Are You the One?

What’s going on here? Why did the writer of the Gospel of Matthew show us John the Baptist sending his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Wouldn’t Matthew’s readers think that John already knew for certain who Jesus was? The gospel accounts showed John and Jesus as cousins. The community of Jewish Christians for whom this gospel was written very likely knew that Jesus had been one of John’s disciples. Moreover, the gospel had already told them that when Jesus asked John for baptism along with everyone else, John said, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” And after Jesus was baptized, the gospel tells us that a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Was the gospel writer trying to suggest that, lying in prison, John suddenly doubted his cousin’s identity?

Actually, there are at least three questions embedded in this story. The first question is the nature of the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, a live and important question for Matthew’s audience. It’s possible that John was a member of the Essenes, an influential ascetic community that wrote and preserved what we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even if he was not an Essene, John was a powerful prophetic voice as Jesus was beginning his own ministry. Many in Jesus’ time wondered how to regard the two of them. The gospel writer voices the consensus the early church reached as to John’s part in salvation history. Quoting from the prophecy of Isaiah, the gospel writer avers that John was a great prophet, perhaps the greatest of the prophets. Even so, quoting from the prophet Malachi, the writer suggests that John’s role was that of a forerunner or messenger, one who prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah, now known to be Jesus.

The second question in this passage is the question of what kind of Messiah Jesus actually was. During Jesus’ lifetime, many Jews had expected God’s anointed one to be a military leader, a “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” i.e.., another David who would free them from the Roman yoke. From their experience of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection, the early church gained a new understanding of God’s Anointed One. Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples reflects that new understanding. Notice that the gospel writer does not have Jesus answer their query directly. Rather, Jesus asks John’s disciples to look around them, see with their own eyes, and draw their own conclusions as to his identity. Then he alludes to the prophet Isaiah. He indirectly claims the Messiah’s mantle by suggesting that, because of him, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” To drive home his point, he tells them that all who understand this new definition of God’s anointed one will be blessed.

And the third question in this passage is an implied question: is it all right to have questions and doubts? The answer? Absolutely! John must surely have had questions about Jesus’ identity. The earliest followers of Jesus struggled for several centuries to come to terms with the impact of his life, death, and resurrection. Ever since, underneath social coercion to conform to the church, thoughtful, serious Christians have struggled with faith, have struggled with the nature of Jesus’ identity, have struggled with who God is, how to trust God, and how to love their neighbors. Having doubts and asking questions are part of the natural cycle of faith. In the end, struggling with questions is the only way to grow spiritually. If you are too content, you may be stagnating spiritually.

The value of struggling with questions is as true for the church as it is for individual Christians. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Oxford movement within the Anglican Church struggled with reappropriating the liturgies, vestments, paraments, and icons of the pre-reformation church. Later on in the century, churches struggled with the call to support overseas missions. The mid-twentieth century brought us questions of liturgical renewal, the role of women, and the inequities faced by racial and ethnic minorities. Today, we struggle with the fate of our institutions, even as the church seems to be breaking out in new forms of witness and mission.

Fortunately, for us, we are in the right place to ask all kinds of faith questions. The Anglican Church has never been a confessional church. Lutherans, for example, are expected to subscribe to the twenty-eight faith statements of the Augsburg Confession. Presbyterians and other members of Reformed Churches subscribe to the Westminster Confession. Anglicans and Episcopalians have no such confessions. Anglicans and Episcopalians are not expected to hew solidly to certain theological perspectives. What about the Nicene Creed, the affirmation of faith that we recite in our liturgy, you may ask. Agreed upon in the fourth century, the creed is the normative statement of faith for the whole church. Whether any individual understands or even accepts every word of it is another matter. Whether, if we were creating a creed today, we would make exactly the same statements as the Nicene Creed is also an open question. The point is that we are part of a church that welcomes questions. I love the title of a Forward Movement pamphlet: “The Episcopal Church: A Faith for Thinking People.” My friends, that is who all of us are.

So what keeps us grounded as Christians? How do we keep growing and evolving in our understanding of who God is? What do we do when we wonder, “Are you the One?” Anglican spirituality is essentially liturgical. It is grounded in worship and fulfilled in worship. More to the point, Anglican spirituality is grounded in a life shaped by Scripture and mediated to us through the cycles of the liturgical year. Think about it. Day by day, if you read Morning or Evening prayer, or even the Forward Movement meditations, you encounter two or three lessons from Scripture. And not just any random Scripture, but Scripture that is chosen to help us hear a vast part of the Word of God in a logical, orderly way. Similarly, week by week, in the Eucharist, we hear four readings from Scripture, again artfully chosen to enable us to understand who Jesus is and what the good news is.

More to the point, our pattern of readings has remained largely the same for nearly a millennium. If you look at the Epistle and Gospel readings for Advent, for example, you will find that they are the same readings that were used not only in the medieval English church but also in a lectionary that goes back to the fifth century. Each of our texts reflects on the other, and all are chosen to help us deepen our understanding of the one in whom we have put our trust. Anglican reformers saw no need to change the ancient pattern; they only wanted us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Scriptures, so that we would be able to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope” which we have in Jesus Christ. As Anglicans, we grow spiritually as we hear and meditate on that proclamation year by year. In truth, we never hear the same Scripture twice, i.e., every time we hear a passage from Scripture it speaks to us afresh. As we mature as Christians, we ask questions, we ponder, chew, and hopefully grow in our understanding.

I invite you to reflect on your own understanding of Jesus and his importance in your life. Are you too asking John the Baptist’s question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Did you begin as a young person with clear ideas about God, Jesus, and the church? What changes have taken place in your understanding of God or Jesus? Do you wonder what you really believe? If pressed against a wall and asked to defend your faith, could you do it? Are you here in church because you think you should be here, or because you really trust God’s faithfulness and want to commit your life to Jesus? How does the way you live reflect your commitment to Jesus? In this time of waiting and expectation, as we prepare once again to ponder the mystery of the Word moving into our neighborhood, you would do well to find a few moments of quiet and meditate on these questions.

My friends, this is good news: it’s always OK to ask John the Baptist’s question. We will rarely get a straight answer to the question. Just like he did with John’s disciples, Jesus will ask us to look around and see the evidence for his presence among us. When we do arrive at some answer, it will always be temporary and tentative, and it will reflect only the next stage in our growth as disciples. But every time we ask that question – “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” – we can be assured that our questions are, in the end, God-given and will eventually lead us deeper into the heart of God.