Matthew 11:2-15 (Advent 3A)
St. John, Galveston 12/14/25
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +
    
Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    Imprisoned by King Herod, John the Baptist waited for the executioner to carry out his sentence of death. From his prison cell, John sent some of the  disciples to Jesus with a question. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” In turn, Jesus sent the disciples back to John with a response. He answered John’s question by quoting various prophecies from the Book of Isaiah. He said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

    Sometimes it is the people we least expect to struggle with doubts in their heart about Jesus and His kingdom that give us the most hope regarding our own faith in Jesus. Mind you, we are oftentimes encouraged in hope by these heroes of the faith, not because they never struggled with doubts in their own lives, but precisely because they did struggle, and yet, they were, as we say, heroes of the faith.  

    If I may, I hope that a little story will help to illustrate my point. We were first year seminary students, fresh out of a ten week crash course in Biblical Greek. As new seminary students, we were at that point in our lives where we thought we knew everything there was know about Jesus and about the Christian faith. In some sense, at least in our own minds, we were at the seminary simply to have everything we already believed validated.

    The next four years though would form us to be Pastors, shepherds, physicians of the soul. Ironically, that process, at least in part, challenged many of our expectations about our own faith and even about God Himself. Not, mind you, in a bad way, but in a good way.

    In one of our classes after the Greek term was over, the professor told us a story. He said, Martin Luther was in his study one day pouring through the Scriptures. A young priest walked in and stood in front him. The young priest was clearly distraught over something, his head bowed down in shame. Luther asked him, what’s wrong? Why is your soul so cast down? The young priest, his voice barely audible, said, ‘well, I find that sometimes I have trouble believing the very things I preach.’ The young man could barely finish uttering those words before his head dropped again in shame.

    The professor turned the story into a class exercise. He asked our class,  “what would you say to that young priest if he confessed his doubts to you?” “How would you counsel him?” As a class, we didn’t have a great deal to offer, but it seemed that we all agreed on one thing. The priest had gone into the wrong vocation. After all, a priest with doubts about his own faith made for an odd situation, don’t you think!? It was at that point, that the professor asked us, would you like to know what Luther said to the young priest? We all agreed that would probably be a good thing. The professor said, well, Luther looked at the young priest and said, “Thanks be to God! I thought I was the only one.” “I thought I was the only one.”

    The point is, whether it’s Martin Luther, or John the Baptist, or Abraham, or King David, or anyone else for that matter, questions about God and His kingdom lurk in the hearts of all of God’s people. And, the thing is, those questions often lurk the strongest when God doesn’t do what we think He should do in a given situation, whether in our own life, or in someone else’s.

    In this morning’s reading from Matthew 11, Jesus certainly wasn’t doing what John the Baptist thought He should do. I mean, John, who at one point boldly proclaimed that Jesus was the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” was now wondering if he might have been mistaken. And so, he sent the disciples to Jesus to ask Him if He was the One. You see, in the situation in which he found himself, John needed assurance, because things weren’t going the way he thought they should.

    As we consider John’s situation, or our own lives for that matter, there is no sugarcoating the fact that the reign of heaven, as it comes about through Jesus, doesn’t make everything in life better; not yet, at least. It doesn’t remove the tears or dispel the fears which characterize life in this dark valley. This is what makes John’s question about Jesus so important to us this morning. It’s his willingness to give his concerns and fears a voice that invites all of us to consider those nagging questions in our own lives.

    The central point for John was for him not to be offended by Jesus. That seems an odd thing for Jesus to say to John, doesn't it? “Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.” We think of an unbeliever as being offended by Jesus, but not a Christian, a believer. And yet, Jesus said this thing to John. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.”  The word translated here as  “offended” is actually the Greek word for a scandal. Literally, Jesus says, “Blessed is the one who is not scandalized by Me.” Elsewhere in the Scriptures, the same word is used in it’s passive sense, as it is here, to mean “to stumble,” or “to fall away.” In essence then, Jesus says, “Blessed is the one who does not stumble, or fall away because of Me.”        

    As God’s dear children, adopted into the kingdom through Holy Baptism, cleansed by the blood of Christ, sometimes we’re confused by what God does or doesn’t do. Things don’t always go the way we think they should. In that, that is, in our confusion, we are in good company, not so much because the heroes of our faith doubted too, but because, by His Spirit, God strengthened them, reminding them of the promises He has made, promises that never change, or fade.  

    In the end, John the Baptist isn’t most known for his moment of doubt in the dark, dampness of Herod’s prison. No, he is most known as the forerunner of Jesus, the one who prepared the way for our Lord’s coming, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And of all the things that John said and did, perhaps the one we identify with and remember the most, is his moment of absolute clarity in identifying Jesus as God’s Messiah. “Behold (he said), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  

    Being that those words of John, about Jesus, are absolutely reliable and true, and being that they are the very foundation of our faith, we wait on God with a certainty and hope that are greater than any that our own means could provide, the Holy Spirit giving us a faith that doesn’t stumble or fall.  

“A righteous helper comes to thee;
His chariot is humility,
His kingly crown is holiness,
He scepter, pity in distress.
The end of all our woe He brings;
Therefore the earth is glad and sings,
To Christ the Savior raise
Your grateful hymns of praise.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +