{"id":373,"date":"2010-09-21T09:09:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T09:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/questions-for-jesus-are-you-the-one-who-was-to-come.html"},"modified":"2010-09-21T09:09:06","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T09:09:06","slug":"questions-for-jesus-are-you-the-one-who-was-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/questions-for-jesus-are-you-the-one-who-was-to-come.html","title":{"rendered":"Questions for Jesus: Are you the One Who Was to Come?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, a number of readers posted “questions for God<\/a>.”
\nSome of them can be answered by looking at specific passages from the Gospels.
\nOthers require a bigger picture view of the Bible and Christian theology. Over
\nthe course of the fall, on Tuesdays, I will look at the following questions
\nthat people ask Jesus:<\/p>\n

Are you the one who was to come?<\/i><\/p>\n

Who can forgive sins but God alone?<\/i><\/p>\n

Where can we get this living water?<\/i><\/p>\n

Don’t you care if we drown?<\/i><\/p>\n

How can a man be born when he is old?<\/i><\/p>\n

How can we know the way?<\/i><\/p>\n

Why this waste of perfume?<\/i><\/p>\n

What is truth?<\/i><\/p>\n

Hopefully, they will provide a lens into some of the
\nquestions you asked–questions about forgiveness, suffering, salvation, and the
\nnature of God. For today, I’m going to take a look at Luke 7:20-22:<\/p>\n

When the men came to
\nJesus, they said, ‘John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who
\nwas to come, or should we expect someone else?’<\/i><\/p>\n

At that very time
\nJesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight
\nto many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, ‘Go back and report to
\nJohn what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk,
\nthose who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the
\ngood news is preached to the poor.” <\/i><\/p>\n

Have you ever had a plan for God that hasn’t worked out?
\nHave you ever prayed a very specific prayer for exactly the thing that you know
\nGod would want and then seen the opposite happen? Have you ever been
\ndisappointed by God?<\/p>\n

John the Baptist had a sense from God that the Messiah,
\nGod’s anointed one, was coming. And when Jesus appeared, John wondered if he
\nwas the one he’d been waiting for. Perhaps it should have been obvious. Jesus
\nwas performing miracles left and right, attracting a crowd, teaching with
\nauthority, fulfilling prophecy. But John wasn’t so sure. And the fact that he
\nsent his disciples to ask Jesus directly makes me wonder whether John had been
\nwrong before. Maybe he had been disappointed. Maybe he wondered if his
\npredictions of the coming Messiah were just shouting in the wind. <\/p>\n

I imagine he felt somewhat like Samwise Gangee in The Lord
\nof the Rings, Frodo’s friend who has to trust that Frodo is the only one who
\ncan destroy the ring of power–really, this guy is the one who’s supposed to
\nsave us all? This is the one we’ve been waiting for? Are you sure? <\/p>\n

So John sends his disciples to ask the question.<\/p>\n

The text implies that Jesus waited a while before responding
\nto their question. John’s disciples had to hang around and watch Jesus, get to
\nknow him or at least observe him a bit. I wonder what they were expecting. Did
\nthey expect someone who was going to liberate the Jews from the Romans? Did
\nthey expect someone who was going to make political speeches or make a lot of
\nmoney or perform magic? <\/p>\n

I don’t know if they got what they expected or not. All I
\nknow is that Jesus respected their question, and yet he gave them their answer
\nthrough his actions. Through healing, and caring, and offering good news to the
\npoor. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t showy. But it was real, the work of God in action.<\/p>\n

John’s disciples reported back, and John had his answer.
\nJesus was the one he had been waiting for.<\/p>\n

So what do we make of all this? First, when we’re confused,
\ndisappointed, wondering about who God is and what God is doing, we can ask.
\nSecond, when we ask, we might not get the answer we’re expecting. Third, often,
\nthe answer comes by watching where God is at work, not by a booming voice from
\nthe clouds.<\/p>\n

So as you wonder, as you feel disappointed, as God doesn’t
\nquite meet your expectations–ask about it, expect the unexpected, and keep your
\neyes open for the work of the one who was to come. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}