By Pastor Lynn Sawyer Parks

Matthew 11:2-11
This time of year, we all have expectations of what the holidays will be like. When we are kids, we have expectations of time off from school, presents, playing with friends or relatives. As adults we look forward to time off from work, being with friends and family, enjoying good food and the traditions that have developed in our lives around the holidays. And as we all know, sometimes our expectations can be different from the reality of what happens. Last year we expected to go to NC before Christmas Day but Vandy had knee surgery and then had some problems afterwards and we weren’t able to leave until a few days after Christmas. We expected to enjoy the time we were in NC but then I got sick while we were there. The reality of last Christmas turned out to be very different from what we had expected.

This is what is happening in this passage in Matthew 11. John had some expectations about Jesus that weren’t being met and he questions Jesus. Jesus then questions the people about what their expectations were regarding John. When I was reading this passage, I noticed that it says John was in prison and heard what the Messiah was doing. In doing my homework on this sermon I looked at this passage in Greek and I looked up the word for prison to see what it means, and it means prison. But as you know, when you look up the definition of a word, they give you several descriptions and one of the things listed was “place of bondage.”

A place of bondage isn’t necessarily just a prison. We can think of a place of bondage as being a place of sin or a place where something has control of us. Alcoholism can be a place of bondage. Indebtedness can be a place of bondage. Our own mindset and the thoughts we think can create a place of bondage for ourselves. Any place where freedom is restricted is a place of bondage. Ill health or the debilitation that comes with aging can be a place of bondage if we find our freedom severely restricted. We can’t always say that it’s our own fault if we find ourselves in a place of bondage. We are told in Romans 8:21 that creation itself is in a place of bondage to sin and death and looks forward to the time when it will be set free from this bondage. John was in a place of bondage because he was living in obedience to God, doing his job as a prophet and Herod had him arrested. There are plenty of people in this world living in a place of bondage, without the freedom to fully pursue life, because of circumstances and systems that work against them. We are all living in a world in bondage to sin and death until Jesus comes again. Let’s keep all this in mind as we look at this passage.
John was in a place of bondage and he heard some things about the Messiah, who is Jesus.

You can’t always trust everything you hear when you are in a place of bondage. In the place of bondage, our perspective is limited. We see things and hear things only from the perspective allowed by the things that limit us. It takes effort to think about what the perspective might be like outside those limitations. Also, in a place of bondage like John was in, where he was isolated from his people, where he was at the mercy of his guards who have no interest in his well being, the accuser is going to show up and start whispering things in his mind. In a place of bondage, a place of isolation, a place where we are under great pressure, we can begin to get a little paranoid. We can begin thinking in unhealthy ways. We can become suspicious of other people and start questioning motives. This is all the work of the accuser, the Satan. This is the same one who we are told in the book of Job, came before God and said that Job was only worshiping God because God blessed him. This accuser loves to get in our minds and mess us up. We have to learn to recognize the lies of the accuser and not give in to them.
John is hearing certain things about Jesus while he’s in prison, but John knows Jesus. They are cousins. John has experienced Jesus. They probably knew each other growing up and were raised in similar fashion by religiously observant, righteous parents. John baptized Jesus and saw the Holy Spirit come like a dove and rest on Jesus. John has been pointing people towards Jesus. That has been his whole vocation. When John hears something that he doesn’t expect, while he is in the place of bondage, he goes to the source. He sends his own disciples to ask Jesus “are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else.” And John trusts Jesus to give him an honest answer.

I have a new appreciation for this question after these last couple of years of our discernment as a congregation. We have asked God, and I have asked God, “Is this it or should we look for someone else to lead this congregation?” You know, our expectations can confine us. We can expect certain conditions to be in place before we are willing to do something instead of just going ahead and doing. Or our expectations can sometimes be too vague. We have some general idea in our mind about something but we never act on it because it never becomes detailed enough to motivate us to take concrete steps.

