The Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
Matthew 11:2-11
Isaiah 35:1-10
All Saints Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex.

Advent is a season when history collapses in on itself. More than most of the Church’s year, it is the season when we are most aware of the unusual way we keep time around here. We are hurriedly preparing for Christmas, but based on our scripture readings and hymns the past few weeks you wouldn’t be able to tell just yet. We’ve been talking about fun seasonal themes like How to Prepare for the Second Coming and Judgment and Repentance for the Modern, Thinking Christian. As we prepare for the Christ’s coming as the baby in the manger, we are thinking and praying and singing about Christ’s return at the end of days and what that means when he arrives in our lives here in 2022: past, future, and present are all layered on top of one another, each time frame trying to tell us something about the others. We look to the past to understand the future, and come to understand something about our present. Advent is a season that eludes easy explanation, a season that is at once confusing and illuminating.

We’re telling stories out of order too. A few weeks ago we were with Jesus at the cross, then we moved backward in the story to hear his teachings about the end of the world. Last week we went back even further to find John the Baptizer waist deep in the Jordan River proclaiming the kingdom of God and insulting his audience: “Prepare the way of the Lord, you brood of vipers!” Soon he will meet Jesus and plunge him deep into the waters of baptism, declaring him the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world… but we’re not ready for that story yet; you’ll have to come back in a few weeks. Today we’ve skipped over all that, several chapters ahead to the next part of John’s story. Today we meet John in the deep darkness of Herod’s dungeon and of John’s own doubt. The triumphant “Behold the Lamb of God” has turned to a doubtful, almost bitter “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for?” This is an Advent story. The season of expectation, the season of the once and future comings of Christ, begins with darkness and doubt.

“Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” John’s question lashes out like a thunderbolt, from the depths of his prison cell to find Jesus where he is and across the span of time to find us where we are. This is the Advent question: it is at once urgent and demanding, curious and hopeful. Advent is when John’s question becomes ours and the Church’s crisis of faith is on full display. Are you the one, O Lord? Our ancestors have told us of the mighty things you did, stories of healing and liberation and restoration, and we have heard this promise, this rumor of a return in glory, of a reign of peace and justice that shall have no end, where Death and all of its friends shall have no dominion, but Lord Almighty it is dark and my strength is failing and I cannot see the path ahead of me. Are you the one who is to come? Or should I look for another?

The entire Christian life is lived in Advent, this time of the long in-between, this time of the radical disconnect between what God has promised and what we live. We do not need to look far. Advent begins when we wake up on a Sunday morning to hear that a young man has entered a safe haven for LGBTQ people and committed an act of terrorism. Advent begins when an oil pipeline in Kansas breaks and the creation groans under the burden of our hubris. Advent begins when our rulers restrict the god-given right of women and trans people to make decisions about their health and well-being. Advent begins (and begins and begins again) when the wars of petty tyrants in far-flung places rage on. Advent begins when the relationship fails despite all our efforts to preserve it, when the doctor shares the difficult diagnosis, when the stress and anxiety of living make death seem like the easy way out, when the phone call comes that your loved one is dead. Advent begins every moment of every day in every human heart: “Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Do not let death have the final word. Are you the one who is to come?”

And there, in the midst of it all, “towering over the wrecks of time,” stands the cross of Jesus Christ, who came once in great humility, that we might be reconciled to God and one another through him. It is here at the crossroads of history that we see the one in whom all things bind together, even the shattered remains of our own hearts. It is here at this altar that we offer this question, this sacrifice of a troubled spirit. It is here that we hear the echo of John’s proclamation: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: Prepare the way of the Lord.” And in response even the desert must burst into bloom.

Advent begins in the darkness, but thanks be to God for those who sing to us of the dawn. “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees… Here is your God, who has come to save you.” Isaiah sings to us a song of a god of the impossible, a god who knows and sees our suffering and loves us too much to leave us the way God finds us. He points to the presence of unexpected goodness and says that wherever this goodness is there must God be also. Isaiah speaks to a people who have only just been freed from captivity, who are learning how to live again. Isaiah speaks to a people who bear the marks of their suffering, those who have been blinded and deafened and crippled by their captors, and sings of nothing less than God’s full healing and restoration for them. He envisions a community of people who know where they have come from and who go out and seek others who need this healing word, those who sit in the darkness asking if there is one who will come and save them. Isaiah envisions a people so overcome with goodness and gratitude that they can’t help but join the world in singing

We do not know why the Lord waits so long to fulfill the work begun at Christ’s first coming but just as we can look around and see all those things that move us to ask the Advent questions, so too can we look all around us and see the places where God’s reign is breaking in, where unexpected, unearned joy is flourishing like a rose in the desert. “Rejoice, rejoice, believers, and let your lights appear!” “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell what you hear and see.”