In our journey through the gospel of Luke thus far, John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth have been put side by side many times. Let me remind you of a few places:

• Both John and Jesus were prophesied about before they were ever born, and had angels speak to their mothers. Their mothers were in fact relatives.
  
  
• Both had miracles attesting to their arrival…John’s father made speechless.
  
  
• Jesus’ mother was pregnant though she was a virgin.
  
  
• At roughly the same time, both John and Jesus began to attract attention, as well as disciples who followed them.
  
  
• John baptized, and Jesus went to be baptized.
  
  
• John the Baptist talked of a Messiah to come, someone far more powerful than he was.
  
  
• Jesus was called Savior, Lord…and Messiah.

In our reading last week, we had two short stories from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: Jesus healed a centurion’s servant, and then resuscitated a widow’s dead son.

In today’s reading, John the Baptist who stands like a strong oak at the end of the Old Testament, and Jesus who inaugurates the New…are side by side once again.

I don’t know about you, but John the Baptist has totally endeared himself to me here. He can’t come to see Jesus himself (chapter 3 says he was put in jail, as does Matthew), so he sends his followers to ask the question:

“Are you the one who is to come?
Or do we wait longer?”

It must have been an important question, because the writer Luke repeats it again…John’s followers get to Jesus and they dutifully say,

John says, “are you the one who is to come? Or do we wait longer?”

He just has to know. I suspect that if the answer came back “More waiting,” John would have just sighed (or maybe spit) and said “Okay,” and gone about hoping he could get out of jail and go back to the baptizing business. “I just have to know.”

I love an honest question. No beating around the bush, just the plain question. Let’s put it on the table and deal with it.

I love it when a child says, “Dad, are you going to be gone again?” No hidden agenda. They just need to know.

I love it when someone prays honest prayers and says, “God, do you want me to do this or not?” They just need to know.

[I used to think really wise people had all the right answers. Now I wonder if the really wise are the ones that ask the right questions.]

I love it when the prophet Isaiah heeds God’s call for volunteers. Isaiah says yes to acting as God’s mouthpiece, and eagerly says, “Send me, God, I’ll go!” But when he hears the full weight of the job, when he understands that people usually don’t like prophets, and most often pay no attention to them…his first question is: How long, God, how long do I have to do this?? Just needs to know.

I love it when the Psalmist prays (in Psalm 94),

“How long are you going to let the wicked win?”

Sometimes we think of the Psalmist praying eloquently, like

“Oh, God, I thank thee that thou in your infinite wisdom have chosen to do things we mere mortals cannot understand to prove how infinitely distant you are from us, and that apparently in your great understanding you may sometimes allow evil to win for the betterment of all of us…”

No. “How long will you keep letting the wicked win?”

He just needs to know. John the Baptist had to know. He’d heard all of these stories about him and Jesus his whole life. The family photo albums are there, at family picnics in the summer people still talk about their infancy, how they were both such unique births.

John knew someone was coming, a Messiah was coming, the world was changing…but I suspect even John didn’t quite get it all. The world wasn’t changing fast enough. There was still oppression, still an occupying army, still injustice, still sin.

Wouldn’t the coming of a Messiah change all of that? So if the Messiah had come, why were things not changed? And yet…he kept hearing stories. Stories like [last week’s], a centurion’s servant healed from a distance, stories like a widow’s son raised from the dead. Remarkable stories. But is it enough?

“Lord, are you the one?”

One night nearly fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. sat at his kitchen table at midnight, by himself. He was just 26 years old. His wife and infant daughter were asleep. He had just been surprisingly elected to head up the young civil rights movement that had started in Montgomery, Alabama. Already, things had begun to turn ugly.

He had been arrested and thrown in jail…for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. And even as he sat at that table, his phone rang…and the ugly voice on the other end spoke horrible racist threats against him and his family if they didn’t disappear within 3 days. He hung up the phone and sat down again. This is what he said:

“And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep…and I got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I was weak…And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it….I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage.”

He was crying out a question:

“Lord, are you the One?
Are you the One who will be in this with me…or not?
I just hafta know.”

I love an honest question. I love a penetrating question that cuts through all the muck. And I suspect that God likes honest questions. I think God can deal with honest questions better than he can with dishonest answers. I think when we ask honest questions…we get answers. Not always the answer we expect, but answers. Maybe we’re just in better position to hear.

“Are you the one who is to come?,” they asked Jesus.

Go tell John what you have seen and heard: blind receive sight, lame walk, lepers are clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.

What John is going to have to figure out now is…if the Messiah came, would he make all of the structures and ills of the world miraculously disappear? If the Messiah came, would he look similar to the world’s rulers, but more powerful? Or could he possibly look like Jesus, introducing glimpses of a kingdom where blind people see, crippled people dance and the poor are given seats of honor in the kingdom of God?

