What did you go into the wilderness to see?

Sermon Notes -- Dec. 15, 2013
The Rev. Liz Simmons

You decide. Jesus isn't going to tell you what to believe. It's up to you. Jesus isn't even going to make claims about himself that you have to believe without evidence.

When John's followers come to Jesus asking "are you the one who is to come, or are we  to wait for another?" Jesus simply says to them, "Tell John what you see: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind are restored to sight." You make up your mind if I'm the one you're looking for.

So is he? IS Jesus the one for you? Is he the one you're looking for?

Last week we talked about the needs of the people who came out into the wilderness to see John.

Maybe you related to some of those needs: most of all an aching sense that there must be more to life than one illness or mechanical breakdown or job loss after another, constant busy-ness, or constant alone-ness for others, the repetitive nature of everyday tasks that can become such a drudgery if we AREN'T connected to something greater than ourselves.

Most of us probably don't need our sight restored, or our hearing made whole; most of us don't need to be raised from the dead, but we can all relate to times when we feel as if our SOULS have been deadened by the hardness of life.

And we are reminded today that there is one who can raise us to newness of life. That one is the anointed One, the Christ.

So, how do we go about asking for this healing, this new life that we so desperately need? How do we RENEW a relationship that has already begun, but may have grown stale and distant because of our own inability to put our life in Christ foremost as a priority?

I don't think it takes much at all. God is always waiting by us for some indication that we want God in our lives. We talk about Advent as a time of waiting. Well, God is waiting for us just as much as we are waiting for God.

It's important that we not use our waiting for God to lull us into inactivity and complacency. In the play "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett, the two protagonists Vladimir and Aragon are talking. One says, "Let's go," and the other says "We can't," "Why not?" the first asks, "We're waiting for Godot," comes to answer. Godot, of course represents God, and Samuel Beckett's is a cynical take on the inactivity of the supposedly faithful in response to the mind-numbing sameness of life. To the outsider, faith often looks like a passive response to a seemingly urgent need to respond to problems in life.

We are faced with a dilemma. We are told that "with God, all things are possible," and yet, feel a need to respond to the problems ourselves. When do we get in the way of God's work? When do we let our own pride claim the credit for what God has done through grace? And when are we being too passive in the face of God's hurting children?

This Advent, we must take stock of what we see. When has God responded to a need of yours in ways you knew were not of this world? When has God asked you to step up and be the healing hands in God's world? What was the difference between the two of them?