“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” (Matthew 11:2-3). 
We are deep into the season of waiting. Advent is all about waiting. It is a time of “getting ready,” but most of us treat these four weeks as the time when we hurry and hustle and take care of details. Buy presents, cook food, put up decorations, and participate in as many parties and programs as we possibly can (we’re currently at 3 programs and 2 parties...and counting...). Not to mention the special worship services we feel compelled to attend! We “wait” by doing things, by filling our days with activity.
And most of us don’t like to wait, especially these days. We get impatient if we have to wait. We expect the doctor to be instantly ready to call our name when we walk in. We expect our food to be instantly ready the minute we order it (the average time it takes at a McDonald’s drive-through from when you order to when you get your food is 2 minutes and 36 seconds...still far too long for some people!). We don’t like to wait for traffic lights, for internet pages to load, for people to arrive. We put off marriage but not sex, we’re rude to those who are trying to assist us if they’re not moving “fast enough,” and we constantly tell our children to “hurry up.” We’re not good at waiting, and so we’re not good at Advent.
The people in the time leading up to that first Christmas had been waiting a long time. It had been over 400 years since they had heard a “word from the Lord.” There hadn’t been a true, genuine prophet of God in all that time, and yet the hope persisted that God was going to send someone to rescue them, to be their savior, Messiah. And so they waited. Generation after generation after generation...they waited. And they believed. God was going to send the savior, that was certain. When was not so certain. So when Jesus comes on the scene, anticipation is high. After all, his very name means, “God saves.” And he’s proclaiming the kingdom of God, much like his relative before him (John the Baptizer) did. Could he be the one? Well, maybe. I mean, he’s doing a lot of good things and saying some of the right stuff...but he’s not doing EVERYTHING we thought a Messiah ought to do. For one, he’s not yet kicked out the Romans and set up a new kingdom of Israel. He’s not quite fulfilled OUR job description for a Messiah.
And the average person on the street wasn’t the only one feeling that. So was John, the one who had told others that Jesus was the “Lamb of God.” John begins to wonder, and so he sends word to Jesus: “Are you the one, or should be keep waiting?” Is our waiting over, or do we wait for someone else? When I hear John say that, I hear within his words a desperate plea for Jesus to be the one, for the waiting to be over, and yet there is a willingness to keep waiting if that is what God wants. Are you the one?
Jesus’ reply isn’t a straight “yes” or “no.” Instead, he points to what he has been doing and says, in essence, “Look at the evidence, and decide for yourself. If you want to believe I’m the Messiah, you’re going to have to take me on my terms. You’re going to have to let me be the kind of Messiah my Father wants, not the kind you want.” And Advent is like that. We think we’re waiting on Christmas, on a holiday or a vacation, when what we should be waiting on is a new visitation, a new arrival of Jesus into our hearts and lives. But the question, during our waiting period, is this: are we willing to accept him on his own terms? Or have we already decided how he should come into our lives? Because Jesus is waiting, too. He’s waiting for us to be willing to allow him to live and move and work in our lives the way he wants to, to make the kind of difference he wants to make. This Advent...will you wait for him?