Good Lord…even John the Baptist might have to rethink his expectations of what the kingdom looked like!

And blessed, Jesus says, is the one who does not stumble on account of me.

Lord, are you the One? Martin Luther King sat at that coffee table, admitting his weakness to God. And here’s what he said later:

“…it seemed to me at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” … I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. (and the famous part that I love so much:) He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

John the Baptist got his answer, maybe not the one he expected: Tell John what you’ve seen and heard. Martin Luther King Jr. got his answer, maybe not the one he expected: I will be with you. They started with honest questions.

But there are other characters here besides just John and Jesus. Two groups, actually. One is “all the people including the tax collectors.” Those are the ones who heard Jesus, and acknowledged God’s hand in what he said. They are the ones, not coincidentally, who had been baptized by John, a baptism of repentance. There is clearly a connection between how we hear God, and the state of our hearts.

By and large, you’ll notice, this was not the “religious” group. They are the ones Luke repeatedly calls “poor,” the ones he repeatedly says are open to God.

The other group are the people who had not received John’s baptism, of whom it says “they had rejected God’s purpose for themselves.” They are the Pharisees and the lawyers (sorry to you attorneys…it says it right here, I didn’t make it up!).

More importantly, they are the religious ones, the ones that Luke will repeatedly call “rich.” Not just in possessions, but in power, and position…and repeatedly Luke will say, the ones closed to God. They are in fact, stuck. They can’t make up their minds. They are sitting on the fence.

You’ve had the experience of trying to hop over a fence. You put your hands up on the top, and then one foot up to the top of the fence (this is hard to do in a robe!). You pause for a moment to gather yourself for a big push that will get your other foot up on top, and then when you’re balanced on top you pause again. Sometimes the pause stretches on, because you’re deciding if this is really what you want to do. Is it safe on the other side? It suddenly looks much further down.

If you’re over 40 you say, “Will I hurt myself doing this?” (It reminds me…I still play basketball on Friday mornings with some of you mostly younger guys. When I was in my 20s and 30s I would leave to play ball and Anne would say, “Have fun!” Now that I’m in my 40s she says, “Don’t get hurt!”).

So there you are up on top. What you could do, I guess…is just park on top of the fence. That way you wouldn’t have to return where you started, nor risk dropping to the other side. You’re stuck, sitting on the fence.

The Religious folk were stuck. They didn’t want to go anywhere, even though the top of that little fence must have been a darned uncomfortable place to be. Didn’t want to follow John and his baptism of repentance. That would require they change and besides…he was too austere, nothing good to eat or drink, shouldn’t life have some joy and celebration? But neither would they follow Jesus. That would require change, and besides…he was too gluttonous, eating and drinking, shouldn’t life have some solemnity and self-denial? So they sat on top of the fence, a long way from God.

Jesus says, “This generation…here’s what you’re like. Like two bunches of kids. Nobody will play the others’ game. One group says, “When we played the flute, you were supposed to dance…you wouldn’t do it.”

The other group says “Yeah? Well, when we wailed, you were supposed to mourn like you were at a funeral…you wouldn’t do it.” And so they were both immobilized.

I don’t know exactly what this looks like today.

• “I can’t be seen as a Christian, because I don’t want to be lumped with those conservative Christians I see on late night TV.”
  
  
• “I won’t be visible as a Christian, because I don’t want to look like those liberal Christians I read about in the newspaper.”
  
  
• “I won’t become a Christian because I don’t have every single thing figured out about Christianity.”
  
  
• “I figured out this spirituality thing a long time ago, and it’s a nice, neat part of my life.”

But Jesus never asked to be a nice, neat part of anyone’s life. He came and died, so that we might have life. You don’t have to be an atheist to be sitting on the fence. These folks around Jesus were religious people, playing games. They were the religious people that didn’t want to move from where they were.

I don’t know where you find yourself this morning. You may have been a Christian for years and years now. Or you may be wondering if its time to give your life to Christ for the first time, and see what happens. But if you are sitting on some kind of fence, not really willing to do anything…it’s time to move off. My experience with Jesus is…He’s not going to leave you alone until you do. Never alone.

And if you are asking good, honest questions…I believe that God will meet you. “Jesus, are you the One? Are you the One who will help put my life back together? Are you the One who can make me stop hurting? Are you the One I’ve always waited for?

In Jesus Christ, God answers… And will never leave you alone. Never. No, he’ll never leave you alone. He will never, never leave you alone.

Let’s pray.

I think God can deal with honest questions better than he can with dishonest answers...