“Go and tell John what you hear and see….”
John is in prison. A dungeon might be a better way to think about it. And from that rank and dank dungeon, John sends his own disciples to Christ Jesus with a question: Are You the One who is to come, or shall we look for another?” John’s going to die in that dungeon (spoiler alert: John gets his head cut off) – is he, are we, barking up the wrong tree with you Jesus? Are we supposed to be waiting on someone else’s Advent?
Life certainly had not gone quite the way John and his disciples had be hoping. Things were lousy and were going to get worse. Did that mean they’d missed the boat, that they had somehow angered God, that they were false believers? They were looking at themselves and what was around them, and doubts and fears build up. And so John sends the messengers out. Looking around here, it looks like we were wrong? Were we wrong? Did we fail?
Then Jesus speaks. “Go and tell John what you hear and see….” Jesus does something simple and wonderful. He pulls their eyes and focus off of what has been happening to them, off of their fears and worries, and puts their eyes upon Jesus Himself. The blind see and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. Even the dead are raised, so go to that poor fellow in the prison who is going to lose his head and preach the good news to him that the Messiah is here and brings the resurrection with Him!
Sometimes we get duped into thinking that being a Christian ought to mean wealth and prizes here in this life, that being “good” (if we poor, miserable sinners would ever dare to say that about ourselves) means we ought to have a better life. Then, lousy things end up happening. Does that mean that our faith is wrong, messed up? No – it means you are a sinner living in a sinful world where lousy junk happens all the time, but Jesus is the One who has come to defeat sin and death. He has won forgiveness for you with His death and He has risen to make sure that you will rise again no matter what this world throws at you. That is what we hear and see whenever He gathers us together in His Church, whenever He sends one of His servants to tell us this truth again.
