This week again during Advent we continue to hear about John’s ministry, but you have probably noticed that the setting is not quite the same. Our lectionary takes us from the sunny banks of the Jordan where the crowd gathered to hear John’s powerful predication and receive their baptism (Advent 2 – Matthew 3:1-12) to a dark and lonely jail where John, the guide, the prophet, is troubled and wonders aloud about Jesus: Is he the one to come, or are the people wait for another? (v3) and John asks his own disciples to bring him back Jesus’s answer. So that’s quite a shift of power isn’t? A lot of commentators have noticed that John was having a crisis of faith, and that would be easily explainable. For me, I have always felt for John, I know prison must be awful for anyone, but even in the New Testament we see some people make the most of it, like the Apostle Paul, an intellectual, a theologian, who used his time in captivity to put together his thoughts and write down a lot of his letters. But for John the Baptist, the wild and free one, who didn’t bend to any human rule, system or organization, I bet prison must have been even more awful. Now maybe you know how he ended up there? We have the explanation a little later (See Matthew 14: 3-4). John ended up in prison because he reminded the king of his duties, he was calling out on Herod for having divorced his wife, and then having his brother’s wife divorced him and married Herod instead, which was unlawful according to the Torah (See Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21). So you see, it’s not like John refused to pay his taxes or something like that. No, John did everything right.
John did everything right. For those of you who are able to attend our Advent study or maybe just read Hamilton’s book at home, it must be pretty obvious as well. From the beginning, John did everything right and his story almost starts like a fairy tale, or rather according to the biblical tradition of the greatest prophets. An angel comes to the priest Zechariah while he is serving in the Temple to announce him that his barren wife Elizabeth will bear him a son. He says: “You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the sight of the Lord (…) with the Spirit and power of Elijah, he will (…) make ready a people prepared for the Lord”. And John didn’t wait long to get started on the mission that has been confided to him. As the story goes, he leaped in his mother’s womb when pregnant Mary came to visit her (see Luke 1), confirming the message she had heard from the angel. Imagine that, John was a prophet even to the Blessed Virgin Mary! Because of all we have learned recently with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, we also believe that John was raised in a monastic community from a very young age, and then, convinced of the imminent coming of the Lord, he left the place to go announce it to the people, and help them convert and prepare for the Messiah, according to the word of the angel – preaching, praying and fasting.
So again, you see, John had done everything right, and Jesus confirms it himself in our passage when he says: “Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist” (v 11). And yet. John ends up in prison and not only that but he hears about the one who is already called the Messiah by many, and he can’t believe what he hears. What does John hear? Well, it looks like the man hasn’t gotten started on the job yet. The one who was supposed to have “His winnowing fork (…) in his hand, and (…) clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (See last week’s passage, Matthew 3:12), this one hasn’t yet done a thing to bring about God’s justice, punishing evil and liberating the people from Herod. John is in prison and may start realizing he is going to die there, without having seen the Messiah accomplish the signs.
You bet John had a crisis of faith. And it would be hard to overlook that there’s a bit of a tension between Jesus and him, a bit of aggressivity on John’s behalf when he asks: Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? And Jesus answering: Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me (v6). I bet John thought: “It wasn’t supposed to be that way”. From the glorious beginnings, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. And certainly it wasn’t supposed to finish like that for him in Herod’s prison, when Herod should had been the one judged by God. Let’s say it plainly: John is disappointed with God, and he is disappointed with God’s Messiah.
So why am I telling you all of that? Well, I am saying all of that because even if maybe we wouldn’t admit it aloud, this is a feeling that may be quite familiar to many of us: It wasn’t supposed to be like that, it wasn’t supposed to end like this. Has God forgotten about me? Why isn’t God helping me? I have done everything right, haven’t I? And I think we may have a heightened sense of that during the holiday season, and at Christmas: A sense that God has failed us somehow, or at least that there was a promise we may have had a sense of in our childhood or youth that hasn’t become quite true. Now I don’t claim I have the answers to that, but I think it’s worth exploring the fact that John has struggled with it, and listen to how Jesus responds to him. So let’s consider a few possibilities:
1 – The first thing I notice is that Jesus, even if he is aware of John’s bitterness, confirms John as a great prophet, the greatest. Yes, John has done everything right. And I think it’s something important for us that we need to remember. We sometimes suffer because we have done something wrong, but we also suffer when we have done something right and sometimes because we have done something right. One of the ways we suffer in the holidays season is because of loss and broken relationships. They aren’t always our fault or responsibility. John suffered because of the sins of other people. We can try to do right and some people won’t like it because it disturbs their comfort or the stories they like to tell themselves. We also can’t help losing the people we love when they die, and we don’t have to feel guilty about not being able to save them or about not having been able to have the perfect relationship with them.
