Freeville/Homer Ave. UMC's - 3rd Sunday of Advent - 12/15/13 Sermon - “What will the Messiah look like?”

Sunday 12/15/13 Freeville/Homer Ave UMC’s

Sermon Title: “What will the Messiah look like?”

Old Testament Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 35:1-10

                                            

New Testament Scripture Lesson: James 5:7-10

Gospel Lesson: Mathew 11:2-11

                            

          Greetings and God bless on this snowy Third Sunday of the Advent Season. This is the time of the year where we wait in hope and wonder for a baby named Jesus. We wait with joy, with peace, and with love. For some though, they wait with pain, with weariness, and the hope of being delivered. For many people in this time of the year then, they are struggling, and they desperately need the savior to come. We all come together then in this time of the year, with a swirl of emotions, feelings, and perspectives, awaiting the Christ-Child to come down from heaven.

          I have often wondered sometimes though, if people thought a lot about the appearance of the coming Messiah. This is to say, did the prophets of the Old Testament wonder what the Messiah would like? Would he look like the high priest or Pharisee of the Synagogue? Would he look like Abraham? Perhaps he would look like Moses? No, no another might say, “he will certainly look Jacob or Isaac.” Still another might say, “no, he will look just like King David.”

          You see in these ways, I wonder how many people thought such things about the coming Messiah? Perhaps they thought that he would be as tall as Goliath in the Old Testament, perhaps as brave as King David. Would he have dark hair? Would he have blonde hair? Would he have green eyes? Would he have brown eyes? “I bet he could lift a camel off the ground with his strength,” a child might exclaim.

          In many of our churches, just like this one we have portraits of Jesus. We have portraits of the Messiah, Immanuel, the King of Kings, yet we don’t actually know what Jesus really looked like. Of course for most of us, we think Jesus looked like the portrait in this church. For me, when I pray, I have to admit that this Jesus is often the one I imagine. Perhaps he had a much darker complexion than this though. Maybe he was really short?

          I can imagine that these and many more questions and thoughts swirled through the heads of the people of the Old Testament. I can imagine that the three wise men as they were in route to see the Christ-Child were thinking, just what will this baby look like?

          If you have never thought about this before, then I commend you, because I know that I have thought about this. Perhaps it is a good thing though that we don’t know what Jesus really looked like. In fact, what if he had a sloped head, unsightly facial features, and had terrible psoriasis?

I remember back when I was attending Potsdam College, that I tutored a student for a year from South Korea. His family was a Christian family, and they were so excited to celebrate their first Christmas in the United States. As all the decorations were being put up in their house, I noticed one day that the family had a portrait of Jesus. Yet in this portrait, Jesus looked Korean. You see they had an Asian Jesus portrait. Well, I finally asked my student one day, “why does your family have a Korean Jesus?” My student said, “because this is how we best understand Jesus in Korea.”

          I also remember when I was in my first semester of my seminary studies. I remember as I was learning that Jesus was from the area fairly near to Jerusalem. I remember thinking “don’t people have a really dark complexion in the Middle East?” I then was talking to the admissions counselor of the seminary one night, and I said to him, “how come we have blonde haired blue-eyes Jesus portrait in some of our churches, if he was from the Jerusalem area?” He then smiled and looked at me and said, “You mean Jesus isn’t Norwegian?”

          I then realized why my South Korean student Calvin had a Korean Jesus portrait. I then thought, perhaps we have created a Jesus portrait that makes a little more sense to us? The reality though, is that we will probably never know what Jesus will really looked like, until will leave this earth to be with the Lord.

          Due to this, I think that in this Advent Season, we have so much more wonder, we have so much more hope, in that the savior of the world is coming, and we might often say or think, “what will the Messiah look like?”

          When looking at our scripture readings for this morning we find the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, speaking of this coming Messiah. Whatever he may look like. The prophet Isaiah tell us that when the Messiah arrives, that “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom’ like the crocus is shall blossom abundantly.” Isaiah then continues on saying, “They shall see the glory the Lord, the majesty of our God,” and I wonder when people read these words, did they say, “what will the Messiah look like?”

