Our reading today began with somebody on death row. Technically he is a political prisoner; the radical prophet whom we know as John the Baptist. He is sitting in darkness with his mind in overdrive. Throughout his life he had staked everything on the belief that Jesus, from Nazareth, was the promised liberator of his people. But now doubts are overwhelming.
The prophets who came before him had told of the Messiah that would come. The circumstances of the birth of both John and Jesus had created a situation where the events of the Messiah’s birth had started to become reality. John had leaped for joy in his mother’s womb, when his mother Elizabeth encountered Mary who was bearing the Christ child.
John was the one who had baptized Jesus in the River Jordan and heard that proclamation from heaven “This is my beloved Son.” John was the one who had exclaimed to Jesus… “You want me to baptize you? I’m the one who should be coming to you!” John was the one who had described his relationship to the Messiah along the lines of “I am hardly fit to untie his shoe-laces!”
John was the one who had initiated the religious movement that led many to come down to the waters of the Jordan to be baptized as he proclaimed, “Repent the Kingdom is near.” John, when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees wanting to get in on the act had angered them by proclaiming "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (Mat 3:7-8)
According to Luke, it is because of John’s criticism of Herod that he now lay in jail. “Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.” (Luke 3:19-20).
Herodias had been Herod’s brother’s wife… and Herod had taken her for himself. While there were many who wanted John out of the way, and would have approved of his incarceration, declaring Herod’s actions were not the way for rulers (or anybody else) to behave, was the specific act which had landed John in jail.
You can imagine how he had his doubts as he lingered there. What could he do now? Hadn’t he done the right thing? How could his being imprisoned help the cause he had devoted his life to? He did not know that his end was near. That he would become a martyr for the cause of the Kingdom.
He sends a message to Jesus, asking a desperate question. "Are you the one?” Are you really the promised Messiah? Did I do the right thing placing all my hopes in you?
Jesus sends back messengers with these words; "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.”
John is told ‘The lame walk…’ ‘the lepers cleansed…’ The words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 35. It’s part of a passage that is concerned with the restoration of Israel. It finishes with verse 10 “And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
When John heard those words surely, they would surely resonate deep down inside of him. He was being invited to look beyond his prison walls and see how God was working out God’s purposes through Jesus Christ. He was not forgotten. He was part of something so much greater than his current predicament. Jesus tells the crowds about John. “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.”
Hopefully Jesus words to John blew away all his doubts. They were spoken to give him strength. To let him know that he had not been mistaken in telling people that God’s promised One had come and was at work in their midst. To remind him that he was fulfilling the words of preachers and prophets who had come before him. That he was at the center of God’s plans for God’s people.
Prisons are not just places made of stones, high walls and barbed wire. Many people though outwardly free are hemmed in by numerous things that keep them captive. Doubts. Fears. Addictions. Debts. Lifestyles. Shame. Grief. Regret. Sickness. People are still wondering, “Is Jesus really the One who can save us?”
What can the words of Jesus to John mean to us, as we head towards Christmas?
They call us to recognize that Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem’s stable,
Truly is the Promised One of God!
Today we swim in a sea of ‘isms!’
• Rationalism, the belief that we can work it all out with our minds and through scientific deduction
• Skepticism, which doubts that is the case… indeed doubts anything is the case
• Pragmatism suggests it doesn’t matter what we believe if it works for us.
• Materialism, “He who has the most toys wins”;
• Hedonism, “If it feels good do it”.
• Atheism, “There is no god”,
• Agnosticism: “We can’t know if there is a god”;
• Deism, “There is a God but don’t get excited because God has left the building”.
So, amongst all of that how can you know? When we are imprisoned by doubts and fears and worries what can get through to us? Listen again to what Jesus said.
"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."
I have been in ministry now for many moons and over the decades I have observed the impact the gospel can have upon peoples lives.
I’ve seen people who were blind, not physically, but blind to where their life is going. I’ve seen them be embraced by the grace of God and find a whole new way of seeing.
I’ve witnessed people, not whose way of walking was disabled, but who in almost the whole of their life had become lame and crippled. I’ve witnessed them be influenced by the gospel message in such a way as they now walk through their lives with a fixed purpose and a solid stride.
I’ve encountered people whose testimony is that they were complete outcasts, (‘lepers’ so to speak) to their families and friends, had been cut off, and despised, sometimes through their own actions, but then the light of Christ has broken through to them and it’s cleansed them of their shame, and they are on track to being whole again.
Since being in ministry I have observed people who have ignored the Bible all their life, thinking it was just a bunch of outdated prejudicial mumbo-jumbo go through a crisis or some challenge to their way of being and, in that situation, they have turned to its ancient writings and found that God is speaking right into their situation in a way that has dramatically melted their hard hearts.
I have observed people who were on a road to nowhere but the emptiness of a cold, dark grave, being embraced by the life that is Jesus Christ and become such different people that you just can not believe they were ever in such bad shape.
There are many inspiring stories of folk, throughout the centuries, who have had their lives transformed by the gospel message. But maybe those examples are not where some of us have been in our lives. Or where some of us are. Not everybody has a Damascus road encounter like St Paul experienced.
Maybe we have simply been aware throughout our lives that, somehow God was with us and watching over us. We have sought to be faithful in the way we live our lives, and we can’t really remember a time when we felt totally outside of God’s love. But when things haven’t gone the way we expected, for sure we have had our questions.
Disappointment and failure, or even just the daily grind of every day being the same, can get to us. We may not adopt some other belief or become atheists or deists or follow any other “ism” that the social scientists can come up with. But we all have days when we question if “faith in Jesus” is really what can get us through.
John sat in a prison cell and asked “Jesus, are you really the one who can save us?” I’m here to declare that Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem’s stable, truly is the promised one of God. I’ve seen the way His love changes lives today!
I’m here to say whatever we are going through, wherever our lives are right now, whatever we may be facing, God is there for us. I’m here to say that “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 I invite us all to place our life into Gods hands. To come with all our doubts and misapprehensions and hear some good news. Jesus Christ IS the Savior! His love CAN be born into the midst of our life circumstances.
I’ve witnessed many times way the work of God’s Holy Spirit can shine the kind of light that adds a new dimension to our daily living. I am aware that I am who I am, and where I am in my life right now, entirely by the grace and goodness of God.
I believe we can all have that sort of assurance, that we are God’s children, and that God is with us. That’s what John needed to hear in his prison cell. That’s we need to hear as we navigate what being a 21st century disciple is all about. And it’s all because of events that took place in a stable in Bethlehem all those years ago. The events to which Advent is but a prelude.
Believe it.
Listen to the songs of the angels.
Jesus Christ is the Savior.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Amen!
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
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