John is not the Messiah.
John is not Elijah; he is not the prophet.; he is not the light. Almost everything we hear and know today about John is about what – or who – he is not.
John enters the story of Jesus surrounded by waves of expectation, and he denies every one of them: Expectations that the messenger of God would be the long-awaited prophet; expectations that Elijah would return; expectations that the Messiah, the anointed one, would be a political figure, a recognizable religious figure…. expectations, most of all, that God – and the messenger of God – would make sense, and fit the world as we understand it.
John isn’t getting any of this Major Religious Figure stuff right. But when all that expectation is cleared away, when he knows and we know what he is not, then what he is becomes crystal clear:
He’s a witness.
His purpose is to testify, to be the one sent from God to bear witness to the light.
He’s here to tell us the story we can’t hear without him, to point to the one among us whom we don’t yet see, to do nothing more or less than point to the light, with all that he is, until we see it too.
John comes – at least one Sunday morning a year in church, and unexpectedly at other times in our lives – to bust up our expectations, because our expectations can keep us from seeing what God is actually doing: bringing salvation in apparent weakness rather than strength, making peace through upheaval and discomfort, or giving life in ways that feel like death.
We’re deep in the season of expectations now, in mid-December. We know the signs of the coming of Christ, the signs of the coming of God, that have become familiar, even predictable: Lighted candles, words from the prophets, early darkness, lighted houses, a season of giving, love and joy flowing through the mailbox as Christmas cards, special foods, angel wings in the parish hall, music on the radio….
We know all these as signs that God is coming, we know how these signs point to the miracle of the baby in the manger. We know what to expect of God, at Christmas. And we know what’s expected of us, and what we expect of ourselves to make this “the most wonderful time of the year,” or to make way for the coming of awe and wonder.
Expectations of hosting, baking, performing, applauding, giving, receiving, shopping, praying…
We are surrounded by the expectation of joy, and kindness, and smiles and love.
We are surrounded by the expectation of joy, and kindness, and smiles and love.
Those expectations can sometimes lift your heart when there’s no particular reason for happiness, make you stronger and more loving than you think you can be. Or they can tear at your heart if you’re grieving or lonely or in pain, or weigh on your heart if you’re just busy, or not in the mood, and can’t meet that expectation of easy hope and celebration.
And maybe we’re not supposed to. After all, God is all about defying our expectations. Maybe it’s time - in this Advent, expectant season - to defy or let go of those expectations all over again.
Many of you know the Charlie Brown Christmas story, and you’ll remember that from the very beginning of the story, Charlie has a problem with Christmas expectations.
“There must be something wrong with me, Linus,” he says. “Christmas is coming but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”
Christmas isn’t meeting Charlie’s expectations; and it seems Charlie isn’t meeting Christmas’s expectations – or his own. He’s not getting cards; he can’t discover the meaning of Christmas, and he really can’t manage to direct the Christmas play, after Lucy talks him into trying.
And after failing at all those expectations, his friends send him out to get their Christmas tree - perhaps here’s one expectation he can meet. One more opportunity to make the story work, to meet the expectations of the season.
Go get a beautiful one, they tell him: aluminum, shiny, strong, festive…maybe pink. Let’s get a tree that can’t fail, they imply.
And then in the Christmas tree lot, surrounded by big, beautiful, perfect and pink trees – the kind he was sent to get – Charlie finally has a moment of clarity. He stands in front of a weedy, bare, embarrassingly small and sorry tree, and he knows this is the right tree.
So he brings it back to his friends, disappointing all their expectations again. And he tells them about the beauty and rightness of the tree, of how this is the tree they are looking for, to complete the Christmas play, the Christmas spirit.
And they don’t see it.
But Charlie – pushed and pulled by unmet expectations – manages to hang on to his truth, to keep seeing and proclaiming the beauty and purpose of his weedy little tree, even when he has to admit he can’t make it work on his own, and the tree seems to break.
But then - finally - the other kids come along, and take a chance that Charlie has been right. They decorate the tree, and suddenly it is revealed to Charlie, and to the audience, to the world, in all its beauty. Suddenly the tree is revealed, whole and glorious, as the window, the doorway to the true meaning of Christmas, to the truth.
When we meet John today, in the story of Jesus, he knows what he is not. Not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the light itself. And because he knows what he is not, John knows who he is: a witness, one sent by God to show the light.
When we meet Charlie Brown in his Christmas story, he spends a lot time trying to be what he’s not: in the Christmas spirit, the director of a play, popular with his friends, in the know about Christmas…
But eventually, he stops trying to be all those things he’s not, and becomes who and what he actually is: a witness. The one who sees and proclaims the beauty and purpose of the tree. He sees what others cannot see, and spends the second half of the show testifying, failing everyone’s expectations still, but witnessing to the beauty, until finally, with all that expectation broken down, all the other kids see it too, and seeing it, reveal it to the world.
This Advent, this December, this season of expectation, let’s be Charlie.
Let’s be John.
Let’s let go of what we are not – of all the expectations that keep us from being who we are, and from seeing what God is doing now. Let’s be witnesses for the beauty that isn’t being seen, the truth already among us that hasn’t yet been spoken, the love that lives among us unnoticed.
Be John.
Be Charlie.
Until the glory of the Lord is revealed to all.
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