There’s a joke I read one time about a person caught in a flood and they were stuck in a tree or somewhere and a boat came along to rescue them, but they said no. They were praying and God would rescue them. Then a helicopter came and offered to rescue them, and they said no. They were praying and God would rescue them. So they drowned. When they got to heaven, they asked God what happened? Why didn’t he rescue them? God said, “I sent a boat and a helicopter, and you turned them down. What more did you want?” It’s important that we understand our expectations, that they not be too vague and not unrealistic.

John had some expectations of Jesus that were based on his understanding of the prophecies about the Messiah. We know from John’s sermons that he expected the Messiah to be someone who executes judgment. We read last week from Matthew 3:12 where John speaks of the Messiah saying, “His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” John’s job was to get the people ready for the Messiah to come so he was baptizing them as they came repenting, to symbolize their desire to be clean before God and to live in righteousness. He was telling them to look out for the poor, to not take advantage of one another, to live in righteousness and justice so they won’t face the judgement of the Messiah.

But then he gets put into prison and, from that place of bondage, hears that Jesus is eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. That’s not what he expected. He expected Jesus to be executing judgment on the sinners, not for him to have dinner with them. Jesus has to remind John of all that the prophets said about the Messiah.

He tells John’s disciples to go back and report to John what they see and hear: the blind can now see, the lame can now walk, the deaf can now hear, the lepers are now clean, the dead are now living again and the good news is being preached to the poor. This was also the work of the Messiah as described by the prophets. Jesus announced in the synagogue of Nazareth, at the beginning of his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me; because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This was Jesus’ statement of purpose. This is what his ministry would be about. This doesn’t mean that John had the wrong idea about the Messiah, because Jesus is the one authorized to judge sin. It means that the way Jesus would go about doing it was different than John imagined.

When Jesus sends back this report to John, he’s telling John that the Kingdom of God is breaking into the world. He’s reminding John of passages like Isaiah 35 which says “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong; do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.”

John’s work of preparing the people, preparing the way for the Messiah, was not in vain. John had prepared the Way of Holiness and now new life was growing there. The blind were now seeing, the deaf could now hear, the lame could now walk, the lepers were now cured and the dead were now alive and this was all the work of the Messiah. John may have heard that Jesus was eating and drinking with sinners, but this was how the Messiah did things. How is the Messiah going to cleanse the lepers if he never goes where the lepers are? How is the Messiah going to preach good news to the poor if he never goes where the poor are and takes part in their lives? How is the Messiah going to turn the hearts of sinners back to God if he never enters the lives of the sinners? The Messiah’s judgment of sin was to love people to repentance, to bring wholeness to their lives so they could walk on this Way of Holiness. Eventually the Messiah would die on the cross and then be resurrected and this would be the judgment on sin and death so that all who believe in Jesus might live even if they die.
John heard one report while he sat in the place of bondage. But he knew that the things he was hearing did not match up with what he knew of Jesus. His expectations weren’t being met. So he sent for another report and Jesus reminded him of all that the Messiah was about. Jesus corrected John’s expectations so that they lined up with all that the prophets talked about. We will hear things, while we sit in the place of bondage, that won’t make sense to us. We need to hear the report from Jesus. We need to understand how to go to Jesus and listen for the report that he wants to give us so that our expectations will line up with his.

Remember that gospel song, “Whose report will you believe? We will believe the report of the Lord.” That was John’s mindset and that’s why he sent for the report of the Lord.
As John’s disciples were leaving to take this new report back, Jesus turned to the people and asked them, “What did you expect when you went out to the desert to see John and listen to him preach? Did you expect to see a reed blowing in the wind or a man wearing soft clothes?” Jesus is asking if they expected someone like King Herod. Herod’s symbol was a reed blowing in the wind and it was the people in Herod’s palace who wore soft clothes. They didn’t go out into the desert expecting to see someone like Herod. John didn’t wear soft clothes and wasn’t as flexible as a reed bending back and forth in the wind. John was rough in appearance and his message was very direct and unchanging. John was a prophet and their expectations of John as a prophet were more than met. In fact, Jesus says, there has been no one greater than John the Baptist. John is the one whom Malachi the prophet said would come ahead of the Lord to prepare the way for him. So if this is who John is, then who should they expect Jesus to be?

