3rd Sunday of Advent
December 14, 2025
Matthew 11.2-11
This morning we are going to take a journey, a through the seven levels of the Candy Cane Forest, past the Sea of Swirly-Twirly Gumdrops, and finally, through the Lincoln Tunnel. Yes, we are taking a journey to the Christmas movie Elf. Now, I understand that this is a love it or hate it movie, but I love it, so bear with me.
Elf is the story of Buddy, a fully adult, human man who grew up at the North Pole after crawling into Santa’s bag when Santa visited the orphanage he was living at when he was a baby. He ends up being adopted by Papa Elf, aka Bob Newhart, and growing up as though he is an elf. Just a really, really big one in comparison to the rest of them. Through a series of rather unfortunate events, Buddy discovers he is human and finds out that his mom gave him up for adoption and later passed away, but his dad is still very much alive and living in New York City, and so Buddy begins his journey to go find his dad. Because he is basically a little kid, Buddy has wild and wondrous ideas of what his relationship with his dad is going to be like. Even though Santa tells Buddy, to his horror, that his dad is on the Naughty List, Buddy thinks this is going to be the start of something remarkable. They’re going to make snow angels and eat cookie dough and ice skate and snuggle. He has this picture perfect idea in his mind of how this relationship is going to go, because this is dad, who is clearly going to love him and be ecstatic to meet him, and everything is going to be perfect.
Walter Hobbs is not the dad you are looking for if you are a grown up elf. The naughty list inclusion was well-deserved. He is cranky and mean and greedy and absent and self-centered, and just meh as a person. So, needless to say, he is less than thrilled to discover that he has this new son. Eventually, he kind of accepts Buddy into his life, but with very clear expectations. There will be no snuggling, there will be no cookie dough, there will be responsible adulthood. Buddy has to wear a suit and go to the office with him and go work in the mail room and not make a ruckus. If Buddy wants to be Walter’s kid well then he needs to act like a kid that would be acceptable to Walter. Christmas is an irrelevant date on the calendar, frivolity is for the immature, and compassionate relationships are for the weak.
As you can tell, this is a terrible combination. Both of them spend the majority of the movie bumping up against the other’s expectations. Buddy tries to fit in and perpetually fails, all the while still holding out hope that Walter will be the dad he imagined. Walter tries to squish Buddy in a box and can’t see that he should be helping him in this transition and accepting him for who he is. It’s a mess. Buddy was a cuddly dad and Walter wants a responsible son and neither of them are going to get that, until, of course, the wonder of Christmas magic, but I won’t spoil the ending here. So much of the emotional turmoil of this movie centers around this failure of expectations, what you want and what you get, what you want and what you need, and the fear, worry, and chaos that results when expectations are stridently held on to and perpetually shattered. Not at all unlike what seems to be on the precipice of happening in our gospel today.
Advent in the Matthew year feels a little bit like a game of pong. We’re deep in Jesus’ ministry, oh we’re back at the beginning with John the Baptist, oh wait we’re back into Jesus’ ministry, and it just feels slightly unsettling, which I think is an emotion that John the Baptist would relate to this morning. While last week, we found him on the banks of the Jordan preaching words of repentance, this week we find him in jail. Things have gone drastically off the rails for John here, mostly because he refused to curtail his message to appease the authorities. He was going to continue to call out the people and power regardless of the circumstances and unfortunately, the circumstances have found him behind bars. Yet, to me, that’s not the most devastating part of this passage. No, that lies solely in the question he asks of Jesus through his followers. As John sits in prison, he is still receiving word of what is going on outside, the things Jesus is doing. He had told the people here is the Lamb of God who will take away your sins, here is the man whose shoes I am not worthy to untie, and yet… John is nervous. John isn’t as certain now that his situation is so precarious. So he dares to ask a heart-wrenching question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” In other words, am I sitting here in a cell for no reason? Has all of this been a waste? Tell me, I didn’t get it wrong, please…
We don’t know what John’s expectations of Jesus were, but from the sounds of this, they aren’t quite jiving and he’s nervous. What if I have sacrificed it all for nothing? What if I led all these people astray? What if I journeyed all this way and got a dad who wants nothing to do with me? What if I found out I have another kid and I kind of can’t stand him? It’s panic inducing, being on the precipice of finding out it’s all gone wrong, and so you can’t blame John for asking the question, for wanting to be sure. If he’s going to give up his life, he wants to make sure that it’s all going to have been worth it, that’s it’s all going to go the way he thought it would. Salvation, hope, light in the darkness, forgiveness of sins.
