December 1998 Issue

Matthew 11:2-11; James 5:7-10

If you have not yet made your annual pilgrimage to the mall, the toy store, and other shrines of the season, you had better hurry. Christmas is fast approaching, and you don't have much time left! Don't forget the grocery store either. There you will find all the goodies you so desperately need for all those parties you will be hosting.

All of this shopping also means that you will spend a great deal of time waiting. Because of heavy traffic you must wait for two or three cycles of the traffic light before it is your turn to venture across the intersection. You drive around parking lots looking and waiting for a space to become available. Then you zigzag through the stores looking for the perfect gift, and once you find it you wait in line at the cash register.

I am convinced there is a conspiracy among merchants to make us wait. In some of the larger discount stores you may find as many as 20 or more check out registers lined up at the front of the store, but every time I go to these places only three or four of the checkouts are open, each with a long line. I usually get in the shortest line, but it often turns out to be the slowest line. The tape runs out just before it's my turn to move up to the register; there is a complicated check approval on the person in front of me, or there is a need for a price check on 15 different items. Maybe this sort of thing happens to you as well. If it does, remember this is Christmas time, so let's be happy as we stand in those long lines. Be patient and don't grumble, the book of James tells us. Easy to say; hard to do.

This time of year brings the paradoxical combination of rush, rush, rush, and wait, wait, wait. No wonder the true meaning of the season is often lost in the chaos.

We have idyllic visions of the season: families coming together, singing Christmas carols, full churches, love and happiness everywhere, but it rarely works out that way. Real life is not what we see depicted in greeting card commercials. When the often grim reality of life collides with our idealistic visions we can easily be left with a sense of emptiness and a great many questions.

Some of these questions may be very troubling. We are told that the child born in Bethlehem came as the Prince of Peace. He was born to usher in the kingdom of God, but the world is still not a friendly place. If the Kingdom really is here, where is it? Has the coming of Christ into the world really changed anything? Before Jesus there was famine, sickness and violence. After Jesus there is famine, sickness, and violence.

Taken as a whole, humanity may be a bit more civilized and more sophisticated now than was the case two millennia ago, but our basic nature seems to have remained untouched. We are still selfish, prideful, and hostile toward those who are different. If Jesus brought in a new era, where is it?

These same hard questions came into the mind of John the Baptist. John was the forerunner of this new era. John was the first person to declare the arrival of the Kingdom. John said it even before Jesus! John said other things, too, "the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is thrown into the fire." The wheat and the chaff will be separated, and the chaff "will burn with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:10-12 NRSV) John envisioned a mighty and powerful Messiah come to sweep away all the wickedness of the world and destroy evil.

Jesus will set the world straight. Justice and righteousness will rule the day. The oppressed will be liberated, and the hungry will be fed. Those who resist, those who do not believe, those who continue to sin, they will be swept away and cast into the fire. That's what John expected. That's what John proclaimed. That's what drew crowds to hear his message and be baptized. Then Jesus arrived on the scene. John stepped aside and essentially said, "O Jesus; go for it! Bring in the Kingdom! Wipe out the old age, and bring in the new!" And nothing happened.

Jesus didn't throw anybody into unquenchable fire. He didn't wipe out sinners; he visited in their homes and ate with them! John found himself not living in a new era, but imprisoned in a very old world dungeon with many questions and doubts. Sitting in the dry darkness of Herod's dungeon, John knew he may not have long to live. He doesn't want to die still wondering about the Messiah, so he sends word to Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?" It is a sad question. It is a question that pleads for an answer. "Are you who I thought you were? Are you the Messiah, or should I wait for someone else?"

John's question may be our question as well. Only our question is compounded by two thousand years of dungeons, injustice, suffering, disease, abuse, exploitation, and death. Is this really the new world of Jesus Christ? Is Christmas just "shop till you drop," or is there something more?

Perhaps John's questioning and ours is due to a lack of patience. Ours is an era of fast food, instant coffee and microwave dinners. We know what we want; we want it now, and we usually get it now. God's timetable seems a bit slower than ours. The book of James tells us to be patient. You can't plant a seed one day and harvest the crop the next day. That's a message we need to hear.

In 1982 Henry Douglas Seigler stood trial for the murder and robbery of a Richmond Virginia insurance agent. He pleaded innocent, but as the jury deliberated his fate, he became nervous. In an effort to avoid the death penalty, Seigler decided to accept a plea bargain agreement and changed his plea to guilty. He should have waited three more minutes. While his lawyers were informing the judge of this change, the jury stood outside the courtroom with their verdict. They had found him innocent. Despite the verdict, Seigler was given a sixty year prison sentence. Had Seigler been more patient, he would be a free man.¹

We all need more patience, but even patience has its limits. In the face of agonizing questions and disappointed expectancy, to simply say, "Be patient" can be an all too glib response. "Are you the one, or shall we wait?" In response to John's probing question Jesus suggests an examination of current events. The lame walk; the blind can see; lepers are cleansed; the deaf hear; the poor are given good news.

Jesus invites John, and all of us, to consider the positive happenings in the world. Our natural tendency is to ask, "Why is there so much suffering in the world?" Jesus wants us to ask another question: Why is there so much good in the world? How do we account for good health, prosperity, and salvation?

In the early part of the decade the world became aware that many people in the nation of Somalia suffered from a lack of food. That is not new. Starvation has always been a threat somewhere in our world. What was new is that American military troops were sent to that African nation in an effort to correct the problem. The very existence of the United States military is based on the belief that the United States and its interests should be protected (by force if necessary). Our troops are trained to kill people. In the case of Somalia, American troops were sent in order that people might be fed. True, the effort was largely ineffective. We are not yet beating our swords into plowshares. We are not yet shipping grain on trident submarines, but we are closer to doing so than we have ever been before. How do we account for that? How do we account for care, compassion and concern?.

When it comes to our own personal experience of life, how do we account for our own health and, when they occur, for amazing recoveries from illness? How do we explain unexpected good fortune? How do we account for the love and support of friends?

Is it wrong to think that the good aspects of life are bits and pieces of the Kingdom of God? A kingdom that comes, not by force, but by the birth of a child who came to life in a barn located in the back lot of an inn. The Kingdom of God was present in that common yet extraordinary birth. The Kingdom of God is within each of us as well. Every time we reach out with love, care, and compassion the Kingdom grows a bit larger and is that much closer to becoming fully realized.

Paul Graham
First Baptist Church
Graham, NC

1. Newsweek (August 30, 1982), p. 58.