Jesus is declaring himself to be Messiah here in a very coded way. The reason he does this is because Herod has already thrown John in prison. If he hears that Jesus is openly declaring himself to be Messiah, he’ll throw Jesus in prison as well and there could be 2 heads that end up on the platter instead of 1. It’s not time for Jesus to die yet. So he has to be wise and not provoke Herod to come after him. But the people need to look around and discern for themselves, who is this that is among them? What do the prophets say? Is this the Messiah, according to all the prophets have said, or should we look for another?

How often do we miss the work of God among us, or fail to acknowledge that God is at work among us, because we are expecting something different? Jesus lived with this all his life. When Mary became pregnant, people didn’t believe her story about being pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was going to divorce her and put her away because he didn’t expect that it was possible for her to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and for him to be called by God to raise the Messiah. When Jesus came on the scene at the beginning of his ministry, people didn’t expect that the Messiah would have been raised in Nazareth. Can anything good come from there? No one expected the carpenter’s son to teach with such wisdom and understanding. No one expected a man from Galilee, with no formal rabbinical training to teach with such authority. Jesus spent his whole life defying the expectations of other people. Certainly no one expected him to come walking out of the grave after having been crucified. Our God can do so much more than we can expect or imagine. We need to understand that our expectations of our God are too small.

The title of this sermon is “Kept Waiting by Fear.” Because our expectations of God are too small, we are afraid to believe. We are afraid of looking foolish if God doesn’t deliver the goods. This shows that we aren’t expecting enough of God. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we should be going around declaring God is going to do this or that when we haven’t taken the time to discern what God is doing or saying to us. God wants to bring His Kingdom into our lives, into our church, into our schools and work places, into this city, and He wants to do it through us. Is it our expectation that God wants to bring His Kingdom into these places through us? If it is, we should be praying and discerning what God’s report to us is and acting on it.

Even though we are believers in Jesus, many of us have been baptized, we worship Jesus, we pray, and so on, we still live in a created world that is in bondage to sin and death. The accuser, the Satan, is still actively working against God and God’s people and we still are susceptible to his lies. We will hear things that don’t come from God, that will mess us up. We will feel alone and afraid and wonder what in the world God is doing or where is God. This is when we have to make the extra effort to seek the report of the Lord. This is why it’s so important that we be filling our minds with the Word of the Lord. Most days I wake up with a worship song in my head, usually one we’ve sung the Sunday before. But it doesn’t take long for that song to go out of my head as I get busy with my day. I’ve found for me that it takes effort to remind myself of the things I do know about God when problems crowd in, when the pressure of life gets intense, when I start to hear what’s happening in the world, or when I read some things on social media. It doesn’t take long for the accuser to show up and start whispering in my ear and I have to be on my guard to recognize those lies and resist them.

We have to know the report of the Lord and that means going to the Lord every day, all day even, to hear from the Lord so that our expectations can line up with His, and so that we can resist when other reports come in that contradict the report of the Lord. We can trust the word of the Lord more than we can trust our circumstances. Life can feel like a dry and barren place, but that is the place where God brings new life according to the Isaiah 35 passage I referred to earlier. God is able to work regardless of our circumstances, regardless of what we are going through, regardless of how much bondage we are in. There may be a place of barrenness in your life where you are not expecting anything to grow, but God can bring new life there, even if it looks different that what you would like. I’m expecting new life in this congregation and in this community. I’m expecting it in my own life. I don’t know exactly what it will look like but I do know that the Messiah came bringing sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, healing to the sick, strength to the lame, good news to the poor, freedom to the oppressed and life to the dead. I’m choosing to believe the report of the Lord that this is the type of Kingdom work God wants to do among us. We need to be on the lookout for the signs of the Kingdom of God at work in our lives and we need to be open to be surprised by God.