It was 1989 when seventeen-year-old Jeffrey Deskovic was arrested in Peekshill, New York for rape. He was charged, tried, and found guilty. What was interesting was that he seemed to have no memory of the rape, but under interrogation he heard the terrible things that had happened, knew that he was in the general vicinity, and started to question in his own mind if he was the perpetrator of this crime. So convincing were those who interrogated him that he ended up believing the theory they had put together. After his conviction he was sent off to prison in New York City, and for sixteen years he was incarcerated. But not long after his incarceration it dawned on him that he had not committed this crime. Psychologists will tell you that you can come to the point where you think you are guilty of something when you have been told by people in power over and over again that you are. But he realized he hadn’t done it, that he was innocent, and that he was unjustly. Sixteen years later DNA evidence proved that somebody else had committed this atrocity, and he was released.
In The Guardian newspaper a couple of years ago, there was an article about this young man and the anger and the bitterness that he felt as a result of his incarceration. In the interview, he talked about what it was like to be in prison over Christmas. This is how he described his Christmas meals:
Holiday meals in prison were downright terrible! Dinner often consisted of two cold-cut slices, one piece of cheese, an old hot dog bun, one packet of mayo and mustard, a slice of a peach, a bag of potato chips filled mostly with air, and soup, the ingredients of which had already been on the serving line three or four times earlier that week, and had simply been dumped into a large vat of water and heated up. Holiday lunch was not that much better: processed and overcooked turkey, salty stuffing, instant potatoes, and that ever-present soup. During the prison staff holiday party, while guards were working on state time, we would often be locked in our cells. Sometimes, I would cry myself to sleep. But, I am free this Christmas, while many still suffer the same way. They can never get back the lost time or the missed holidays.
He was angry, and as the article in The Guardian goes on, he suggests that there is no justice, and that he is suspicious of anyone who even talks about justice. He has set up a foundation to help others who are falsely incarcerated, but it gives him little solace. He is still angry. He is still bitter. And while, to quote the great Neil Young, he should “now be rockin’ in the free world”, he is still angry in the free world. He feels he has lost so many years of his life.
I tell this story because the only way to understand this morning’s passage is if you can grasp the anger of John the Baptist, for he, like this young man in New York, had been falsely incarcerated, for being honest, a prophet, and speaking on behalf of God. What happened was John had been arrested by King Herod, because John condemned him for seducing his brother’s wife, for adultery, for not being the proper leader of the nation of Israel, and not representing the people of God.
This was nothing new for John. He was a prophet and wandered around speaking the Word of God, exposing injustice and corruption. He described it as “The voice crying in the wilderness ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’” But now he is incarcerated in a prison dungeon near the Dead Sea! If any of you have been to Israel and you have been around the Dead Sea, you know how incredibly hot it gets there. So you can imagine what it is like to be in a dungeon by the Dead Sea. John is angry! He is bitter! “Why should these walls oppress me? Why should I be behind the bars of tyranny?” He is furious! Who does he take his anger out on? Who is he really mad at? Jesus? After all the time he spent extolling the virtues of Jesus of Nazareth! After all, it was John who was at Jesus’ baptism and had said, “Here is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” He is the one who said, “I am not worthy to even untie the shoe laces of Jesus.” And, “One who is greater than I is coming” – and this is Jesus. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”
John has done everything in his power to introduce the Messianic ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and now he is in prison, having done nothing wrong, and Jesus is out there somewhere free. What kind of a Messiah would create such a condition that he would find himself innocent, but in a dungeon? So what does John do? He sends a messenger to Jesus and says, “Are you the One?” In other words, “Are you really the Messiah, or is there another? Is there somebody else who is going to come along and take your place? Tell us, which one are you? Who are you? Are you the One, or are you going to send another?” You can feel the anger and questioning in John. And, why not?! He is disappointed with Jesus, and he is disappointed with God. After all, he is innocent, and he is in prison. But in many ways, John is speaking for many people. There is something so honest and gutsy about this passage.
When I think about it, only those who really believe in God get angry with God. Only those who really believe that God exists and should be doing something better feel a disappointment when God does not live up to their expectations. Martin Luther once said, “I would rather have a hundred people angry with God than not believe in anything at all.” In other words, anger and disappointment with God comes out of a deep belief in God. For John, he still held a deep belief in Jesus, but it was waning.
Many years ago, as many of you know, I was privileged to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and the Rivonia Group had been incarcerated. I went with a group of Christian leaders, including Bishop Tutu, before it was open to the public and it was still an active prison. When you walk into this incredibly tiny cell, you realize precisely how small the world is. You see a chair and a table and a little bed – and that is it! You see the walls coming in, and you want to get out as soon as you can! Even when we went out into the courtyard, and it was forty degrees Celsius, the heat beating down and the high walls all around you, you realize the claustrophobia that a person who is imprisoned must feel. It was daunting and life-changing in many ways!
It was explained to me about a year later by a good friend, Abil Khalima who also was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela, that it was even worse than I realized. You see, Nelson Mandela and those who were part of the Rivonia Group had grown up in the countryside with animals, and had wandered the fields. They had grown up in the Transkei and the Ciskei areas known for their wide open fields and farms. They were used to no borders, no fences, no wires, and barely any roads. They had complete and utter freedom to move. For those who had lived in freedom to be put in a box and have walls and bars put around them, the sense of oppression and claustrophobia was even greater. This is what John the Baptist felt. We are told that John lived in the wilderness and travelled as an itinerant preacher. He ate berries and wore sack-cloth. For this free, roaming prophet to be behind bars was absolutely horrendous! He was constrained, angry, and disappointed with God.
