John must have felt crushed. He was all in. He gave everything he had – all of himself – to God. He showed people how to break free from the sins that held them back. He spoke truth to power. He knew who Jesus was and helped others to understand. He gave people – crowds of desperate people – hope.
And in spite of his best, God-inspired efforts, here he was alone in prison. Worse yet, he had to wonder whether or not he would ever get out – or if he might be killed.
This was NOT how it was supposed to end. Was he mistaken? Was he a fool? After everything he had done, everything he had given, everything he had become, this was the conclusion? How could it be? Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Jesus was not the Messiah. Maybe his life and all of his sacrifices meant nothing.
Have you ever reached a point in your life, when you’ve looked around and thought “This is NOT how it’s supposed to be.” Maybe you thought you had finally found the right job or the right partner. Maybe a child, once so full of promise, has again made choices that are incomprehensible to you – that have landed them again in a dark place. Or maybe you could see or feel or touch or taste something so wonderful… something you’ve worked so hard for… only to discover that it wasn’t what you thought it would be… or that it was something that would forever remain out of reach. Now what?
Just because we strive to be faithful and good, doesn’t mean that disappointment or despair won’t come knocking. Could there be anyone with greater faith in God than John the Baptist? Could there be anyone who did more for Jesus than him? And, yet, even he experienced anguish and an awful end.
This is our persistent emotional and spiritual dilemma. We want to believe that if we do everything we think we are supposed to do; if we strive to be the best people we can possibly be, if we are earnest in our prayer, that somehow we will escape from the worst that life has to offer. We will be protected. For many people, faith is like an insurance policy. It’s as if we think that by having faith we will somehow be sheltered from the cruelty of this world – or that our prayers will be answered as we wish.
John may have fallen into the trap that many of us fall into – holding so tightly onto how we think God is supposed to fix the world. Or fix us. Or fix someone we love. After all, John had received an incredible spiritual consolation. After he baptized Jesus, John witnessed the heavens open and God’s spirit descend on Jesus like a dove; he heard a voice from heaven say, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Not an everyday occurrence. But, one that likely gave John confidence that Jesus would be the one, at last, to fix all that is wrong with the world.
No wonder that in prison, John has his doubts. His situation is not fixed. The powerful continue their reign of terror against the poor and anyone who speaks up. Wasn’t the Messiah going to change all that?
It is so hard for us when our hopes, desires, dreams, and expectations are not met. Whether we are disappointed in ourselves, in others, or even in God, we can lose heart. And in those moments of despair, when it becomes clear that we’re in a situation that is not going to work out the way we want, and that we can’t rely on our own understanding to make sense of our situation: we need help. We need each other. We need God.
John needs to know whether or not Jesus is the Messiah; He needs to know that his life story is part of God’s story. He needs to reframe what hope looks like – to step back and see a picture of grace that is bigger than the four walls of his prison cell.
Sometimes we can get so lost in our own darkness that the only way through it is to be reminded of God’s grace alive and active in the world. We need a witness.
I think of all the Hospice visits I had with people who were bedbound; who had not left their homes in weeks or months – people for whom the walls were closing in. “Tell me some good news” they would often say. The stories I would share – especially as I was getting to know and fall in love with David – often seemed like a spiritual lifeline for people whose worlds had shrunk. I shared stories that reminded folks at the end of their lives of their own love stories and happier times, rekindling their joy and faith.
John needed to hear his disciples’ stories. He needed to be reminded of the reality of God’s grace active and alive in the world beyond his prison walls, so he could also remember that God is with him there. In our desperate moments – when darkness or depression or despair take hold, shrinking our ability to see beyond the prisons of our own minds – we need to hear each other’s stories of grace, too.
Some stories are awful. They have terrible endings. Period. They don’t get resolved in this lifetime. Think of those who are dying in Ukraine, or in mass shootings, or from addiction or depression. And if we only see those stories in and of themselves, we might never get out of bed in the morning.
But, part of what our scriptures today are trying to convey is that all of our stories – even the hardest ones – are part of a larger story: the story of God’s love affair with the world, of God’s love affair with us. It’s an eternal story that began before we were born and will continue after we die. It’s a story whose echoes resound across the ages.
And what is the message? Christ’s story, the ultimate paradigm for all our stories, is one in which darkness and death do not have the last word; Christ’s story offers resurrection as the ultimate horizon for every story, no matter how bleak.
This is why in our desperate moments, when we despair at our own lives and the world, we need wise friends who remember and share the larger story; we need a community of faith to help us see more, to remind us that light and life come again, that God, Emmanuel, is with us.
John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “”Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus responds, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”
When have you known God’s grace in the midst of a dark time? What story can you tell about the goodness of God to you? Of joy that breaks out in the midst of pain? Of new, resurrected life following death?
There may be no greater gift we can give each other in the darkness of Advent than the witness, the stories, of God’s grace-filled, resurrecting spirit in our own lives. Amen.