"A God Out Of Control"

I have probably told this story before, but it is one of my favorites. A little girl had asked her mother if God was everywhere. The mother confirmed that God was indeed everywhere. The girl wanted to know if God is in the room at that very moment. Yes, the mother said, God was in the room at that very moment. The little girl pointed to an open box on the table and asked, "Mommy, is God even in that box?" "Yes," the mother concurred, "God is even in that box." With that, the little girl clamped the lid tightly over the box and exclaimed, "There! Now we have God in our own box!"

Something I was thinking about as I was wrapping Christmas presents this year -- I wonder how many of us have tried to put God in our own box?

The Hebrew people were expecting the Messiah to return and it could be at any moment. The Messiah would be called "Christ," the anointed one, and would be the one who would re-establish the Hebrew people as a nation independent from the rule of any other nation.

The "anointed one" was primarily the title given to the ruler of the Hebrew people (1). What exactly this Messiah was going to do to accomplish this was debatable. Was the Messiah coming to bring peace or war? Was the Messiah going to establish a kingdom in this life or in the life beyond? Was the Messiah going to be political or spiritual? Or is the Messiah going to be the One where all of these things, even though they appear to be opposites, would somehow come true?

Regardless of who the Messiah was or what the Messiah was going to do once he arrived, all the Hebrews were living in expectation that the Messiah would come and fulfill their hopes and dreams.

The expectation of the Messiah would be heightened when the forerunner of the Messiah appeared. Before the messiah would arrive, there would be one who would proclaim that the "anointed one" was coming.

Isaiah, the prophet, spoke of such a forerunner. "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord.'" Before a king made his way to visit among his subjects, the subjects were expected to "roll out the red carpet" for his arrival. Part of this was to prepare a straight path for as smooth an arrival as possible. Roads would often be found in a terrible state of disrepair. Potholes would have to filled. Debris that had mounded up would have to be removed. If it was considered too inconvenient to go up or down a steep incline, then a way would be made around such obstacles. Whatever could be done to straighten out the road and get it put in good order was done.

The forerunner arrived far enough in advance of the king as to give the people ample opportunity to get out and get the straightening accomplished. Mind you, they didn't have forever, but they had sufficient time to get the job done. There was no time to waste once the forerunner cried out that the anointed one was coming. This, too, would add to the sense of urgency and expectation.

Some believed Elijah was going be the forerunner for the Messiah. According to the Bible record, Elijah did not die but was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, separated from his follower Elisha by a chariot and horses made of fire (2 Kings 2:11). Elijah therefore did not die like other mortals, and so it was believed that he would return as the forerunner to the Messiah 's arrival (Mic. 4:5).

Elijah was expected to settle the disputes of the people before the Messiah came. He would be able to separate the good from the evil, the clean and the unclean. He would also be able to mend the brokenness experienced among the families who were alienated from one another. This would be yet another way the forerunner Elijah would straighten things out before the Messiah arrived.

Some others believed the forerunner to the Messiah would be one more generically referred to as 'The Prophet." Prophets are people who tell God' s truth regardless of the consequences. They may even behave in peculiar manners in order to better illustrate and bring across their message from God.

The Hebrew people had had many prophets, although at the time of Jesus and John there had been no prophets for hundreds of years. Some expected that the prophet who would act as forerunner would be Isaiah or Jeremiah. It was based on Moses promise to the Hebrew people in the book of Deuteronomy (18:15): "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet."

Whoever "The Prophet" was to be, he was expected to be the Prophet of prophets, the greatest prophet who would ever live.

When John the Baptist arrived on the scene, there were rumors going around that he was the Messiah or that he was Elijah returned or that he was the prophesied greatest Prophet of all time.

John denied all those claims. In fact, the gospel of John emphasizes his disclaimer about not being the Messiah: "He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, 'I am not the Messiah.'"

The religious leaders who had asked John who he was and John never really gave them a straight answer. He told his questioners that he was not the Messiah, not Elijah nor the Prophet. If all we had was the gospel of John, we would know very little about John the Baptist. The gospel of John says nothing about John the Baptist's mannerisms, diet, or dress code. We are not even told that John is called "the Baptist." Who John the Baptist is - his status, his identity, his personality - receives no attention in the gospel of John. This gospel, I believe, reflects more what John the Baptist wanted to emphasize himself: the message is more important than the messenger.

John's identity was of such no account that he would not say who he was other than a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. He was merely a voice crying out in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord. He was so unworthy that he was not worthy of untying the sandal of the one for who he was preparing the way. That was about as lowly a job as a slave could have, bending down to untie shoe leather that had been dragged through mud and who knows what else. But, John admits, he was not even worthy to do that much.

This shirking of his identity must have been maddening for the religious leaders. Your identity determines what authority you have. For John, that did not matter. He was baptizing with water, and that was that. The religious leaders were so worried about control. We do the same kind of thing. If we can find out who a person is and what they are doing with their time, then we feel we have some kind of control over them. If we can put them in some kind of box or put some kind of label on them, then we can either listen or ignore them as we deem appropriate. For example, we might say, "Oh, you are a liberal" or "Oh, you are a conservative," and depending on our perspective, we think someone else who thinks differently has nothing worthy of being said. I am sure you could think of ways that you label people and ways in which you have been labeled. Most of us know how it feels for someone to put us in a box, yet we continue doing it to others anyway.

Instead of really listening to what is being said by someone we have labeled, we shrug them off and explain them away as "well, you know how they are." If we think we can put people in a box, then we can close the lid on them any time we want. With the lid closed, maybe the voices will be too muffled to even notice. That's what the religious leaders were trying to do to John the Baptist. But he would have none of it.

Instead he turns it around on them. These religious leaders who thought they were so smart and thought they knew all there was to know about whom should be controlled how, to them John responded, "Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me." (John 1:26-27)

In other words, the Messiah, the "anointed one" for whom they had searched for so long, was standing right there among them and they didn't even know it. It was John's way of saying, "Duh!"

If they thought they had no luck putting John the Baptist in a box, just wait until they get a load of the one who was coming after him. The Messiah they were expecting was not whom they were expecting. Surprise! Wake up! Stop trying to put God in a box because it doesn't work.

John himself was not even sure of the identity of the one who was coming after him. Even when Jesus was known to many and John had been put into prison, John had sent a message to Jesus asking, "Are you the one or should we look for another?" (Luke 7:20)

The Messiah continues to amaze us because he does so many unexpected things. Even when God became human, the box of flesh and bones could not contain the wonder of him. A God who so loved the world that he came Himself so that we might be saved.

I like what Barbara Brown Taylor wrote:

"We are given this passage on the Third Sunday of Advent because we still need John's testimony to the light. While we are waiting .we can use John's reminder that none of us ever knows exactly whom we are waiting for either, and that we need not be ashamed of that. It is a good thing, not a bad thing, to surrender ourselves to a love we cannot predict or control, especially during this season when we look forward to holding him in our arms. He will allow us to do that, but only on the condition that we understand we can never possess him, not entirely.

In the end, it is he who puts his arms around us. No religion can contain him. No church can box him in. But oh, can we worship him. We can worship him until the light is all we see."






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