Already Not Yet
How do I share with you the mystery of Advent? I struggle with that question every week. How do I share with you the mystery of Advent? You see, we take so much for granted… we who look at Advent backwards through the cross and the resurrection … we who look at history backward from a world where Christianity has spread to every part of the globe. We already know the answers. We already know what is coming… what has come. It’s like reading the last chapter of the book before you start reading at the beginning. You know how the story ends… so how can I show you the mystery of its beginning? How can I bring you a word picture so powerful that Advent becomes …for you…a season of eager anticipation, instead of one of stepping through the same old routines?
When I lived in Chicago, the one thing that I always tried to do at Christmastime was to go downtown to Marshall Fields and to walk around the outside of that mecca of Christmas shoppers… one entire block of Chicago’s Loop… and look at the magical scenes of Christmas that were in the store windows. Each window was a glimpse into another world… a world of wonder… a world of joy… and world of eager anticipation of one special day… of Christmas. That was the way I tried to start my Advent season… with a new perspective… a new picture… of the same old story. How is it that we get so jaded by Christmas that we fail to pause in wonder at the tiny, vulnerable child lying in a manger… that we fail to gasp with astonished pleasure at the angels singing heavenly choruses of praise to God for an audience of poor, scruffy shepherds in a field late at night… that we fail to ask why God would choose this universe…this world…the tiny town of Bethlehem…2,000 years ago to come and live among us.
John the Baptist had a job to do… to prepare the way for the One who would come after him. So, how do you talk to Pharisees about the Messiah… especially if you are not a scholar, but an outdoorsman… a man more in tune with nature than with people? Think about it. John knew it would be difficult, but he also knew that God would help him… that God would give him the words to say. After all, he was a man sent by God to do this. Now, notice that the Pharisees did not even come to see him themselves. They sent the priests and Levites to see him. The priests and the Levites wanted to know what authority John had to speak of these things. So, they asked him who he was.
Interesting… “Who are you?” In a world where movies, television, cable, and video games allow the average person to escape into a fantasy world for hours… in a world where famous people are almost never who they say they are… for they have all adopted a screen name with more cachet than the name they were given at birth... in a world where identity theft is the fastest growing crime… we would all expect John the Baptist to claim a superhuman identity. After all, his birth was also foretold by an angel… and, from birth, he knew that he was set apart by God for a great task. But, although he had every right to lay claim to greatness, his first act was to confess… not just to say it, but to confess… that he was not the Messiah. His denial was emphatic.
Then, who are you? Elijah? The prophet? No. Who are you? “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord.” “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord.” Not good enough. More questions. “Why are you baptizing if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? Well, that one is easier to answer: “I baptize with water… but among you stands one you do not know, the one who is coming after me. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” Whoa! How they must have stopped and stared at him at that statement! What was he saying? What did he mean? What were they going to tell the Pharisees? “I baptize with water… but among you stands one you do not know, the one who is coming after me. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
There are two things that you need to know about that sentence. First of all, the phrase, “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” Sandals worn in ancient Palestine were open to all the dust and debris that people might walk through during the day. Streets were not paved. There were no sidewalks. There was no effective sewage system… nor any significant garbage collection. Whatever was left on the ground, people walked through as they moved from place to place. Dirt, dust, rubble, rubbish, discarded food, excrement… anything you can think of that might have fallen along the road or in the fields where people worked. People’s feet were so dirty and their sandals so disgusting that Rabbinic writings of Jesus’ time instruct the students… the disciples of any Rabbinic teacher… that they should do everything for their teacher that a slave would do, with the exception of undoing their sandals. It was beneath them. Yet, here John turns that dictum on its head, claiming that he is not even worthy to untie the thong of this man’s sandal! He must be talking about a great, great teacher… a great man… the One who is coming… must be greater than any human in the Roman Empire. “Among you stands one you do not know, one who is coming after me. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
The second phrase that I want to draw your attention to is the phrase, “among you stands one you do not know.” At first glance, we would all believe that John is speaking of the carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth, a thirty-year-old man, who is living in the area, but not yet, perhaps, known to the priests, the Levites, nor the Pharisees. But the verb form, carefully chosen by John… or, perhaps, given to John by God… makes the word “stands” a perfect verb… indicating that this man not only stands among them in the present, but has always been standing among them and will always be standing among them. It is a verb of continuous action. “Among you stands one you do not know”… one who has always been standing among you… and will always stand among you… and you do not know him. I wonder how many of the priests and Levites questioned John’s use of that form of the verb. Did they think that he made a mistake and that, in his uneducated ignorance, had used the wrong verb tense? How many of them, do you think, really understood what he meant when he said, “among you stands one you do not know?” How many of us understand it?
We are waiting for Jesus to come… our Savior… our Messiah. He has not yet come… and yet, John is telling us something different. We are waiting for the One who comes, but the One who comes is already here. Already…but not yet. The One who comes is the One who already came… and the One who will come again… but do we recognize that this is also the One who now stands among us… and we do not know him. “Among you stands one you do not know”… one who has always been standing among you… and will always stand among you… and you do not know him.” For the priests and the Levites who met with John that day, Jesus was someone that they did not know… that they would not know… until or unless he was revealed to them. They did not know… they would not know… they could not know that the carpenter from Nazareth was the Son of God. They would never know that the carpenter from Nazareth was the Son of God… unless that special knowledge about Jesus was revealed to them by God through faith… and, for many of them, it was never revealed. They never did “get it.”
But the message that this text has for us today is exactly the same as it was for them. Do you “get it?” Do you understand the mystery of Advent? “Among you stands one you do not know”… and he is One who has always been standing among you… and will always stand among you… and you do not know him. You, who think you know him, because you know the rest of the story… because you know how it all ends... you know that this One died and was resurrected… you know that Christianity has spread across the globe. Yes, you think you know him. “Among you stands one you do not know.” And it is not just today that he stands among you… and you do not know him. He has always stood among you… and you have never known him.
You see, what we are truly waiting for this Advent is not just the birth of a little baby in a manger… we are waiting for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to reveal himself to us… fully and without restraint… completely and without reservation… totally and without reserve. For unless and until our God chooses to reveal his glory… and his glorious plan… to us in the person of Jesus Christ… we remain ignorant and unaware of the One who stands among us… and has always stood among us.
And so we wait for Jesus to come… for Christ to come… for our Messiah to come… going through the motions of preparing for his birth… for his return. But how eagerly do we wait? How much do we yearn for his birth… his return… or are we beyond that now? Maybe it is just lip service… and we are not truly waiting at all… not truly expecting God to reveal Godself in Jesus Christ… at least, not to us… or, perhaps, not this Christmas. Maybe we have no great expectations… no real hope for something new in our lives… no joy… no anticipation… no excitement. Maybe we’re just tired… and we want it to be over… to be done with it. William Willimon, dean of the chapel at Duke University, once wrote, “Show me a person who is not waiting [for something more to come]… not yearning… not leaning forward… [not] standing on tiptoe for something better… and I will show you a person who has given up hope for anything better… someone who has settled down too comfortably in present arrangements. And that’s sad. The future belongs to those who wait… for those who know we are meant for something better. The present darkness is not our final destination.”
What about you? Where are you this Christmas? Do you know that there is One who stands among you… who has always stood among you... waiting to reveal himself to you… waiting for you to be prepared for his coming? How will you prepare to meet your Savior… your Messiah… your Redeemer? The One who is already… but not yet here. Amen.
John 1:6-8, 19-28