Sermon: Are you the one?

 "Are you the one?" is John the Baptist's question to Jesus. Can you really believe it is fierce John the Baptist asking that one? Such doubt in one so certain! Of course, it's a question from someone who really cares about the future, since his whole life has been the warm-up act for God's coming. John expects God to come and to do certain specific things. Not all those things are happening, hence the uncertainty and the question.

As I have been reflecting on John's question this week, I have come across three things which seem to me to throw some light on what is going on.

For a moment this week, negotiators at this year's round of UN climate talks in Bali were able to pause and contemplate the treaty, which their forerunners' compiled in the 1997 Kyoto winter. For some, that meant celebrating a pioneering attempt to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. For others, it meant mulling over the fact that Kyoto has been a disappointment. Is there a bit of disappointment in John's question? "Are you the one - or are we to wait for another?"

Then there was an article in Oi magazine (by teenagers for teenagers). The Archbishop of Canterbury invited three Kentish teenagers to his home in Canterbury for tea and toast, and to answer their questions for a magazine article, ranging from his views on abortion to what he does in his free time. The teenagers were surprised at how relaxed the experience was, and at the accessibility of the Archbishop.

"I was expecting just words, what he gave me was meaning, an understanding of who I was and where I was at, cloaked in kindness"

I thought these words were a beautiful modern expression of what it means to encounter Christ; the effect that God in Christ has on us, when we are fortunate enough to meet him. This is the opposite of disappointment: it is wonder, discovery, the breaking in of a fresh way of living that makes you whole. I am not sure that John, languishing in prison, had really encountered this.

Thirdly, the Bishop of Bristol's blog: earlier this year he heard an address by Professor Michael Porter, Professor of Strategic Management at Harvard. He regards himself as an 'outsider' in relation to looking at faith groups, churches, charities etc. After expressing some genuine appreciation for the work of such groups in society, he offered this insight.

"As someone looking in from the outside, the impression you give, is that a lot of what you do is related to your own need rather than the need of those you serve." That is a challenging thing for us all to hear, but especially in this Advent season when we are encouraged to look for God to put everything right. There are dangers in looking for the big, final solution. Whose need is driving Advent?

So, back to John in the light of these three snippets. "Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?" You can hear the uncertainty, if not the disappointment. So what was John expecting? We heard his speech last Sunday, from earlier in Matthew, as John called the people to repentance. "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight". There's a little bit of Pelagius about John. WE have to prepare the way (by repentance and austerity) and then the Lord may come along it. (Whereas, in the passage from Isaiah, the highway is part of what the Lord prepares to ease the way for his people). But be that as it may, John's message is a message of judgement, "the axe is laid at the root of the tree, every tree not bearing good fruit will be cut down and thrown onto the fire....he will clear his threshing floor, gather the wheat and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire". And John had carried the message of judgement right to the heart of Herod's court, which is why he lies in prison. Scarey! (This week I have been to my first Christmas party of the Advent season, pulled my first cracker, worn my first party hat, and read my first joke. ‘How do you get holy water? Answer: you take ordinary tap water, and boil the hell out of it.' What's that got to do with John the Baptist? Well, it does not entirely misrepresent John.) But this one-man purge that was John the Baptist seems to have been expecting a little more from the One who came after him. After all, the Messiah was to be king, the Messiah was "more powerful than I". Why did the Messiah not take up the axe that was laying at the root of the tree, and use it? "When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing... he sent word...Are you the one?"

