Who was John the Baptizer? We know so little about him. There is this huge gap in his story…
Born to Zechariah and Elizabeth, John was born into privilege. He was the son of the High Priest in Jerusalem, the son of the man who was chosen to enter the Holy of Holies. Zechariah was a Levite, of the priestly lineage. Only one man was chosen to enter the room that was considered the most holy. Only one man on one day out of the whole year. And it was Zechariah who was chosen.
As the son of this high priest, John would have known every privilege. He would have been educated by the best rabbis. He would have known his Scripture. He was born as an only child to parents who had longed to have a child and had even given up hope. They must have doted on him, cherished him. He would have had so much love. He would have had everything that a child could need or want.
Then there is this huge gap in his life story. The Scripture tells us only the essentials. And the next time we see John, he is living as a homeless man in the desert. He is dirty. He wears animal skins for clothes and he eats bugs for dinner. What happened to him? I would love to sit down and hear his story.
What was it like to leave everything behind? What was it like to disappoint his parents? When did he leave? When did he realize that God had something else in mind, something more than just being a temple priest, something much harder? And did he miss the comforts of Jerusalem? Was he ever lonely? Did he ever wonder what he had done?
John the Baptizer seems so powerful, screaming about repentance. He must have had this incredible charisma, for people would have walked long distances to hear him. And he baptized people in the River Jordan, urging them to confess their sins and get ready for the Messiah who is to come. It is clear to me that somewhere on the road to the high priesthood, John encountered God and God told him that he was to leave his family, his wealth, his city and find God alone in the emptiness of the desert. And that experience was enough to propel him into the desert.
John was so charismatic that many people thought he was the One, but he was clear that he was not the Messiah, even though he clearly had a following and even disciples who followed him everywhere. He seemed to be such an authority that people were drawn to him. He seemed so sure of God’s will.
When Jesus finally arrives at the River, John recognizes him immediately. In the presence of Jesus, John asks his first question. For the first time, he seems unsure. “Shouldn’t you be baptizing me?” he asks.
After the event of the baptism, we hear little about John. Again, there is a gap. The next that we see him, he is in prison. We do not know why or how John was imprisoned. I imagine that his prophetic nature and the fact that he believed Jesus to be the Messiah eventually got him in trouble with the Roman authorities. We do not know how he got there, but one thing we do know…that, in prison, John began to doubt.
John sends some of his disciples to Jesus with the following question,
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
In other words, Did I make a mistake?
What happened to this incredibly powerful man in prison? What led him to begin to doubt that Jesus was the one? It sounds from his question like he is questioning his whole life. Was Jesus the one that he had been waiting for? And if Jesus was not the one, was there ANYONE who would come? What in the world was he doing, hanging out in the wilderness hollering about salvation? Weren’t his parents right when they told him that he was out of his mind leaving all that they had given him? What if he had made a terrible mistake?
Terry Waite was imprisoned years ago in Lebanon. He was working for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was trying to broker negotiations so that the Lebanese government would release foreign prisoners. They captured him and he spent four years in prison. Much of the time, he was in solitary confinement. Alone in the dark, he would go through the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist in his head to delineate one day from another. As a boy, he had loved the prayer book so much that he had memorized it and he would later write that it was God’s words in liturgy which held him from the brink of insanity and despair.
At other times, his captors would chain him to a radiator or transport him in a refrigerator to new sites. Many times, they set up an execution and he thought that he was going to die, but they were only mocking him.
Waite would later talk about the doubts that ran through his mind in prison. We all have them, we human beings. It seems that it is part of our nature to doubt, not just God, but also ourselves. And when we are treated badly or hated by others, the doubt can easily turn to despair.
‘Help me, Jesus,” John was saying, “I am having doubts.”
When Jesus hears of John’s question to him, he does not just send back a yes, he tells the disciples to relay to John everything that Jesus is doing. Tell him that the lame are walking, the blind have been given their sight. Tell him that you saw Scripture being fulfilled, for these are the things that the Scripture tells us the Messiah will do. Jesus knows that his actions will speak louder than his words and he wants to reassure John that he is, in fact, the Messiah and that John’s life was not lived in vain.
As John’s disciples go away, Jesus turns and tells the crowd about who John really is. He tells them that John the Baptist is about as close to God as anyone can be. “I tell you,” he says, “Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist…” No one.
This man, who suffers in jail, who wonders if his life was worth anything at all- this man was the greatest according to Jesus. This man was closest to God. What does this tell us, you and me?
It tells us that even the greatest saint has doubts. It tells us that God does not fault us or get angry at us when we wonder if any of this is true at all. It tells us that perhaps our greatest doubts lie not in God but in ourselves, whether we really are loved, whether we really are worthy. It tells us that we are not alone when we find ourselves wondering about the decisions that we have made and if we have done as well as we could.
John the Baptist had doubts. He doubted God’s plan and he doubted himself.
Think of Mother Theresa in all her incredible work. Only after she died did we discover that she was suffering, not able to experience the presence of God. Even Mother Theresa, the most saintly person that I can think of in my lifetime, even she struggled.
What is it that makes us think that doubt is bad and certainty is holy? What makes us question ourselves when we wonder how the Universe really was made and if we are following God’s will for our lives? Why do we see questioning as a sign of weakness?
The human being cannot see God. We live in darkness. Light penetrates us from God in many ways, in the love of others, in prayer, in worship. But we cannot see clearly. And when we suffer or when we are treated poorly, the curtain is pulled even more tightly over our eyes and we wonder if God loves us at all, or if God is out there at all.
But to doubt and wonder does not make us any less loved. As it turns out, some of the prophets of old doubted. John the Baptizer, who devoted his entire life to waiting for the Messiah, even he wondered if he had made a mistake.
So learn to live with your doubts and your worries. They are part of the complexity that makes up the human being. Do not berate yourself or try to fix them. Do not try to silence these doubts or believe that if you just prayed enough, they would go away. They are part of your nature and you can still worship and follow Christ even in the midst of them. John did.
You are a beloved, marvelous, doubting, questioning child of God. And so was John.
