And perhaps Christ will point them to you and me and say
“See there how the Gospel is to be seen at work in their lives!”
How wonderful if in that
moment, some poor lost soul
might glimpse in your life and mine
that same message of hope which the advent angels brought of old!
Then would we be angel messengers indeed!