December 1998 Issue

Sermons for this passage rotate around an axis of doubt and proof. The text provides a provocative starting point for the preacher: "Are you the one, or shall we look for another?" Jesus' answer is equally suggestive. Those who preach on this lection have much to work with!

The matter of doubt is taken up by Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor. In Are You The One?,¹ Taylor first turns to John the Baptist. What prompts John to ask, "Are you the one, or shall we look for another?" John has known Jesus all along, has been so devoted to him, so clear in his announcement that Jesus is the one. Why this sudden skepticism about Jesus' identity?

Then Taylor moves the sermon to us. Before we get too critical of John, most of us can admit to asking the same question at one time or another. "Who is innocent of doubt? Who has never—in anger, hurt, disappointment, loss—who has never asked John's question?" Just one look at the world, one visit to the hospital, one encounter too many with those "who need more than we can give," and each of us is prone to ask, "Are you the one?"

Jesus' answer, Taylor preaches, is radical. Jesus does not make any "I statements." He simply tells John's disciples, the ones John sent to ask the question, "Go and tell John what you see and hear." John asks Jesus to prove himself, and Jesus "gives his power away" to those who witness the miracles happening around them. John's followers must make a determination for themselves, and then tell John what their answer is.

As a way of setting up the answer to John's second question, "Shall we look for another?," Taylor begins with Jesus' statement, "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me." She interprets "offense," "skandalon" in Greek, as "stumbling block." Her interpretation of Jesus' words: "Blessed is he who does not get tripped up on me." Jesus is saying, "Don't get tripped up on me," and "Do look for another." Jesus' answer to John, and to all of us, is to see the face of God in him and "in another, and another and another." In the blind who see, in the deaf who hear, in the poor who hear good news, we see and hear the miracles of a God who works through all who believe. Our nagging doubts about Jesus find their proof in the faces and voices of the believers around us. We have the answers to the questions, Taylor says, if we would just see and hear.

The doubt question also is the focus of George Forrell's Overcoming the Credibility Gap,² although Forrell takes a slightly different approach. "The dawn of doubt about someone to whom we have been committed," Forrell says, is both painful and basic. Difficult as it is, we all doubt. Even John the Baptist, a man with all kinds of Christian credentials, a man with much invested in the advent of Christ, doubts. John is no longer sure.As Forrell preaches, "Again the New Testament shocks us with its honesty."

Jesus' answer, Forrell claims, is just what we need to hear. Jesus does not seem to be surprised or angry by the question, "Are you the one?" Jesus knows we have doubts; it's only natural. In response to the doubts, Jesus gestures toward the signs of the kingdom of God. Christ doesn't get involved in the kind of liberal and conservative rhetoric splitting our churches today. Rather, Jesus gets involved with people, "the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dying and the poor."

Forrell ends by calling for us to work with Christ to help overcome the credibility gap. Forell claims that the gospel is true, but that the credibility of it depends on us. We have the power to "demonstrate the truth of the gospel in our time" by getting involved ourselves with the kind of people Jesus got involved with. By involving ourselves with health care, with the fate of the poor, with the diseased and the handicapped, we will do much to increase the public credibility of the gospel. We who call ourselves ambassadors are to blame for the gap of belief, because through our "stinginess, sloth and preoccupation with other things" we have clouded the truth of Jesus' message. Now is the time for us to enhance the message.

Jesus' answer to the question of doubt is also the subject of James Crawford's Advent's Great Scandal.³ Crawford gets his title from an interpretation of verse 6 that differs from Barbara Brown Taylor's. Jesus' statement, "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me," becomes: "Radiant, joyous are those who by my mission are not scandalized." This is clearly a different slant than Taylor's interpretation of the same verse!

The scandal of Advent, according to Crawford, is the spirituality of Jesus. That is, Jesus' arrival and mission mean a complete upheaval of the status quo. Jesus is dangerous to religious leaders because he is not concerned with religious institutions; he is concerned with "healing wounds, changing lives," bringing bad news to society's leaders and good news to society's marginalized. The scandal of Jesus' spirituality is that worship does not occur through the decorum, the credentials, the liturgy of the church, but through sharing bread with the hungry and clothing the naked (Crawford refers us to Isaiah 58:7).

Crawford challenges us to compare Jesus' criterion for mission with ours. How are churches doing? How does our mission match Jesus'? Crawford takes us on for our emphasis on charity rather than justice, for our budgets that allot more to church maintenance rather than to outreach, for glossing over the starkness of the season with our elaborate services. The preacher then leaves us with another twist on verse six: "And radiant are those, yes joyous, who see my new creation not as offense, not as scandal, but as invitation, as privilege, as blessing."

Susan Steinberg

1. Barbara Brown Taylor, "Are You The One?," in Mixed Blessings (Atlanta: Susan Brown Publishing, 1986), pp. 54-57.
2. George Forrell, "Overcoming the Credibility Gap," in A Child is Born, ed. John McCollister (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House), 1972, pp. 20-27.
3. James Crawford, "Advent's Great Scandal," in Worth To Raise Issues (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1991), pp. 87-94.