2 – Jesus says that although John is great, the greatest, he is the smallest compared to the people who are already in God’s kingdom (v 11). There is a time for repentance and this life is about our sanctification. This means that we are never completely freed from sins, whether our own or the sins of others, which make us suffer, but we also suffer because we don’t understand God’s ways and God’s power. Jesus says we shouldn’t be offended at him, and it is something we find a few times in the New Testament, Jesus asking his disciples to not be ashamed of him. And he says that because he works in ways that we don’t always value: patience, mercy, forgiveness. John wanted the destruction of God’s enemies, but God wants their conversion even if it means we suffer in the meantime. It’s normal to be angry with that at times, that God does not strike down the evildoers, but this is how we feel because we don’t have God’s compassion.
3 – But then, what John cannot see is that Jesus will be the one who will suffer, even more than John did. Jesus reminds the people that John is the one sent ahead of him, and I believe he wasn’t a forerunner only in predication, but also in his suffering and dying. John is actually closer to Jesus than he thought. Like Jesus, he is arrested and condemned by his enemies. Jesus wants friends to carry with him the sin of the world, he does not save us with condescension, as if we were stupid and helpless, he invites us to participate in the mystery of redemption, by suffering, being patient, with the sin and the brokenness of the world. This is very mysterious but it is the testimony of all the Saints. Maybe our greatest work of faith is accomplished when we suffer and even when we doubt. But I think most people know that, when they say how they learned to be compassionate, patient and hopeful in the midst of their trials.
4 – Jesus shows John how he works by quoting another part of Isaiah’s prophecy (35:5-6; 61:1): The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, (…) the deaf hear (…) the poor have good news bring to them. And he adds:the lepers are cleansed, which is really an image that healing and wholeness are brought about, it’s an image of spiritual cleansing. Jesus invites John to focus on what God is already doing and how John’s ministry is actually bearing fruit. God may delay in destroying evil, but those who come to God experience renewal. For us as well, the fruit of our faith is often hidden for us. We talked on Wednesday about how we are not always aware of the sin we commit and that’s true, but in the same way we aren’t always aware of the good we enable and how it can change people’s life. We may feel in a dark or lonely place like John, but it doesn’t mean our life isn’t rich in God’s sight. Rather, God is poorly impressed with worldly success (Psalm 147 “His delight is not in the strength of the horse…The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.”). What matters to God is our faithfulness.
5 – There are things that will not make sense in this life. John will die without knowing what happens to Jesus, without witnessing his death and Resurrection and having confirmation that he is the Messiah. It is a tragedy if we believe that this life is all that there is, but Jesus invites him to believe that “the dead are raised” (v5) and that people are made whole in the Kingdom of God. This is also for us an invitation to trust, it’s not a blind trust or a trust against all odds, we trust because we discern God’s work around us. It comes with a good knowledge of the Scriptures (Jesus reminds John that Isaiah is not all about justice and condemnation, but also about justice and healing) and taking no offense when we feel we have better ideas about how God should run the universe. Jesus does not condemn John for his passion and impatience though, and in this season of Advent, where we speak so much about expectancy and expectations, I think it could be helpful to reframe these feelings of sadness or disappointment we may experience in terms of longing. We may be sad or disappointed not because we lack faith or love, but because long for God’s kingdom and God’s justice. We are reminded though with Jesus’s words that the promise is not fulfilled at Christmas or even during Jesus’s ministry but only in his death, Resurrection and coming in glory. We are invited to take patience with him, suffer at times, but also bear our testimony that God is already at work our world.