Last week we heard the story of John the Baptist appearing in the desert to proclaim repentance and announce the coming of the Messiah. I have always admired this portrait of John the Baptist. He is courageous and fiery. He is as “prophety” as you can get. He’s a prophet’s prophet you might say. But I have never felt a lot of connection with John the Baptist as he appears in chapter 3 of Matthew. He is more confident, fearless, and certain than I could ever be. And the description of him wearing camel’s hair and eating only locusts and wild honey makes him almost a caricature of a prophet. Someone to admire, but not someone who seems fully human or a person I could model myself upon. But John as we see him this week in chapter 11 of Matthew, this John is another story. This is a character I can connect with. This is a person I can understand.
Gone is his certainty. Gone is his confidence. Gone is his fire. Prison will do that do a person. I have never been in prison myself, but I have visited prisoners. Most prisoners, in their most honest moments, speak of the awful sense of powerlessness that besets a person in jail.
Think about it for a moment. When a person enters a prison, they are stripped of their possessions, often even stripped naked and searched. Gone are all those things that we use to give us a sense of identity and security. A prisoner is also stripped of any illusion or sense of control. You are locked in, and your fate and freedom are in the hands of others.
This is the place that John finds himself in. And more than that, he knows that his life is also very much at stake. He understands that he will likely emerge from his prison only to be put to death. He is caught in the in between time waiting for others to determine his fate. It is hard to be fiery, confident, and certain in the darkness of a prison cell. It is hard to be fearless when you are facing an unwanted unknown. And from this place of darkness, John asks Jesus a question, a very profound question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Profound because of the place from which it is being asked.
On the surface John seems to simply be asking, “Did I get it right? Are you the messiah or is there another person I should be looking for?” and he probably is asking this. But I think the question also goes much deeper than that. When you sit in the loneliness and darkness of a prison cell, you are thrust back to the most basic and primal place spiritually. “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” And most importantly, “Who is God?”, “What kind of God do I believe in?”, “Is God there?”, “Does God care?”. I think John as asking Jesus to help him understand the very nature of being and who God is in relation to his being.
When you are imprisoned, your questions change. When you lose your freedom, your yearnings change. Prison cells tend to focus our attention. Prison cells tend to strip away all that we use to distract ourselves from that which is the most important thing, the ultimate thing, God. But it is uncomfortable, to say the least, to ask these kinds of questions. These questions get us in touch with our deepest longings, longings that we may fear can never be satisfied. These questions don’t fit in well with comfortable religion or a settled life. These questions unsettle the identities and categories by which we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. And that is exactly why we need to ask these questions, for truth, peace, and God are rarely found in settled and uncomfortable places.
Faithful people must continually consider who God is. It is far too easy for us to define God in ways that are convenient for us and our lives but have nothing to do with who God really is. It is far too easy to make God in our image and a player on our team than it is to recognize that God is on no team, or maybe all the teams. It is far too easy to worship anything and everything but God. Asking these questions, considering who God is, makes it possible to spot the real God amidst the idols that surround us. Including the idles of comfort, security, stability, control, privilege, and self-righteousness.
When we sit in the loneliness and darkness of a prison cell and really ask, “God who are you and who am I in relation to you?”, we risk hearing nothing in return. And I think that is what scares us the most about asking these questions. But we also might just discover that the God who we thought was there to provide us with good things because we are good people, is something even bigger than this Santa Claus-like God of our imaginings. We might just discover that God is the one who loves us and is seeking us even when we don’t live up to the good image we have of ourselves. We might just discover that God is the one who loves us even when we are sitting naked in a prison cell cold and alone. We might just discover that God loves those we don’t love. We might just discover that God is the one who working to restore all of creation to wholeness and life, even if that ultimate restoration has not yet come.
And whether or not you have ever literally been in a prison cell, all of us know what it feels like to be in darkness. All of us know what it feels like to be stripped of those things that we use to give us our identity and bring us a sense of comfort and security. Everyone knows what it feels like to have our illusion or sense of control taken from us. We all know what it feels like to wait for other people or circumstances to determine our fate.
Waiting for that phone call that will tell you your medical diagnosis. Sitting in the waiting room while your loved one undergoes surgery. Receiving the phone call that your husband, wife, sister, brother, best friend, or child has died. Coming into work, the place where you’ve worked for decades, to receive a pink slip and be escorted out by security. The knock on the door and opening it to be handed divorce papers. Receiving your divorce decree even when you initiated the process. The pain of the negative pregnancy test when you’ve been waiting for months or years for a positive one. A positive pregnancy test when you are unprepared to raise a child. The pain of miscarriage. The betrayal of a friend or colleague or spouse. Mental illness. Foreclosure. Bankruptcy. Being accused of something you did not do. Being accused of something you did do and having to face the consequences. Not living up to our expectations for ourselves. Being the victim of a crime. There are so many things that can happen to us in this lifetime that can push us into darkness, that can immediately rip away our illusion of control, that can instantaneously strip us of our self-made identity and security. And it is hard to be courageous, fearless, fiery, certain, and confident when we are in one of these dark places.
And. . . this place of darkness can become a place of new life. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It is a question that breaks your heart . . . or maybe, it speaks a truth, many truths, truths that in everyday life we can’t find or don’t find the strength, or the courage to say. I wonder what would happen if we leaned into the question rather than ran away from it. I wonder what transformation might be waiting for us on the other side of this question. I wonder what might happen if we leaned into this question together—not to answer it or solve it, but to allow the struggle with the question to transform how we understand God and who and what we worship in this world, and therefore allow it to transform us. I wonder what God’s answer to us might be.
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?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” (Matthew 11:2-6). Amen.