There is a connection here with what is going on in Bali. Some people see the huge need, the huge danger, involved in climate change and know that a few little steps are not enough. On this issue, if the world is made up of little sinners and bigger sinners, no solution is possible unless the bigger sinners are brought to book. So how can they be forced to comply? Well, the world does not appear to have a messiah waiting in the wings to impose a solution. True? But what are we saying about our advent hope if we accept that? We certainly have no reason to be confident that any human being can ever exercise the degree of authority and power needed, and not become a tyrant. And as for democracies and world politics, they always involve such compromise, they end up being fairly ineffective. But what is our expectation of God? Do we share any of John's disappointment? It seems a little inappropriate even to formulate the question in church, but are we, basically, a bit disappointed with God? Disappointed that we believe in a God who doesn't seem to want to sort things out, to rule? Perhaps that's where John was? He had announced the arrival of God's promised rule, and got himself in goal, and guess what; nothing much seemed to change. "Are you the one?" That's a very Advent question and John is a very Advent person. What do we expect of God? What are we looking to see? Have we given up expecting anything much of him?

John hadn't, quite. He sent his disciples to ask Jesus, and Jesus said, ‘look at what's happening and make your own mind up: the blind can see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the poor have good news brought to them' - "and blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me". Well, John is close to taking offence at Jesus, at the way in which Jesus is fulfilling the role of Messiah. If you make the mistake John is close to making then you fail to see what God is actually doing. You could fail to register that for the poor and the blind and the deaf and the lame things are coming right. And on top of the sheer human joy of that, Jesus' words throw us back into prophecies like the one read today from Isaiah, where the blind and the deaf and the lame will be healed as part of the coming reign of God. So for Jesus, what was foretold by the prophets is happening, the signs match, the King is here; but John is right in his question. What he sees in Jesus is only part of the promise. The bit missing is the judgement, the comprehensive putting right, the establishing of an irresistible just rule.

This brings me back to the Archbishop and those teenagers. One of them was a 17 year old girl who was pregnant. She asked him directly about it. And the human exchange was such that, in the end, one of these teenagers was able to write, "I was expecting just words, what he gave me was meaning, an understanding of who I was and where I was at, cloaked in kindness". A Christlike moment, of recognition and love; a raising of the sights about what human relationship can be; breathing life into dignity and love and human worth.

The Archbishop, of course, is the man who has been asked to keep the Anglican Communion together (big picture stuff), to sort it out, to come down on one side or the other, to vindicate one and condemn another; but for a very long time he has refused to do so. Instead he has asked for listening and for care of the other who differs. Even this last week, when some expected him to draw a line in the sand, he is trying to facilitate a further discussion between those who most disagree. He has taken a lot of criticism for what some perceive to be an indecisive position and sooner or later I fear he will be trapped. I am not trying to put the Archbishop on a pedestal. It is obviously easier to chat to a group of courteous teenagers than a Babel of bishops, and to try to reconcile the irreconcilable is to be stretched on a cross. But perhaps the way he is handling this (just like the way he relates to these teenagers) may just illustrate how suspending judgement at least for a while can give space for something of eternal worth to come to birth. Something like the quality of knowing and being known that those teenagers felt so strongly. Perhaps that is what John was missing?

And that brings me, in conclusion, to the third of those quotations with which I began: the criticism that in the churches "a lot of what you do is related to your own need rather than the need of those you serve." In Advent we are encouraged to look at the big picture, to take the long view, and to make space for our longing to have someone to sort the world out; but whose need is that serving? The poor and the blind and the lame are the credentials which Jesus offered to John's disciples. When his authenticity was questioned he rested his case on their need and the benefits they were receiving. This was the foretold shape, the template of success, for the advent of God. Our age is less sure about this definition of what a well-run world would look like. ‘Care for the poor' gets tangled with feelings about whether they are deserving, and ‘healing the sick' strays into the healthcare provision we want to secure for ourselves. But when we look at climate change it is accepted that global warming will affect the world's poorest most; those who live precariously in the Ganges delta, ‘on the edge' in the horn of Africa. Care for the poor is once again centre-stage in one of the biggest issues of our day. It is an Advent value, a gospel value. The future which is coming will depend on how much we care that the poor get good news, and those who are most in need have their needs met.

"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" That is also our question as Advent approaches Christmas. Let us not be disappointed that the axe has not yet been laid to the root of the tree, that the big solution isn't happening. It gives time for many more of us to find "meaning, cloaked in kindness", and for the blind to see.