Fishing

Have you ever noticed that the passages of Scripture that we are most familiar with are the ones that we fail to examine? It is as if they become old friends to us, comfortable, predictable. We don’t want to disrupt the cozy relationship that we have established with these passages. We say, Oh, I know that passage! And we stop listening. Who wants to reexamine something when it feels so familiar, so comfortable? Who wants to disturb and old friend? So we gloss over the passage, smiling and nodding and failing to listen to the depths of God’s message contained in the sacred words.

Today’s gospel is one that many of you have heard. You know, the one about fishing for people? Jesus has just emerged from the desert. He walks along the shore of the Sea of Galiliee and sees two fishermen casting their nets into the sea. The nets of fishermen were made of rope tied in hundreds of knots. They were invaluable as tools in making a living, second only to the boats in their value. It was probably close to dusk for the fishermen tended to fish at night. The fish would not rise in the heat of the day, but preferred to take the bait in the cool hours of the night.

Jesus saw Peter and Andrew, two brothers, going about their daily lives. They were hauling the heavy net, and throwing it out like a weighty sheet into the water. Jesus said to them

Come. And I will make you fish for people.

These words were life-changing. With these words, Peter and Andrew left their entire livelihood behind and followed Jesus. But they sound so simple, so metaphorical.

Come. And I will make you fish for people.

Listen to these words with me. For their meaning is so rich, so deep as to penetrate our understanding of what it means to serve God. These are not familiar old words, or the words of a comforting fairy-tale. These words are the stuff of change itself. To catch a glimpse of what Jesus was talking about is frightening. It is frightening. And I will tell you why.

When I was five years old, I went fishing with my cousin Edward. Edward was eight years older than me and I thought that he knew everything. I was so proud that he had invited me. I was determined to learn a lot, to do everything he said, to be totally and utterly useful.

It took hours for Edward to catch a fish, or at least that’s what my five-year-old mind remembered. Hours of waiting. It seemed like forever. Then then, he hooked a fish.

A tug of war ensued between Edward and the fish. Edward won and he lifted the fish into the boat where it flailed and struggled. I watched it in horror.

It was unable to breathe, it’s gills pumping in and out. It seemed totally panicked, desperate to return to it’s world of water. I watched and watched. I was horrified by the agony of the fish. I had no idea that something so peaceful could be so brutal. I watched longer and, finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I threw that small fish back into the water. Edward was furious. I never went fishing with him again.

Most of us come to church because we are hungry for something. We want peace of mind. We want to understand why our lives aren’t working out quite like we planned. We want some guidance, something more meaningful than ordinary existence. Maybe we have a child and realize that we cannot raise that child by ourselves. How can we teach them about morality when we don’t really understand it ourselves? Or maybe we get sick and begin to wonder, “What does happen to me when I die, when my body no longer works?” We begin to hope that there might be something more and it is this hope that drives us here, to this beautiful space. We are hungry for something that we cannot articulate.

We come to this beautiful building, here this music that stirs our souls and some of us begin to get hooked. We find ourselves longing to return. We realize that our lives just don’t feel quite right when we miss church. We begin to recognize that there is something here which we cannot explain but which moves us deeply. We begin to believe, to be willing to put our trust in God. And that’s when the tug of war begins.

The early person of faith wants God to do his or her will. We want to be believers, we know that God made us and we want to serve God, but we are still convinced, somewhere deep inside, that we know what is best for us. We pray for things like health and prosperity, a balanced budget and safety for our children. We all do this. We pray for our will to be done. We ask God to help with our agenda and then we strain and tug against the pull of the fisherman. Do it my way, God, we say. Not your way, but my way.

At some point, we give up trying to tell God what to do and we begin to listen. We awaken to the fact that God wants to pull us out of our very existence, to a realm of being that is totally unfamiliar. God wants to pull us into what Jesus described as The Kingdom, a reality that it completely different from what we know. This kingdom is so unknown and so foreign to us that we struggle and we are afraid. We must die to ourselves so that we can be born to God.

To be truly caught, utterly and totally by God is to know that God really knows so much more that we know. It is to hand ourselves over to God, body and soul and to wonder what God will do next with us. It is to live in the Kingdom, in the resurrection life, and to make all our choices from that vantage-point. To be caught is to say, with sincerity and with hope, Thy Will be Done.

I just returned from a visit to Cuba. The Christians there are incredibly healthy spiritually. They have so little to hold onto in this world. There is so much poverty and so many economic issues in Cuba. The buildings are literally crumbling. Many would be considered hazardous in this country and would be condemned. Just going to church has been a great risk in years past. To become a priest is to give up a steady reliable salary for the uncertain hope of the generosity of a small struggling church.

But, despite all of this struggle for money and belongings, for a secure place to live, the people are so happy. They have light shining from their eyes.

At the Installation of the new Dean, I wanted to give them something, but my Spanish is terrible. So I sang an Irish blessing for them. They were so happy and gracious. They thanked me and kissed me and told me how wonderful it was, a silly, simple blessing that my mother used to sing to me. And at the Peace, every single person in the Cathedral had to hug every other person. The peace lasted for a full 15 minutes. These people had been caught by the fisherman.

