Last Sunday we heard Saint Matthew’s report of the days when John the Baptist was at the pinnacle of his oratory power and influence.  Oh, they were exciting days!  They were days when everyone simply knew that the prophetic promises were about to be fulfilled.  John was the rumble of God’s thunder foretold by Isaiah -- “the voice of one crying in the wilderness:  Prepare the way of the Lord”; . . . John was the rumble of God’s thunder, . . . but as John himself said,

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming . . . is mightier than I . . . he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  . . . he will . . . gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff [the heathen and profane and unfaithful; . . . the chaff] he will burn with unquenchable fire.

John was the rumble of God’s thunder, but when he baptized Jesus, he knew that God’s lightning had arrived.  God’s lightning had come in fulfillment of the prophesy of Isaiah such as you have heard today:

Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.  He will come and save you.  . . . And the ransomed of the Lord . . . shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

    . . . But in the Gospel appointed for today . . . it is some months after those days when John was at the zenith of his influence.  . . . Now he is the prisoner of a profane and lecherous king, . . . and there is still no fire; . . . nor any particular cause for joy; . . . neither has the sorrow of God’s People fled away.  Certainly John’s hasn’t, because in his dungeon cell John hears report of Jesus, Whom he heralded as God’s Mighty One; . . . John hears report of Jesus going around telling stories, of all things; . . . Jesus is going around telling stories, eating with the very chaff He should be burning, and talking about how meekness shall inherit the earth!  . . . And so, John sends to Jesus a rather petulant message:  “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?”  . . . John says, in effect, “Are you God’s vengeance?  If you are, then stop horsing around and get to work; the people need you to act!”

    So, Jesus sends back to John a very serious reply.  Pointedly quoting the portion of Isaiah’s prophesy which you have heard today, Jesus says to John’s messengers,  “Tell John exactly what you see and hear; . . . tell him that the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”  And then the smile fades from Christ’s face, and He publicly chastises God’s prophet, . . . warning John that his very soul is in peril, saying “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”   . . . Blessed is the one who does not become impatient with God’s mercy.

    And then . . . as John’s disciples are walking back to the place of John’s imprisonment with the Teacher’s strong words, . . . Jesus preaches a sermon on the very subject of being patient with God.  . . . Jesus asks His hearers, . . . “When you went out into the wilderness some months back, . . . did you go out on a nature hike, . . . to see shaking reeds, perhaps, or to feed the duckies?  No?  Was it to see something more unusual than nature, . . . perhaps a fashion model?  Not likely.  Then why did you go out into the wilderness?  To see and hear the tremendous thing that God is doing for His People?  To see and hear God’s Prophet?  Yes!  . . . Of all the people of history there is none greater than John the Baptist.  . . . And yet, the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven . . . is greater than John.”

    Isn’t that an astonishing thing to preach?  Jesus says that whoever is the most unskillful, untalented, unmusical lump of a person in God’s kingdom; whoever is the least useful to God’s holy purposes . . . is still greater than John the Baptist.  . . . What do you think Jesus is trying to tell us in saying such a thing?  What do you think Jesus means when He says, . . . whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist?  . . . Well, perhaps I can explain it by telling you about something which Jesus did not say.  I heard it said when I attended a diaconal ordination some years back.  In the course of exhorting his newly ordained deacons, the consecrating bishop quoted Henry Kissinger quoting a French diplomat, who said that “a person can be . . . or a person can do.”  . . . And I listened in disbelief while the bishop went on to apply Mr. Kissinger’s borrowed philosophy to the diaconal ministry by asserting that deacons do the servant ministry of the Church.  … I don’t know what Henry Kissinger and his diplomat friend were talking about when they drew a distinction between being and doing, . . . but what that bishop doesn’t seem to understand is that in order to truly do a servant’s ministry . . . you must be a servant.  . . . And that’s what Jesus is getting at in His saying about John.  . . . The work of a prophet is a wonderful thing, . . . but the Word of the prophet is not his; . . . it is God’s.  And the work of the Word is to make each of you and all of us together; . . . the work of God’s most holy and sacred Word is to make us more than a prophet; the work of God’s Word is to call each of us into being.  . . . You have been called by God’s Word to be children of light:  sons and daughters of God.  And so, with John’s petulance before Him, . . . Jesus exhorts us not to become impatient with God’s mercy.  . . . Jesus exhorts us to be children of light and not go into the dark recesses of second-guessing the Lord God Almighty by instructing Him what He must do, and by being offended when He does not do it.

    David Adam, the Vicar of Saint Mary’s Church on Lindisfarne Island off the East coast of Northern England; . . . David Adam has written that

It is a pity that the Church seems to have stopped using the Advent season as a time to look at the ‘Last Things’.  . . . Some things are certain and ought to be faced:  at least at some point in the church year . . . we should be made to face the ultimate realities.  By tradition, the preaching in Advent was on the Four Last Things:  Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.  Only one of them can be avoided and it must be one of the last two.  (The Cry of the Deer, London:Triangle/SPCK, 1987, p. 66)

You can avoid Hell . . . or you can avoid Heaven.  And in the Last Day, at the culmination of History, it is Christ Who shall judge which you have successfully avoided.  . . . And so, on this third Sunday of Advent Season we remember what Jesus has said about being patient with God’s mercy.  We remember Saint James’ counsel as well:  “Be patient . . . [d]o not grumble, brethren, . . . that you may not be judged.”

    I told you last Sunday that in all likelihood you will die, . . . but that God’s Holy Spirit, bestowed upon you at your Baptism; God’s Holy Spirit gives you Wisdom and Understanding and Counsel and Might and Knowledge and Holy Fear.  And the purpose of these gifts of the Spirit is so that before you die you might become what God’s Word desires to make of you; . . . so that you might understand and know the Wisdom of Christ’s counsel, “blessed is he who takes no offense at me;” . . . so that, in the end, you might be judged, by your patience, to be a child of God; . . . so that you might be judged, by your patience, to be a child of God and worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.