The verses for this morning need a little bit of “laying the groundwork” prior to us talking about what this specific passage tells us so that we are able to have a working understanding of what is actually being asked.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, John the Baptist makes his appearance on the Judean scene as a prophet in the mold of Elijah who was proclaiming, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. In due course, he was baptizing all of those who would “bear fruit worthy of repentance”. He stood as a beacon that reminded the people of the declarations of Isaiah that another, more powerful, ‘One from God’ was coming.
This ‘One’ began his ministry by going to John to be baptized. We are not told in Matthew that John and Jesus were related or that they knew one another, but without hesitation, John recognizes ‘who’ Jesus is, and begins to protest why Jesus is there saying, “I need to be baptized by you, why do you come to me?”
However, John eventually relents and baptizes this man who he as recognized as the Messiah sent from God above. It is after this event that the heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and a voice from heaven was heard saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”. Soon there after, at least in Matthew, John is arrested, because of some undisclosed event. It is while John is in prison that the events of our passage this morning take place.
You would think that after recognizing Jesus as the ‘One’ whom is sent from God, and being present when the heavens were opened, that John, even while stuck in prison, would be confident of how God’s plan was being put into action through this man from Nazareth.
However, what we hear this morning tells us that this is not the case. John was, in fact, worried about whether or not Jesus was the person who they were waiting for.
Think about that for a second, here is a man who has been raised, as we hear in the Gospel of Luke, to be the individual “crying out in the wilderness”, and yet even he had doubts, worries, and concerns.
What I would
like you to think about is this: has there ever been a circumstance where you
began to doubt that which you once had faith in, only to ultimately realize
that you didn’t need to worry at all? If
you have, what was able to get you through this time of uncertainty? The scripture reads this way.
Matthew 11:2-11
2 When John heard in
prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3 and
said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 4
Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 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. 6 And
blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
“Back and
Forth and Back Again”
As a family, the Nace/Gabriel
clan is pretty with it. While we may not
be trend setters in every case, we have a pretty good pulse on the various
trends that are out there. When it makes
sense for us as a family to hop in, we do.
When it doesn’t, we don’t.
One of the trends that injected
itself into the societal consciousness four year ago (or at least the
consciousness of 90% of boys in grades 1-8), was the gaming system called the Wii. For those of
you who haven’t heard about this video game console, your controller acts as an
extension of your hand, so however your hand moves in real life, your character
moves on the screen: that and depending on the particular game, you are able to
create a character that looks you. We
haven’t had this, or any other console gaming system in our home. That doesn’t mean that Jim (and over time,
Well, last Christmas, my mother in
law gave us the money to go and purchase a Wii
system. We used the monetary Christmas
gift that was given to us in 2009 when we purchased a Wii
system, … three weeks ago. Needless to say, the boys were excited and
set about creating their characters and playing games like wakeboarding, ping
pong, golf, and a game that Austin affectionately refers to as ‘sticks’. Let me just show you how Austin looks when he
plays it (can you picture a little five
year old acting like he’s chopping wood as fast as he possibly can? Yeah, like that!).
However, the boys haven’t been the
only ones who have enjoyed the new game: so have Jen and I. One of our particular favorites is
bowling. Now I have no idea if we’re any
good. But what I do know is that we’re
really good competition for one another.
Frame after frame, we are within a
few pins of one another, spare after spare; strike after strike; we keep going
back and forth. Sometimes I’ll get a few
pins up and two frames later Jen’s in front.
Other times Jen gets a lead and then I’ll come charging back. Back and forth, positive to negative,
confidence to doubt, and then all the way back again. It sounds silly, but it gets tense, because
you don’t know how it’s going to end up, until the final frame is done!
Now as we talked about in the
introductory section, a similar situation seems to be occurring with John the
Baptist in the scripture that we have before us. When you first meet John in Matthew, his
confidence in his calling from God is so great that it is jumping off the page. This level of assurance does not dissipate as
he recognizes who Jesus is, as the Messiah sent from God, when Jesus comes to
him to be baptized. John’s statement of,
“I need to be baptized by you” points this out to us. He knew, and he was so confident of what he
knew that he felt the need to express his unworthiness.