          I mean it is only human nature. In fact, anyone that has been on a blind date, probably said, “well what do they look like?” Luckily I had never been on blind date before I met my Melissa. Yet I had heard stories in college of people that did go on blind dates. I remember a young guy that lived in one of the dormitories that I lived in, agreed to go on a blind date. You see one of the girls from the school had a friend that he had never met. She told the young the man countless great things about this girl. He was quite excited when he left the dormitory, but when returned later that night, he said, “It was not what I expected.” What if Jesus isn’t what we expect? Would we be disappointed like the young man who had a bad blind date?

          Yet the prophet Isaiah concludes today’s scripture by saying when the Lord comes, the people shall “obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighting shall flee away.”

          When looking at the Epistle of James, or the letter of James, James tells us, “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” James then says, “The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.” Then James says, “You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord in near.”

          You see as people of Jerusalem awaited the birth of the Christ-Child, we will likely never know just what that baby looked like. Yet even though I wonder sometimes just what that baby looked like, I also wonder sometimes just what will Jesus look like when he returns to us. What will he look like when we see his face, after leaving this earth? The reality is we don’t know. Perhaps this adds to the excitement and the majesty of this Advent Season. For we await the Messiah, and we don’t he know what he will look like?

          When looking at our Gospel reading this morning from Saint Mathew, John the Baptist is in prison. You remember the guy covered in camel hair that ate grasshoppers and honey, and baptized Jesus Christ? Well King Herod put him jail for “preparing the way of the Lord.” In this reading it says, “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciplines and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

          You see John the Baptist was in prison and doubted Jesus briefly in his despair, but he did at least know what the Messiah looked like. Jesus said to these disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and what you 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.” Jesus then said, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.” I wonder when Jesus healed the blind, did they wonder before they could see, and what will the Messiah look like? When the blind opened there eyes, was he what they expected, or were they disappointed? Jesus then says quoting the prophet Malachi in the Old Testament, and says, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.” Jesus then closes this gospel reading by saying, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom is greater than he.”

          Jesus is coming down from heaven soon my brothers and sisters. He will come to us as baby, a baby that we will probably never know the appearance of. He came to John the Baptist as man, and John the Baptist knew what he looked like, and we probably ever will. Well, we won’t until we leave this earth to be with Jesus.

In closing this service, I would like to tell a Christmas story. This story is called “The Gold Wrapping Paper.” Here is how it goes, “Once upon a time, there was a man who worked very hard just to keep food on the table for his family. This particular year a few days before Christmas, he punished his little five-year-old daughter after learning that she had used up the family's only roll of expensive gold wrapping paper.”

“As money was tight, he became even more upset when on Christmas Eve he saw that the child had used all of the expensive gold paper to decorate one shoebox she had put under the Christmas tree. He also was concerned about where she had gotten money to buy what was in the shoebox.” Nevertheless, the next morning the little girl, filled with excitement, brought the gift box to her father and said, "This is for you, Daddy!"

“As he opened the box, the father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, now regretting how he had punished her.”

“But when he opened the shoebox, he found it was empty and again his anger flared.”Don't you know, young lady," he said harshly, "when you give someone a present, there's supposed to be something inside the package!"

“The little girl looked up at him with sad tears rolling from her eyes and whispered: "Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was all full."

“The father was crushed. He fell on his knees and put his arms around his precious little girl. He begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger.”

The story then says, “An accident took the life of the child only a short time later. It is told that the father kept this little gold box by his bed for all the years of his life. Whenever he was discouraged or faced difficult problems, he would open the box, take out an imaginary kiss, and remember the love of this beautiful child who had put it there.” 
          You see in this Advent Season, we await a savior that is like the gold box that the little girl gave her father. We know Jesus is special, when know he will come down and be wrapped in love like the golden wrapping paper in the story, but our mystery is what did he look like? While the box of the manger was very much full, we might never know what the Lord looks like until we meet the Lord. Until then he sends us love, joy, peace, and yes maybe even some imaginary kisses. Amen.