Jesus, the Unquenchable Light
A prayer from A New Zealand Prayer Book:
God faithful and true, make us eager with expectation, as we look for the fulfillment of your promise in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.1
On this third Sunday of Advent, we are past the midway mark on our Advent journey and our journey to Bethlehem. I don’t want to shock you, but if you count, we’re ten days away from Christmas Eve! More seriously, we hear in today’s gospel lesson a very different John the Baptist than the one we met last Sunday in the third chapter of Matthew. You may remember; it’s the first time John the Baptist appears on the scene in Matthew’s gospel. He’s baptizing people at the Jordan. He sees that the Sadducees and the Pharisees have come to be baptized, and in John’s wonderful way, he says, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” John the Baptist, often wrong, never in doubt. This is a self-confident, assured John the Baptist who is preaching repentance and judgment and talks about the ax at the root of the trees. And he speaks of the one coming essentially wielding a winnowing fork separating the wheat from the chaff and the chaff will be consumed by an unquenchable fire.
You remember that John the Baptist, right? Today, John’s in prison. He’s in prison because he called out King Herod for philandering with his sister-in-law—that got him in trouble. Scripture tells us that Herod actually wanted to kill John, but because he was recognized as a prophet, the king put him in prison instead. In those days, people in prison were tended by family and friends, and they were obviously bringing stories of what Jesus was up to and it doesn’t sound very much like that winnowing fork and the unquenchable fire. So, John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” John has his doubts about Jesus. Is he really the Messiah? He’s not behaving like John envisioned the Messiah would. Instead of the winnowing fork and the unquenchable fire, Jesus is wielding mercy and compassion and love. Yes, there’s judgment in there, but it’s not like an unquenchable fire. The truth is, Jesus is much more like an unquenchable light.
Listen to what Jesus says in response to the question. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus is quoting Isaiah in that response, and in so doing, he’s essentially saying, I’m fulfilling the prophecy, and that’s what my ministry looks like. Warren Carter put it this way: “Jesus uses Isaiah’s visions of God’s liberating empire to sum up his merciful mission among the marginalized. His miraculous actions anticipate the transformation and wholeness that God’s empire will bring.”2 Essentially, Jesus is performing the works of the predicted Messiah as told in Isaiah. But John is struggling, and while the scriptures are silent about the cause of his doubt, it’s fairly easy to surmise that he’s not understanding this vision of the Messiah. He imagined something quite different.
But Jesus knows who he is and knows what he’s called to do. And before we go too hard on John, if we’re really honest about it, don’t we wonder sometimes, don’t we get a little frustrated? Don’t we get impatient with the ways of God? Don’t we wish that God acted more proactively in punishing evil and that God was quicker to hear and act on our prayers, which are always about affirming the people that we like, and usually not the ones we disagree with? But Jesus comes again and again and again as the light in the darkness. They lived in dark and challenging times, just as we do—more shootings, war continues—you don’t need me to give you a list. You know it, you feel it, and you pray about it. I think if we reflect deeply on it, it’s often in the darkest of times that Jesus shows up—that unquenchable light.
This reminded me of a story that Anne Lamott tells in her book, Traveling Mercies.3 Lamott writes that she was at one of her lowest points. She was engaged in very self-destructive behavior: unhealthy relationships and addictions to drug and alcohol. One evening she was in a most deep and dark depressive state. She went to bed, turned the light off, and all of a sudden, she felt a really tangible presence, more tangible than her dog sleeping beside her. So, she turned on the light, looked around and although she didn’t see anything, she knew that Jesus was there crouched in a corner, seeking to embrace her with the love that surpasses all understanding. But she wasn’t ready to receive, so she flipped the light off.
Well, as she went about her week, this tangible presence kept following her everywhere she went. She describes it like a kitten nipping at her heels no matter where she went. On Sunday she went to church and she was still in a bad place. She knew the presence was sort of around, but all of a sudden, the presence was again so overwhelming she couldn’t escape it. She said she felt like a scared child in a loving embrace, and she finally gave into it. She raced home, kitten right alongside her. When she finally got to her door, well, she said an expletive, which I’m going to skip since we’re in church. Essentially, she said, “I quit. Alright, you can come in.” She finally let the light of Christ into her life, into her heart, and it changed everything. Everything. Jesus is like that: even in the darkest times, the light’s there, if we can only open ourselves to it and let it transform us and encourage us to do the things which God has called us to do.
Advent is a time of waiting and watching and expectation. It’s a time of preparing ourselves to welcome the Christ child once again into our hearts and our lives. Open the door, friends, let the light in and remember that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it. Jesus comes again and again and again as an unquenchable light.
Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
1 Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand, A New Zealand Prayer Book (NY: HarperOne, 1997), 554.
2 Walter J. Harrelson, ed, The New Interpreter’s Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), 1765.
3 Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York, NY: First Anchor Books Edition, 2000), 49-50.