I don’t think John is alone. I think he is the epitome of many people who deep down in their hearts still believe in God, but are disappointed with God, and angry things have not turned out the way they thought. They are in the prison of their own confinement, and they are mad! This occurs especially at Christmas. It seems that the superficiality that is such a part of our western Christmas tradition can try to cover up that anger and disappointment, but it is tinsel, pet phrases and common wisdom that sounds nice, but we know that it does not deal with the guts, the hardship, the feeling of disappointment with God. We ask, like John, “Are you the One? Is this really what you want from me? “Is this how my life is to be lived?” Is this how I am to deal with those who are oppressed around me? Is this it?”
One of the most inspirational characters that I read was of a young man called Charles. In 1863, Charles decided that he had seen enough oppression and violence in the United States, and he wanted to join Lincoln’s army. He lived in a home on Brattle Street in Cambridge, a street that I once lived on for some months. He decided to go to Washington to sign up and fight, even though he was just a young man. He left his father and his siblings and he went off and fought. Unfortunately, before there were any major battles, for him anyway, he contracted typhoid and became very ill and was sent home to be nursed. Finally, he got strong enough and went back, only to miss the Battle of Gettysburg, but nevertheless fought in another battle not long after Gettysburg, and there he was shot in the shoulder. The bullet entered his body just a centimeter from his spinal cord, and he was partially paralysed. He was very ill, but he could still get around. However, they concluded he couldn’t continue, so they sent him home. He came home just before Christmas in 1863. There he was greeted by his father and his four younger siblings. They were delighted to see him, but he was only a shadow of himself – a broken and emaciated and ill young man!
It broke his father’s heart because he had just got over the tragedy of losing his wife. You see, there had been a fire in the house, and the mother, Fanny, had caught on fire. Her dress lit up with flames and burnt her to death before the father’s eyes. He tried to save her but got burnt in his face and was disfigured. For the rest of his life he wore a beard to try to cover up all the pain and disfigurement. His name was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow tried that Christmas to capture his disappointment and his pain and his anger with the world in his famous poem Christmas Bells:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought as how the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Still ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolves from night to day;
A voice, a chime,
A chance sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then, from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the south,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearthstones of an continent,
It made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
There is no peace on earth I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Longfellow looked at his son, emaciated and broken, heard the sounds of cannons and war, and said, “Don’t give me this ‘peace on earth’ business, for what I see is that it appears ‘hate is strong and it mocks the song’.” Just like John the Baptist! Just like many people who go into Christmas thinking “Why am I so disappointed?”
What was Jesus’ response to John? Here, it seems to me, is the good news in this – The Gospel! There is no condemnation of John! Jesus does not say, “Oh John, get over it! You don’t know how life really is! Things aren’t that bad!” He doesn’t make an argument or a case for what he is saying or doing. He just says, “I want you to send a message back about what you hear and what you see.” No argument – just “What do you hear and what do you see? And this is what you hear and see: that those who are lame walk; that those who are blind see; that those who are lepers are cleansed; that those who are dead, live; that those who are poor have good news. Go back and tell them these things.” You see, the problem with John was that he only had half the story. He had been so wrapped up in himself, so caught up in the injustice that had made his life so bleak that he had lost sight of everything Jesus, the Messiah, was doing. That God had broken into this world and was giving sight to the blind, hope to the dying, good news to the poor, and cleansing the leper. He had taken those who had been deaf to the things of God that they could now hear.
I was reading an Op-Ed piece in a newspaper from the United States not long ago, and it said “Have you noticed how 2016 is characterized by people’s anger?” There was anger in Britain at Brexit. There was anger in the United States election. There is anger. People seem angry, and there comes a point where you have to name the cause of that anger, and face it head-on. But the problem is that anger often arises from pure selfishness, from only looking at the very disappointments that are in our own lives, and not seeing any of the good that God is doing in the world. For John, he had lost sight of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was still alive and active, and that his ministry was the ministry that God had. Was John was concerned about the lame or the blind or the dying or the poor? No! He was worried about himself, and his disappointment was borne out of what was not coming his way, rather than seeing what God was doing in the lives of other people.
The good new always is that God is alive and doing good things in people’s lives, and that Christ is still the One, and even though he suffered – Lord did he suffer! – He rose from the dead, that he is the one who is the Lord. And so, when John is looking for another one, the only reason he is doing so is because he himself wants to be different. Not that the One who has come is not the true Lord. Longfellow though didn’t end it with the last stanza that I read to you. He ended it with:
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Longfellow had heard the end of the story. He wasn’t just wrapped up now in his grief. He was not consumed by doubt and despair, although for a moment it had seized his heart. Here was a man who had every reason to remain angry with God, but he would not. He would not, because he could not. And, why could he not? Because God was not dead! And that is the word to the angry and disappointed world! It is there for a world that is often hurting and filled with despair, because of tyranny and injustice, and like John the Baptist, you can point all the fingers at it in all your holiness and all your righteousness, and you can talk about the sins and the brokenness of the world, or your own despair and trials until the cows come home, but there is no good news in that, no redemption in that, no salvation in that, no peace in that!
Disappointed, yes! Angry sometimes, maybe? All Jesus asked John to do was open his eyes and see that as the Lord, the ill will be healed, the lepers will be cleansed, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead shall live, and those who are poor will receive good news. That is our faith. Amen.