Standing Firm :: Matthew 11:2-15
Sometimes we just need a miracle.
If ever there was a man who knew his purpose in life, it had to be John the Baptizer. John lived with singular purpose. Before he was even born, while he was still in the womb, John knew who he was. He knew he would spend his life waiting for Christ and pointing us to Christ.
When his father Zechariah learned from the angel that he and his wife were going to be parents, Zechariah fell into disbelief. In response, as a sign to Zechariah, God deprived him of the ability to speak. He ultimately was able to speak again only after his son was born and Zechariah insisted on naming him John. Because John had a purpose.
Fertility experts can manipulate the body of a sixty-year-old woman to carry another woman’s child, but she can’t conceive her own child. John’s parents may not have been as old as Abraham or Sarah, when Isaac was born ... Abraham was 100, and Sarah was 90 ... but conception in their seventies was just as miraculous.
The miracle of women giving birth long past the childbearing age is God’s way of saying that that child is going to be special. Scripturally speaking, whether it was Sara, Rebekka, Rachel, Tamar, Ruth, Hannah, Elizabeth, or Mary, it always points to the incarnation of Christ, to the birth of the Messiah. God is able to bring forth life in the most barren places.
Sometimes we just need a miracle. They can give us purpose.
When Zechariah regained the ability to speak, he sang one of my favorites canticles we still use in Matins, the Benedictus: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people (Lk 1:68). If you don’t know this beautiful canticle, maybe someday I can teach it to you. Zechariah sings of how his son will prepare for the way of God on earth.
We don’t know how long Elizabeth and Zechariah lived after John was born, but if they didn’t tell him of the strange circumstances surrounding his birth, I’d have to think his aunts and uncles did. John’s life was shaped by the miracle of his birth. He knew who he was and what he was going to do. He had a special purpose. He was destined to go before the face of our Lord to prepare the way, to lead us to repentance, to turn us around from unbelief to belief, to lead us from death and darkness to light and life.
John wasn’t simply another child.
He was the one whom the prophet Isaiah called the voice crying in the wilderness. Jesus said that John was the Elijah whom Malachi prophesied would come before the great and terrible Day of the Lord. John wasn’t simply a reed shaking in the wind, that is making a lot of noise with no purpose. He didn’t come dressed to impress.
Instead, John would stand in the river Jordan, the border between the darkness of sin and the light of the promised land, pointing people to the dawn emitting from Christ, the Son of Righteousness.
John had unparalleled success as a preacher.
Some suggest that he baptized a half million people. He was so eloquent that some thought he was the promised Messiah. After he was murdered by Herod, his memory had such a hold on the people that they thought Jesus was John risen from the dead, even though John repeatedly made it clear that he was not Christ, that he was but a mere prophet sent by God, sent with the specific purpose to identify who Emmanuel was.
Behold, Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, he cried out. Behold, Jesus is your Lamb. Behold, turn to him.
By the time our Gospel reading opens, John is now in his 30s. His prominence and success have been exchanged for a prison cell, not because he had done anything wrong, but because he had done everything right. He called everyone to repentance.
Flee from your sexual immorality, he told Herod.
Flee from your pornography, he would have told our world.
Flee from your gossip.
Flee from your idolatry of me, myself, and I.
Flee from your refusal to acknowledge your need for the forgiveness of sins.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, flee from your sin. Repent and believe the Gospel.
This was John’s calling. He knew it. And he embraced it, no matter the toll it would take on his life.
We Christians know that life can become so miserable that, like Job, we are forced to ask ourselves if God really cares for us, if God really does hear our prayers, if God really is going to liberate me from this body of death. We know things can seem so hopeless that, like Habakkuk, we are forced to wonder if God really will save us from ourselves?
Perhaps we go to the extreme and question whether God exists.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that John the Baptizer did too when push came to shove, even if he did know his purpose in life.
The man who preached how Christ would release captives from their prison probably expected that Jesus would spring him from imprisonment, too.
Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him: Are you the coming one, or shall we look for another? (Mt 11:3). This certainly is a puzzling question from a man who knew who he was.
Think about it: John, had pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. He stood in the river Jordan and heard the voice from heaven identifying Jesus as God’s beloved son. He saw the heavens open, and the dove descending on Jesus. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, he declared. Lord, I need to be baptized by you.
But now, here he is doubting it all. Are you the coming one?
Despair does that to all of us, especially in these darkening days of December. We are susceptible to doubt. Have you ever been like me, and wondered and questioned your faith, too ... even when you’ve been lifelong Lutherans?
Some scholars cannot accept that the great preacher did not believe his own sermons, his own testimony. Some scholars have hypothesized that John asked this question not for himself but for his disciples, that John didn’t want his impending execution to cause those who’d heard him preach to lose faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
It’s such an easy and attractive solution, putting the burden of unbelief on John’s disciples and not on John himself. But it has no support from scripture. This reading is about John’s conflict with unbelief and how Jesus deals with it.
John’s doubts do not detract from his importance or his greatness. Jesus calls him the greatest man born of woman. A large segment of the conservative Protestant population holds that believers will never lose their faith. They claim that those who lose their faith never had faith. The cliché is “once saved always saved.”
Wrong!
For us Christians, there is never a time when faith is very far from the edge of unbelief. Satan never leaves us alone. Each and every day he works harder and harder to lead us away from Christ, to cause us to doubt the promises of God, the promises which lead us to faith, the faith that gives us hope, the hope that leads us to love.
John was no exception. The sad reality is that preachers not only can lose the faith they preach to others, they do lose faith. Preacher and hearers are not immune to unbelief.
John is no exception.
Even after being the first witness to Christ, leaping in his mother’s womb. Even after standing in the baptismal waters; even after hearing the voice of God the Father declaring this is my beloved son, even after seeing the dove, we humans always find room for doubt, and not more room for him in our inn.
A miracle is always a good solution for unbelief. So Jesus reminded John’s disciples ... Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the dead hear, and the dead are raised up ...
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name.
And I pray that now you do.
But for you and me and those caught between faith and unbelief, there are no miracles. Like John, we have something even more certain.
MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAN ALL THESE PHYSICAL MIRACLES IS THAT THE POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM.
No miracle will release John from imprisonment or save him from execution. So John turns to Christ, who gives us something even more certain: The very words of Gospel, the Gospel. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Faith feeds ... not on miracles ... but on the words of Christ that God has come in this man Jesus and has redeemed us all by sacrificing his own life on a cross at Calvary. Jesus has redeemed you with his blood.
You who have confessed your sins are the poor. You who have believed the Gospel have received the forgiveness of sins. Your faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is saving you. God did this for you by grace not because of anything you have done, but solely on account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ himself.
Our Emmanuel has lived for you and died for you and overcome sin, death, and the devil for you.
If you really want to insist on a miracle, look to the water and the blood.
Praise God that the message of Advent assures us that Christ is coming to save his people from their sins. Praise God that he does this through his word coupled with the water of Baptism and the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. Because we can never hear the Gospel enough or receive the forgiveness of sins enough.
May God grant that we will stand firm in this singular purpose of the Gospel, directing our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, to Jesus Christ, our savior.