An elderly woman approached me after church. She ran a house church for Episcopalians who could not get to the cathedral. She spent her meager pension on helping those less fortunate than herself. And she had light shining from her eyes.

It strikes me that there are many stages of fishing. There is the time when you are just getting hooked, a time of excitement and thrill as you realize the beauty and the hope that God provides for you. Then there is the tug of war, as we struggle to try to make God do what we want, what we think that it means to be Christian. And then there is the final stage, when you allow the fisherman to pull you right out of this world into the resurrection life, where your life is no longer your own and everything is new.

And even when you have been pulled into the Kingdom itself, and your life becomes dedicated to God, there are times when you flail around, not knowing how to give your life away, not knowing how to die to yourself. There are times when you long to be thrown back into the water, the humdrum simplicity of ordinary, selfish human existence.

Who says that fishing is easy? It is a struggle, a death, an ultimate change of existence. It is a process of being pulled from everything that we know into something so free, so incredibly other, into God’s service…into life itself.

Words from the Cross

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
The Gospel of Luke


 It takes a certain kind of strength and faithfulness not to just skip Good Friday. I am constantly surprised at how many of my flock can’t make it. When I was in South Carolina at a little church, I would sit in silence for the three hours that Jesus hung on the cross and there would be one person with me at times, sometimes no one. So many people don’t want to think about the pain that Jesus endured, about the death that he suffered. It is just too raw, too difficult. So we get busy. We just can’t make it. Just take me straight to Easter, I don’t want the mess. It’s too hard to look at death in the face. Only certain people have the strength and you, my friends, are among them.

Jesus spoke only seven times during the three hours that he hung on the cross. Physicians who have researched what happened to his body as it was being crucified conclude that Jesus suffocated. Fluid would have slowly filled his lungs. He also could have bled to death. We are not sure which of these two led to his death. But we do know that it would have been very painful to speak, especially in a way that could have been heard by those below the cross. So when Jesus spoke, it was important. These words were spoken in agony. Each word cost him precious moments of life. Each word was uttered with enormous effort. And that is why, during the three hours in which Jesus hung on the cross, we meditate on his words. These are not some off the cuff statements that Jesus made. These words ate up his oxygen, accelerated his dying. These were intentional and costly words.

Jesus words are recorded once in Matthew and Mark, three times in Luke and three times in John. It is not clear in what precise order they occurred, since different phrases are recorded in different gospels, but each year we do our best to place them in some kind of chronological order.

In the Lucan account, Jesus’ first words are Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

Have you ever been in excruciating pain? Have you ever broken a bone or given birth to a child, cut yourself to the bone or thrown out your back? Most of us have endured some kind of extreme physical pain at some point in our lives and we recognize that one of the most evident features of pain is how all consuming it is. When you are in excruciating pain, there is nothing else that seems to matter. It is a state of extreme self-absorption. When I am in pain, I cannot think of the needs of the world or the desires of my friends, all that absorbs my mind is processing the pain. It fills my consciousness and there is not room for anything else.

Jesus was able to think of others in the midst of physical agony. He was not concerned for himself, his thoughts were on us. And that in and of itself is a miracle. He was so selfless, so loving that even agonizing pain could not make him forget his love for the human race.

And even if we put aside the physical pain for a moment, what about the mental pain? Jesus is in the pit of despair. He is dying. He has any and every right to be totally and completely self-absorbed. Talk about an opportunity to feel sorry for yourself! I would have milked it for all its worth. But he does not let this complete injustice make him self-absorbed. His first words are not for himself. He is not thinking about his pain or his death or even how unfair all of this is. He does not beg for mercy or to come down. He thinks of Us!

Jesus is concerned that God will not forgive us for crucifying him. He begs for God’s forgiveness. Sucking in each agonizing breath, he begs not for himself but for us.

I don’t know about you but I spend an awful lot of time thinking about myself. The intensity of my self-absorption only seems to increase when I am suffering. All I want to do is to feel better. Jesus was not that way. He was so in love with us that he could not stop thinking about us, even when his lungs were filling up with fluid, even when he could not breathe.

It is also a human tendency to demonize the one that commits violence to you. The one who hurts you is not a person. It is easier to commit a crime when you do not think of the person that you are hurting. Better that they are a spectacle, an event, not a human being.

A college student named Jane was walking through campus at night when she was grabbed from behind. Her assailant dragged her into the woods and began to rip off her clothing. Instead of fighting him, she kept looking into his eyes and saying, “I am Jane. My name is Jane. What is your name? My name is Jane. Are you OK?…”

As she was telling his over and over again that she was a person. And he stopped. He realized that he was hurting a person. He let her go. She began to help him get off drugs and they became friends.

Otis Gray was a chaplain during World War I. He brought communion to the soldiers daily. He counseled them amidst the horror of a kind of war none of them had ever seen before. He held boys as they died. He watched others gun down young men who were so close that you could see the fear in their eyes. He lived in the midst of hell. And he tried to bring God into the lives of these men who saw nothing but violence.

Otis had a good friend, a young man who was also from Kansas. The young man told Otis that if he got out of the war alive, he would start a church with Otis Gray. Together, they would start a church in Kansas.