However, somewhere along the line, as
he was confined inside his jail cell, that confidence began to wane. And it’s understandable.
There John is, sitting in prison,
thinking that the savior of the world is out there in the various towns of
Judea, and yet the majesty that would be thought of as the Kingdom by a Jew in
that day and time simply isn’t showing up.
John gets worried, doubt sets in, and the back and forth action begins
to set in. “Was I right? Was I wrong?
No, I know that the person who I met was the person who God had promised
to send. But what if he fooled me?” Back and forth, positive to
negative, confidence to doubt.
This concern becomes so great that
John send out the message through his disciples to the ‘One’ who he was once so
confident about. You can almost hear how
unsettled he is as he says, “are you the one who is to come,
. . .”, insert long pause for dramatic affect, “or are we to wait for
another?” Back and
forth, confidence to doubt.
I’m not sure if the answer that Jesus
tells the disciples of John to take back with was able to quell any of John’s
fear: “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.”
In this answer, there is a subtle and understated reality that Jesus was
not fitting the mold that was prescribed for him. The royal majesty that people had assumed
would be there, was, in fact, nothing but a cultural construct that would never
be fulfilled.
Instead the savior of the world would
heal the sick, raise the dead, and proclaim the message of salvation, the truth
of God. The last statement of Jesus
shows how foreign this idea was: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me.”
Jesus isn’t proclaiming blessings
upon those who accept him, but those who aren’t offended by him. Think about that, Jesus is saying that if you
aren’t offended by him, then you are blessed.
He isn’t asking for belief, but the willingness of people to
listen. He is asking for John, and
therefore all of the people who are expecting a Messiah like John, to give him
a chance, and more importantly, give the plan of God a chance to come to
fruition through the actions of healing the sick and ministering to the
poor. Back and forth.
We never hear if John the Baptist
ever received this answer, and, if he did, what his reaction was (for shortly
thereafter, he was killed by Herod in order to fulfill an oath that he had made
to the daughter of his sister-in-law Herodias).
However, if he did receive Jesus’
answer, how do you think he would have reacted?
We can surmise that although it was not the specific answer that John
was hoping for, that it would have allowed him to catch a glimpse of the new
way that God has chosen to work. Jesus
answer, and then, most definitely the way that he speaks of John as the one
“who will prepare the way” allows the belief that had swung to doubt to swing
back to belief once more. Even John the
Baptist, the one who had been born to proclaim the way of the Messiah, had
moments of doubt.
One of the critiques that I have
heard so many people offer about themselves in regards to their faith is that
they doubt, they worry, they aren’t sure. Well, what scripture shows us is that we’re
in good company on that one. In the
midst of this fallen and broken world, doubt is part of our faith journey. Hear that: doubt is part of the faith
journey. But it is only part.
What we hear from scripture is that
when those doubts arise, we need to redouble
our efforts to focus our reliance upon
God. This refocusing doesn’t mean that
we will Divinely receive the answers that are causing
the doubt in the first place. But what
it will do is remind us that we are in the hand of God and that we are cared
for by the Creator of all through all of our days. Faith is not knowing
the exact happenings of the future: faith is trusting in God in whatever may
come, even in those moments when the world tells us that we should doubt.
We have all experienced moments when
it has felt like the floor has fallen out of a belief that we once had. Even John the Baptist had some of these
instances.
However, when we place our faith in
God, we will ultimately be shown that the faith that we have been blessed with,
was rightly placed all along. Back and
forth and back again: doubts and concerns are part of life, but in God, we have
been promised that that which we place our faith in will ultimately triumph and
lift us up.
After
Sermon Prayer
Even from the beginning of Jesus
ministry people vacillated back and forth between doubt and belief. We know that in our lives this has also been
the case. Lord, in this season when we
are preparing for the recognition of the birth of Christ, we pray for your
reassurance, for your ability to bring the floor back up so that we might be
able to move from doubt back to belief once again. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.