Notice, Jesus doesn’t answer by saying, yeah ‘cuz, totally the Messiah over here, no worries, you backed the right horse, I got this. Instead, Jesus tells John’s disciples to go tell John what they have witnessed. Miracles, healing, resurrection, hope being given to the hopeless. Again, we have no clue if that is what John was expecting the Messiah to bring, if that is going to be the assurance he needs to be like, ok, sigh of relief, Jesus is doing the Messiah thing like I expected. BUT Jesus essentially refuses to play the expectation game. He’s going to give reassurance by doubling down on who he is. Whatever your expectations of the Messiah are, here is what the Messiah is doing, and that has to be enough. The way that Buddy and Walter were able to move forward was by Walter accepting who Buddy was, full stop. Letting go of the expectations and letting him be himself so that they can figure out their relationship from there, and that’s pretty much what Jesus is laying down here. This is who I am as the Messiah. If that isn’t enough for your definition, if that doesn’t fit your expectation, sorry.
I think, if we’re honest, we all run into a bit of this around Christmas. We know Jesus is coming, we know all the things that he will do, and yet… we look around our world and we want to ask the same question as John, were you the one we were actually waiting for or should we still be looking because, well, *gestures broadly.* There are still people who are poor and begging for good news, there are still people in need of healing, there are still people who are mourning, there is still so much hurt and pain and violence in the world, and well, Jesus, are you the one we were waiting for or not? We want this little baby to fix it. But here’s the issue…Jesus isn’t Gandalf. Jesus isn’t Santa. Jesus came into this world and was exactly what he professed to be, exactly what the Messiah needed to be, exactly what we needed him to be, brought exactly what the world needed. Jesus didn’t just meet expectations, Jesus exceeded them, this isn’t a Jesus problem. This is an us problem. Because you have to imagine that sometimes Jesus wants to look at us, the people who profess to believe in him more than anything, who claim our faith is central to our lives, who will put his name on bumper stickers and Facebook memes, and go…are you the people I called, are you the people I gave my life for, are you the people I taught, or should I be waiting for another?
Now, of course, Jesus is never going to walk back salvation, that’s not a thing, but I think we need to be very honest with ourselves about how we’re living into the call of people who profess to love Jesus and follow him. We profess belief in our Messiah who came to live, love, and die for all of God’s children, who never said anything about race or sexual identity or gender roles, and yet, Christianity in America has created an expectation that that is who we are supposed to be. When the expectation should be, love, love for all, acceptance for our neighbor. We profess belief in our Messiah who pointed to the poor being given good news as proof his Messiahship, and yet, Christianity in America has created an expectation of well, the poor are poor because of addiction and bad choices and have nothing to do with an unstable housing system, a corrupt health system, and an egregious wealth gap. The expectation should be, we proclaim Christ and so we need to be the good news the poor receive, asking how we can help, and seeking to create a world where everyone has enough, because there is more than enough in this world for that to be the case. We profess belief in a Messiah who was murdered, who was a victim of violence, and yet, Christianity in America is somehow ok with an idolatry of guns and weapons of war. Today is the 13th anniversary of Sandy Hook, and we would still rather talk about how we can protect our gun rights, as opposed to protect lives. The expectation should be life is sacred and violence is never, ever acceptable.
The Jesus who is coming into the world is everything we could ever expect him to be. Full of grace, love, peace, hope, joy, light. We are the ones who have been called to follow, to be his hands and feet in the world. Jesus is always going to exceed expectations. We are the ones who skew those expectations to fit our needs, who we want to be in the world. Jesus is exactly the one we have been waiting for, and we are exactly the ones the world has been waiting for, if only we would act like it. AMEN!!!