“Joy Even So”
December 21, 2025
Matthew 11:2-11
St. Paul AME Church, Manchester, KY
David A. Shirey
When she was a little girl, our daughter Betsy came home from church one Sunday with a Sunday School craft special of the construction paper and Elmer’s glue variety. We smiled, said it was really nice, and asked her, “Who is it?” “Johnna-Battist” was her answer. We’ve kept ‘ol John for thirty years. He spends the year in one of the boxes in our garage marked Christmas. When we brought those boxes into the house a couple weeks ago he made his annual appearance. Jennie found him among the ornaments and lights and hoisted him to his perch in the upper boughs of our Christmas tree.
But who wants a guy perched at the top of their Christmas tree shouting, “Repent, you brood of vipers!” John the Baptist doesn’t belong there, does he? Yes, he does! And I’ll tell you why: he’s an angel. He may not look like an angel with the camel’s hair clothing, the leather belt around his waist, and munching on locusts and honey. But biblically speaking John the Baptist is an angel. I say that because John is a messenger of the Lord and since the word for “messenger” in Greek is angelos, that makes John an angel. John the Baptist – Messenger Angel – has a place in our Advent journey to Bethlehem.
Someone might ask, but does he have to make his appearance today? It’s the third Sunday of Advent – Joy Sunday. And John’s in jail. An angel in jail on Joy Sunday? Say it ain’t so! And an anguished angel to boot. He’s anguished because at the Jordan John boldly proclaimed the coming of the Christ with confident expectation, saying things like, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight” and “The one who comes after me is more powerful than me. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals” and “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:3,11). But John isn’t at the Jordan today. He’s in jail. And the tone of his voice has changed from boldly proclaiming the One who is to come to openly questioning the one who came: “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” An anguished angel in a prison cell second-guessing his life’s work. Is this a scripture for Joy Sunday? What happened to John between the Jordan and the jail cell that he should ask such a thing?
I’ll tell you what has happened. Nothing. Nothing went the way John thought it would. In Barbara Brown Taylor’s words: “The Messiah was supposed to change things… He was supposed to come with a sharp ax, with a gleaming pitchfork, and separate the good guys from the bad guys once and for all. He was supposed to clean up the world, so that people like Herod were no longer in power and people like John were no longer in prison…[1] But “the one who is to come” came and he came in a way that was not as advertised by John. John prophesied an ax-wielding, fire-breathing divine avenger who would come in overpowering might to make things right. But who came? A babe in a manger who grew up not a fire-breathing prophet (“Repent you brood of vipers!”) but a beatitude-speaking carpenter’s son (“Blessed are the meek”). Nothing went the way John thought it would. Now he sits in a Roman prison cell and nothing seems to have changed. So he asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
The word is disillusioned. You fervently hoped and believed in someone and they failed to meet your expectations. Is there anyone here who has never experienced disillusionment, disappointment, the feeling of being let down? I remember a retired pastor at the church Jennie and I served in NC. Milton was pastorally sensitive, theologically grounded, intellectually astute, socially conscious, justice minded. But in the years following his retirement he first lost his wife to a brain tumor, then lost his confidence in the capacity of human beings to effect significant social change, then lost his faith to boot. I used to pick him up from his apartment and take him to Hardee’s on Friday mornings for a biscuit and cup of coffee. He’d unwrap his biscuit, break it open, and scrape all the bread out with a coffee stirrer, leaving only the golden brown crust to eat. “David,” he said one day over the communion of coffee and crust, “I don't believe any more. The good die young. The wicked prosper. No good deed goes unpunished. With every cause I gave myself to, it was two steps forward and three steps back.” He wasn’t interested in looking for another. He said he was too old. He’d seen enough. I’m talking about disillusionment. Milton’s. John the Baptist’s. Anyone who has ever put their hopes in anybody or anything and that person or institution or belief system failed them.
I will say this: sometimes disillusionment is a good thing. Look at the word: dis illusion – to have an illusion dis-missed. Literally speaking, to be disillusioned is to realize “What I founded my belief on was an illusion.” But part of growing up, of maturing, is to shed whatever illusions we may have, painful as that may be, so that our lives and our beliefs will be rooted in the truth and not illusions. George Buttrick, a great Presbyterian pastor of the previous century and father of my preaching professor, David Buttrick, recalled that students would come into his office, plop down in a chair and declare, “I don’t believe in God.” To which Buttrick would reply: “Tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.”[2]
There are beliefs about God that are illusions that ought to be dismissed:
That God is a Santa who exists to give presents to all his good girls and boys or
God is the Lone Ranger who gallops in at the nick of time to save the innocent and punish the guilty or
God is the genie who, when you rub the lamp, you get three prayers answered or
God will come in a fireball to wreak holy vengeance on my God’s enemies.
