Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146
James 5: 7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Last week John was telling it like it is...the kingdom of heaven is at hand and it's time to repent and turn back to the Lord. Last week there was no doubt, no question, no wondering. John was tall and strong and filled with absolute certainty that he was doing the work that God had destined him to do... to proclaim the coming of the Messiah... to prepare the way of the Lord.
Sometimes I find myself feeling a bit envious of John. Wouldn't it be great to be so sure about what God wants us to be doing? To have a clear job description all laid out before we even get here?
Throughout history, we find people who seem to have been given this same clarity of vision so that they too appear to have followed God's lead without doubt or question. Look at Moses, for example. Now he wasn't clear about what his assignment was from birth like John, but he wasn't at all confused about what he was hearing while he was standing in front of that burning bush...his mission was to lead God's people out of bondage. God was quite clear and to the point - no hemming and hawing around, and no option for passing the job off to someone else, although Moses tried. It was Moses and Moses alone that God had called to lead God's people out of bondage.
And other names come to mind - names of the saints - like Joan of Arc or St. Francis, and names of people in our own day like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa. No matter the risks or the odds, these people KNEW who they were and what God had called them to do.
And John KNEW what he was supposed to be doing. He preached with conviction, never hesitating to call a spade a spade or a brood of vipers a brood of vipers... he did his job so honestly and clearly that he got himself arrested for chastising Herod about breaking the law and marrying his brother's wife. For John, God's law, God's plan would not be flouted or ignored.
As we heard last week, John is a man who does not mince words. He's a man of action, a man who is ready for God to get busy and straighten out this mess that we've made of the world. John wants revolutionary change in the social order of the world - and he wants it now!
Not long ago Jesus of Nazareth had come to the banks of the Jordan River seeking baptism from John. And John with his characteristic boldness had declared, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." The Lord had come and salvation was at hand... Divine retribution, divine destruction would now begin ... every tree that won't bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. What an incredible moment that must have been for John. Can you imagine it? He'd been given the most important job in the history of humankind...and here was its fulfillment...the Lamb of God standing before him to be proclaimed to the world.
What he must have experienced in such a moment...when the heavens opened up, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, and a voice came from heaven saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Has any other human being experienced something even close to this kind of revelation?
Yes, last week John was strong and proud and filled with righteous zeal. He had seen the Word made flesh shining in the light of the Spirit with his own eyes.
Today John sits in the deepest of Herod's dungeons - a place so dark that one can hardly see their hand in front of their face. This man who has spent his entire life in the desert with its wide open spaces, with the clean, hot wind on his face and the spacious vault of the sky for his roof - this man was now confined within the four damp, cold, narrow walls of a windowless prison cell with nothing but rats to keep him company. This man who has stood face to face with God incarnate and proclaimed him the Savior of Israel - this man who never had to question God's plan because he knew it in every fiber of his being... this man was suddenly cast into the depths of a darkness that must have seemed impenetrable.
This picture of John is not the one that we usually think of or hear about. Matthew rushes through this event in John's life in one short sentence fragment..." When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing..." That's it. Just that one short phrase that tells us that John is in prison...
And then Matthew goes on to tell us that John sends his disciples to go and ask Jesus if he's really the right guy...if Jesus is really the Messiah. John must know that he will never leave Herod's dungeon alive, that his death could come at any time. What if he got it wrong? What if he proclaimed the wrong man? What if he's made a ghastly mistake and has been leading the world on a wild goose chase?
Matthew's Gospel is the only one of the Gospels that gives us this stark picture of John in prison sending his disciples off to ask Jesus if he's just another of the frauds that abounded in that day - after all people proclaiming to be the Messiah were a dime a dozen back then. Only Matthew reveals this dimension of the human condition that most of us work overtime to avoid.
That place where we cannot see, where we cannot find the face of God, where we are suffocating in a darkness that must surely be endless... This is that place that most of us were taught to keep locked up so deeply within us that even we won't have to know that it's there.
How often have we heard those admonitions? You know the ones, like - "Oh, you of little faith!" "How can you possibly doubt?" "It's God's will...it's not ours to question the will of God." "Where is your faith?" To doubt and to question is to convict oneself of betrayal - betrayal of all that we are absolutely convinced is true and dear in the eyes of God.
And yet, despite all of those admonitions over the centuries, we all come to those times in our lives when we flail around in the darkness and cannot find our way out. When suddenly the landscape is hidden in the shadows of despair and we can't even seem to find the road.
Isaiah says that even fools can't get lost on that Holy Road - but - what if we've been on the wrong road all along? Then what do we do? Where do we go? What on earth do we do with all those remarks that are surely meant to be helpful, but fall like so many hard pebbles into the depths of our despair... "just have faith;" "it's God's will," "ours is not to question, but to submit."
Well I say thank God that Matthew gave us an answer that turns all those helpful admonitions upside down. Because Matthew's John doesn't hide what's going on. He doesn't pretend that he doesn't have any doubts or questions. He isn't walking around with his chin held up proudly so that no one will notice he's lost his way.
No, Matthew's John goes straight to the heart of the matter... He goes to Jesus.
Even though he's imprisoned in darkness, he's determined to find a way to Jesus. In order to do that, he must expose his doubts, his vulnerability, and his fears to his own disciples. And then he sends those disciples to Jesus where they lay at the Master's feet John's greatest gift - the gift of faith...a determined, stubborn, insistent faith that no matter how dark the darkness or how lost the traveler...Jesus will always be found exactly where he promised he would be...right there waiting for us to bring everything to him... Not just the warm breezes and lovely cloudless days of our lives - but everything - including, and perhaps most especially, the darkest and deepest corners of our own prisons of doubt and fear.
This year when that tiny babe arrives to be laid in the manger, are you willing to bring him that remarkable gift which you've kept hidden in the darkest recesses of your heart?
AMEN.