#johnthebaptizer

“are you the Expected One, or should we wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3) Considering who asks this question, this has to be one of the saddest questions that anyone ever asked Jesus. 

Jesus answered questions throughout his earthly career.

Jesus was questioned throughout his earthly career.

People questioned the legitimacy of his birth, and his authority to speak and act in the way that he did; they even asked questions in order to trap him. (Isn’t that so irritating, when people ask you a question - not in pursuit of the truth - but to get you into a corner?)

But given who asks this question, it’s arguably the saddest question that Jesus was ever asked.

It came from his closest ally - his cousin, John the Baptizer.

(by Rembrandt) The question comes from a prison cell, where an evil king has put John for speaking out against a royal scandal. John cannot understand why his cousin Jesus has allowed this to happen; this was not part of the plan.

The saddest questions come from the people who know us really well, the people who have championed our cause, the people who would suffer right alongside us.

This was John.

If you know anything about the Baptizer, you know that he wasn’t always so gloomy. Quite the opposite. He self-identified as a voice in the wilderness, one who was preparing God’s people for the arrival of their King. When the time came for Jesus to be revealed to Israel, John boldly and passionately and joyfully declared to everyone within the sound of his voice: HEY LOOK! It’s God’s Lamb! The One who takes away the sin of the world!

John had become quite a superstar in his own right. By the Jordan River, he reenacted Israel’s journey out of slavery and into the Promised Land by taking people through water. The scandal of his message was that this time, it wasn’t the Red Sea, but the Jordan River, that people were passing through. He wasn’t calling people out of Egypt, but out of Jerusalem. God’s people had corrupted themselves, and John wasn’t afraid to call them out for it. People heard loud and clear: your King is on his way, and you aren’t ready for his arrival. Until you return to him with all that you are, you remain in exile - outside of his promise and favor.

This scandalous message resonated with huge crowds of people who recognized the deep compromise in their lives, and they readily went through a baptism of repentance. It also offended the religious and royal powers of his day, who were happy with the current establishment. Nonetheless, John the Baptizer gained a huge following.

But when the time came for his cousin Jesus to step into the spotlight, John joyfully gave up his place at center stage. John’s disciples thought that their rabbi would be grieved when the huge crowds of people left him and flocked to Jesus. But like a man allowing another man to cut in to dance with the woman he has been partnered with, John says: he is the groom, I am merely the best man. He says, with joy: he must increase, and I must decrease.

So what happened between then, and now, in prison, where John asks Jesus: are you the Expected One, or should we wait for another? Where does this deeply sad question come from?

The circumstances of John’s life had changed drastically.

In his passion for God’s people to live with integrity, holiness, and righteousness, John had challenged the man who was in power in his day... he challenged the morality of Herod Antipas - one of ancient history’s powerful and ruthless rulers. Herod had taken his brother’s wife to be his own wife, and John called it for what it really was - sin.

When we are confronted with sin, we have two options:

1) own up and repent

2) silence the voice that stirs our conscience

Herod chooses option two and sends the voice to prison.

And left to rot in that prison cell, John is surprised, dejected, and confused. John’s question comes from a place of deep disappointment with Jesus.

John had given his all for Jesus, but now, not far from the day he will be beheaded, John wonders if he had been wrong about Jesus.

(by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes)

“are you the Expected One, or should we wait for another?”

Have you ever felt that way?

Have you ever wanted to ask some form of John’s question?

Yesterday was about the Cross. Tomorrow will be about the Resurrection. But today, we are in that in-between space of doubt and personal darkness. 

So what went wrong for John? Why the doubts?

The Gospel writer Matthew tells us that while John is in jail, he hears a report about the work that Jesus is doing. And what John hears is a great disappointment.

Not that it’s bad news - it’s really good news. Jesus is healing the sick, releasing the demonized, even raising the dead!

So what bothered John?

It wasn’t what Jesus was doing. It’s what Jesus was not doing.

Ever felt like that before? 

And so John sends messengers to ask Jesus: are you the Expected One, or should we wait for another?