I could go on. Those are all illusions. Look for another God.
I don't know what you’re expecting this Advent in terms of the one who is to come, but at some point you’ll have to square your expectations with the one who came. Contrary to John’s proclamation, Jesus didn’t come with an axe and fiery blowtorch ready, as one of my friends said, “to go Rambo on the Romans.” He didn’t come, snap his fingers, and voila! make everything right and everybody healthy, wealthy, and wise. Rather, the one who came ate with tax collectors and sinners. He taught and lived nonviolence. Urged forgiveness. Prayed for his enemies. Said “the meek will inherit the earth.” Was betrayed by one of his own, suffered, died on a cross and was ridiculed for it by those who said in so many words, “Hey if you are the one who is to come, come down from there! If you’re the one who is to come, call out to the one who sent you for help.” And what happened? Nothing. And when he was raised on the third day and came back from the dead, did he go first thing to Pilate, to Caiaphus, to the soldiers who beat him to settle the score? I’m baaaack. No the one who came and the one who came back from death to life came not to wreak vengeance on his persecutors but to equip his followers to be his witnesses so that we might do as he did in the way did until he comes again. I don't know what you’re expecting this Advent in terms of the one who is to come, but at some point you’ll have to square your expectations with the one who came. He leaves it up to us to decide if he “is the one who is to come” or not.
John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to look for another?” And Jesus answers, “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.” What’s it mean “to take no offense” at Jesus? I think it means not being offended that Jesus didn’t come as the fire-breathing, axe-swinging, roaring lion that John prophesied and who we may want to sic on our enemies but rather as a lamb who was slain seeking the reconciliation and redemption of everyone and everything. I think it means not being offended that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s timeline for the salvation and redemption of this world is different than ours. I don’t know about you, but I wish God would ask me how to straighten things up. Appoint me Deputy Sheriff of the Universe for a day or a term or two and I’d make things right real fast. To which Jesus says, “Tell David Shirey, blessed are they who take no offense at me and are willing to trust God will make things right in God’s way in God’s time."
Let me ask you a question: with John the Baptist’s death imminent (He is beheaded three chapters later), did he die believing that Jesus was in fact “the one?” The Bible doesn’t tell us. Was he able to “take no offense” at this one who came and did not set him free from his captors and did not deliver him from death? Was he able to believe in him as the Lord of Life even so? Because I know someone who was able not only to believe despite circumstances to the contrary but to be joyful even so. Thirty-seven Advents ago I was pastor of a church in St. Louis. Don was a member of my church. He was a retired pastor. A dear friend and mentor. A lifelong bachelor. Don was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the late summer of ’88 and come Advent he was rail thin. Jaundiced. Dying.
Our worship committee chose folks to light the Advent Wreath. When they handed me the list, I looked at it and said, “What! You asked Don to light the candle on the Advent Wreath on the Third Sunday of Advent? That’s the joy candle. Don’s dying. What were you thinking?”
They said, “He said he’d do it.”
I said, “I’ll go by and talk to him.”
There was nothing to talk about. “David,” he said, “I know it’s the joy candle. That’s the one I want to light.”
I’ll never forget Don coming down the center aisle as we sang the opening hymn, bearing the candle lighter as he processed. As he reached the front of the sanctuary, his back to the congregation but his face toward where I stood on the chancel, the flame from the candle lighter bathed his jaundiced face in a soft glow. What I remember was the look on his face – a “peace that passes understanding.” A deep, fierce, faith. A clear and present joy.
I did his funeral fifty days later. At Don’s request, the service began with “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and ended with our standing and singing “Joy to the World the Lord is Come.”
Given how Don’s life ended, too early, suffering so, how was he able to be joyful even so? The answer of course is he was convinced Jesus was the one who is to come. He believed Jesus came and will come again and accomplish God’s purposes in God’s time in God’s way and that his life, Don’s life, will be swept up, lifted up, raised up, healed up, and filled up and this whole world and all creation will be made right finally and forever.
He’s the one!
You don’t have to look for another
There is cause for joy.
Defy the darkness. Light a candle and bask in its light.
God’s gonna pull it off!
God’s gonna do it in God’s way in God’s time.
Take no offense. Rather, take heart.
He’s the one!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
Joy. Joy. Despite all else, joy even so!
Let all God’s people say with Don and John AMEN
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain, “The Gift of Disillusionment,” p. 18.
[2] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
