Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's December 12, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.

---

I had the chance last week to watch the movie, Terminal with Tom Hanks, which is the story of a man from a fictitious eastern European nation who is visiting New York City on a quest, (I won’t tell you what is the nature of that quest fear of ruining the movie for you). This man, Vicktor Novorski, just as he is about to pass through customs, learns that his home country has undergone a fiery coup, that his visa is now been invalidated by the US State Department, that he cannot enter New York City. Thus, he becomes stuck in the international terminal of La Guardia Airport, the proverbial man without a country, someone who speaks only a little broken English.

The authorities supervising the international terminal at La Guardia figure that eventually, he will grow impatient and just try to leave, and their surveillance cameras will capture him in the act, and that then they can arrest him and turn him over to immigration officials. But they have also told that he cannot leave, and so he stays put; the terminal becomes his home; he’s a master builder, and he finds work on a construction site in the terminal and gets paid cash under the table; he makes himself a place to live at an unused gate, gate 67, and over the months that he is stuck, suspended between two countries, he makes friends with various people who work in the terminal; he transforms their lives; eventually, since of course this is Hollywood, after all, they help him fulfill his quest.

It’s an insightful movie, with the metaphor of the airport as symbol of our fast-paced, do-anything-to-get-ahead, impersonal culture, yet, in contrast, this person who sits patiently and calmly, waiting in the terminal for either the word that his country has stabilized and he can return home, or that he can now go into New York city.

The airport authorities want him to try to leave, thus becoming someone else’s problem, but he simply refuses to do anything less than what he has set out to do.

In Matthew’s gospel, John the Baptist is stuck in his own terminal; he has been thrown into prison. The voice of that great preacher of promise, the prophet who wasn’t afraid to tell the people where to go if they didn’t start acting like they were supposed to, his booming voice has fallen silent. Our text begins, “Now when John was in prison.” A sad, depressing situation.

You may remember the scene with Robert Duvall in the movie The Apostle where the apostle, a traveling evangelist who is also a recovering alcoholic and sinner, who had done so much good for so many in that rural Louisiana community where he had landed, who had built a little Pentecostal Church up from nothing, is arrested? They are having an evening service, full of the Spirit, then the police cars come with their flashing red lights and take the apostle away.

That happened to John.

John was arrested because he mixed religion with politics. Herod Antipas took his own niece, who was already married to his brother, and married her.

John the Baptist was of the old school. He did not, like some powerful preachers do, snuggle up to the powerful and flatter them. No. John named it for what it was. He condemned Herod, and Herod took offense. Politicians don’t like preachers accusing them of incest and adultery!

That once powerful voice languished in jail. Earlier, John had touched many hearts. At the end of his sermons, great numbers of people said, “What then should we do?” And John told them. Repent! Turn around! Change!

But now, the crowds are gone. John is in jail.

There in jail, silenced, his death looming before him, John had time to think. He thought, “If the forerunner of the Messiah can be so easily silenced, then what of the Messiah himself? John’s thinking led him the dark night of doubt, and he sent a delegation to ask a devastating question of Jesus: “Are you the Messiah, or should we be looking for somebody else?”

That’s is a shocking question, coming from the mouth of Jesus’ best friend and cousin. Are you really it? Did God send the wrong one? You’d expect that sort of doubt or sarcasm from enemies and detractors, but from the person who baptized you and did more than anyone else to prepare the way for your ministry?

We’re not shocked that John is in jail. After all, even today, who really can get away with being a prophet without being shunned or ostracized by your own community, or people leaving your community in protest if they find your words upsetting or offensive?

But what is shocking is what this preacher inquired of Jesus. Are you the one? What’s going on here? Is this a failure of nerve, a failure of faith on John’s part?

Maybe, at the beginning, as Jesus began, it was easier for John to look at him, and see the Messiah. His ministry began with such promise and hope. To be sure, there was resistance, but Jesus seemed able to overcome it.

But now, those heady days of baptism and adoring crowds and great expectation seem more like a distant memory to John, as he sits in prison.

And so comes that question.

John’s whole ministry has focused on pointing to Jesus, but now, in prison, it is so cloudy and dark that he can’t even see where his finger is pointing.

Baptizing Jesus must have been the most stunning spiritual moment of John’s life. But even the greatest mountaintop experience has its let down.

Anticipation has met cold, hard reality.

I’m sure everyone here has been disappointed at some time or another. You feel abandoned by those you trusted or you feel disappointed that a friendship failed or you feel despair because expectations have shifted, and there is confusion now about your role.

I suspect John felt that way.

Perhaps Jesus didn’t meet John’s expectations. That would not be surprising, given what Jesus stood for.

One writer contrast Jesus and John this way:

“ Where John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain, Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host of a marvelous party . . . Where John said people had better save their skins before it was too late, Jesus said it was God who saved their skins, and even if they blew their whole bankroll on liquor and sex like the prodigal Son, it still wasn’t too late. Where John ate locusts and honey in the wilderness with the church crowd, Jesus ate what he felt like in Jerusalem with as sleazy a bunch as you could expect to find.”

    (Beuchner, Peculiar Treasures, 70)

Here came Jesus, the one who was mighty and sent from God, and he is telling people to turn the other cheek, to “do good to those who hate you.” John expected so much of Jesus, as we do. Yet, it seems that Jesus delivers so little, at least, when it comes to things we like to hear. When they put him on a cross, we expected him to act like the son of God, to be able to throw himself down from the cross, to say, “OK, now it’s payback time.” Instead, he looked down, hanging there in utter misery, and said simply, “Father, forgive.” We’d like to hear Jesus say, ok, you’ve been hurt, go ahead and do something to get even, but he says turn the other cheek and do good to those who persecute you.

As the old joke goes, most churches would gladly welcome Jesus as their pastor, but it would only take a couple of weeks before the good folk would either run him out of town – or hang him on a cross.

Expectations and reality.

There is a gap between our expectation of Jesus and the reality of Jesus. John the Baptist lived at the intersection of those competing realities. And I think his time in prison was a time to confront his own ministry in light of what Jesus stood for and taught.

The trick, of course, is to realize that what we want out of God is not always what we get, nor even what we should be getting.

I am drawn to John the Baptist because there is really no other disciple in scripture who asks such a hard question of Jesus: Are you the one to come, or shall we look for another? He’s honest. He speaks the truth. He doesn’t put on a happy face or gloss over his despair. His speech is the speech of one who doubts, yet who seeks an answer consistent with whatever new thing God is promising to do in the world.

The response he gets from Jesus says it all. In effect: “You go tell ole John what you’ve seen around here. Tell him there are people who have sold their seeing-eye dogs and taken up bird-watching. Tell him there are people who’ve traded in aluminum walkers for hiking boots. Tell him the down-and-out have turned into the up-and-coming and a lot of dead-bets are living it up for the first time in their lives.” (Beuchner, 71)

That’s really the message of Advent. The message that John and all of us need to hear. Jesus doesn’t really care how pretty your tree is, or how many gifts you’re giving or getting, or how many poinsettias you can squeeze into the sanctuary.

What it boils down to is the chance to start over again. To see; to hear; to be whole; to be resurrected; to receive good news. And, to John and all his kin, even though you’re plenty tired of sitting in that cold, hard prison cell, even the past can’t hold you captive.

For God in Christ is about to do something new -- with or without you!

Thanks be to God! Amen.