What was Jesus not doing? What was disappointing John?

The disappointment is on two levels: theological and personal. When it comes to our own disappointment with God, these things usually go hand-in-hand.

First, theological.

Very much in line with the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the spirit of the prophet Elijah, John was expecting his cousin to bring a baptism of fire and Spirit. 

The fire would purge the world of everything that is evil and broken in this world. The Spirit would renew God’s people to make them everything God had always intended.

What’s the problem? The gifts of God’s spirit are being poured out, but there’s no fire. John hears nothing about wrath, only mercy.

What’s worse, the people that John expects to get the axe are the very people that Jesus is partying with! Jesus, I see the Spirit, but where’s the fire?!

But his question isn’t just theological, it’s personal.

Personal, because John is in prison.

This seems totally out of line with the arrival of God’s Expected One! God’s Messenger has been put in prison by the unrighteous people that God’s Messiah was supposed to destroy! Languishing in prison, John can hear the singing and dancing right above him, as Herod and his cronies get drunk.

And adding insult to injury, Jesus is the guest of honor at the houses of drunkards and loose women and traitors to the nation. Jesus is pouring out the mercy of God on the very people whom John called down the fire of God! And to make things worse, John sees no indication that Jesus plans to free his cousin from jail.

John’s question is: if you’re really the Expected One, then what am I doing here?

What am I doing here? Ever identified with John’s disappointment? Our theological and personal disappointments often go hand-in-hand, don’t they?

Our theological issues are often rooted in personal wounding.

Like the words: Our God reigns.

Our problem isn’t that we don’t believe these words, but our lives aren’t going the way we thought they would if God was reigning.

Or: Jesus heals.

We struggle with these words, not because we don’t believe that Jesus can’t heal, but because he hasn’t healed us or the people that we love.

Or: Jesus can give you joy.

The issue is not that we haven’t seen anyone else who is filled with the life and joy of God, but because we are battling deep personal darkness.

John’s expectations of who Jesus is and what he should do weren’t being met on a theological and personal level, so he has to ask: are you the Expected One, or should we keep waiting for someone else to arrive?

Again, have you ever wanted to ask Jesus some form of that question? 

I haven’t found many Christians who are comfortable with this kind of personal darkness and doubt. Different friends have told me about times when God’s healing didn’t arrive for themselves, or someone that they loved, and the answer that Christians gave them boiled down to: well, you clearly didn’t have enough faith.

Don’t you just want to punch those people? I do. (Just being honest.)

I take great comfort in the fact that a great man of faith like John the Baptizer also battled personal darkness and doubt. If this is where you are, then know that you are in good company.

When a loved one, for whom you have prayed your guts out, dies.

You get cancer.

You get fired.

A natural disaster kills hundreds of people.

A war that you prayed wouldn’t happen does happen.

Your Christian brothers and sisters are being beheaded by evil people, and you’re not sure if you should blame the evil people, your government, or someone else, for not doing enough.

The conditions of your neighborhood or local school are atrocious.

Depression or anxiety lingers for months.

At some point, all of us have asked some form of John’s question: Jesus, are you the One we have been waiting for, or should we start the search for a new candidate?

Yesterday, I gathered with my church community to celebrate Good Friday, which as my friend Clint pointed out, is a gigantic paradox. Good. Friday. Good Friday. Good for who? Not Jesus, that’s for sure.

But we can’t get to Resurrection Sunday without the Painful Friday, and the Doubting Saturday. We’ve all met people who short-circuit the necessary journey through theological and personal darkness, and as a result, they give shallow and insincere answers to questions of doubt and suffering.

In times of darkness, you want to be around the people who didn’t go around the pain, but through it. They experienced Resurrection, but only after a difficult and sad Friday and Saturday. When these people sing it’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away, you believe them, because you know that they embraced and learned from and were shaped by the struggle.

So on the Saturday before the empty tomb, I’ll ask you: where are you facing deep theological and personal darkness? What questions and disappointments do you have with Jesus?