In the mist of one of the worst battles on the fields of France, Otis found himself in a ditch along with his soldiers. They were ordered to run into the no man’s land between themselves and the Germans. The boy from Kansas climbed out of the ditch and began shooting. Otis watched as his young friend was gunned down. He watched as the boys body hit the ground. And, at that moment, he had to make a spit decision.

It came from deep inside. It was not a decision that could have been justified with words. It was just a gut level decision. Otis climbed out of the no man’s land and went to the boy. Seeing that the boy was alive, he gave him communion. And then, he carried his friend to safety.

They both survived the war and started a church together. It is called St. James Episcopal Church. But to this day, the people of that church say that the worship began that day so long ago, on the fields of France, when one man was able to put another man’s life ahead of his own. When someone, for just a moment, became a true servant of Christ.

That is all that we can hope for, really. For moments of time when we are able to leave our self-centered notions behind and see through Jesus’ eyes. And see the pain and the ignorance and the needs of so many people for God and for forgiveness. When Jesus said that the people did not know what they were doing in crucifying him, he was right. We had stopped seeing him as a person. But he never stopped seeing us.

When Jesus looked out across the place of the skull, he saw people who needed God. He saw people who were lost and had no idea what they were doing. He saw you and he saw me. He saw all our stupidity and all our mistakes. And he wanted us to be forgiven. He wanted us to be saved.

And he hopes for us still.

Never has there been another human being who was so selfless, so giving. We can never be as loving as Christ, but we can move a step closer. We can step out and introduce ourselves to people in pain, we can think about the needs of others. We can try to know what we are doing.

Coming Down From Heaven

Did you see the eclipse on Monday night? My mother mentioned it at dinner Monday night and the time stuck in my mind. 2.30 a.m. I want to see that, I thought to myself. Then I resumed parenting and working and forgot all about it. But God had not forgotten.


At 2.30 on the dot, I woke from a deep sleep. Startled at the time, I still struggled to get out of my warm bed despite the fact that it was clear to me that I was supposed to see this cosmic event. I did rouse my lazy body and went to my son Jacob’s room to wake him. He went outside with me, where we witnessed one of the most beautiful celestial events that I have ever seen. Jake wanted to go back to sleep so I woke up Luke, his older brother. Luke looked at the eclipse for awhile, then he too wanted to go back to bed, so I woke up Max, my youngest and carried him downstairs. He loved the sight but was cold and wanted to return to his warm bed, so I woke my husband, JD, and stood outside marveling with him, until he too asked to go inside. Then I stood out there alone, until my neck hurt.

The sight of that eclipse granted me a moment of pure awe. These kind of moments happen briefly to many of us, when we become overwhelmed with the size of the Universe and our own relative obscurity. It is so powerful, this sense of awe, but it does not last for long. I don’t think that our small human brains can stretch that far. We can only contemplate God’s greatness for a short period of time before our minds begin to hurt and shrink back to the daily worries and thoughts of our lives.

I remembered how small we human creatures are in comparison with the vast expanse of the Universe. That eclipse was millions of miles away and yet it was considerably closer than most of the rest of outer space. The Universe is vast and we are tiny in comparison. And the God who makes it all, that God is far beyond anything that our tiny brains can fathom.

What does it mean that the God of the Universe, the God of light years, of eclipses and cosmic events, that this vast Creator became a baby? For years I have spoken to congregations about what it means for us to have God do such a thing, to make such a sacrifice. But I have never really asked myself what it must have been like for God, to be so large, so vast and creative and exquisite, and to empty himself/herself/itself of all greatness in order to become helpless. What was it like for God? We can never fully know this for we can never fully know what it is like to be God, but we can catch glimpses of the nature of this sacrifice and of what it took for God to become human.

I caught a glimpse of God's sacrifice in my friend, Margaret.  Margaret was a traveler of the world, a lover of art and books. Her husband was in the foreign service and they lived much of their lives abroad. They had never wanted to be encumbered by children, they were free to chose their own destinies, free to live life fully. Margaret loved to read, to listen to music, to paint. Then, at forty years old, Margaret got pregnant.

An amniocentesis revealed that the child had severe developmental disorders. He might die, the doctors said. And if he lives, he will be compromised, very compromised. His life would hardly be life, just a boy who was unable to communicate or even feed himself.

Margaret already loved the child before he was even born. She could not explain why, she just loved him. But her husband did not. Worried about what this would do to his career, he left Margaret for a younger woman.

Margaret had no other family. She gave birth to the baby boy alone in a hospital in New York City. There were complications, many complications. The baby had to have multiple surgeries just to stay alive. He would never walk, never talk. His life-span was shortened. But from the moment that she looked upon him, Margaret felt that she had never seen anyone so beautiful. She changed the course of her life, devoting herself to his care. She did not travel. She was on a tight budget. She spent much of her day cleaning and feeding him. They communicated only in smiles and in touch, for he had no words that he could speak. She was often alone with him.

Margaret gave up her wide open life to give herself to this boy. Her life became small, it revolved around his eating and sleeping habits. She would dress him in the morning and clean him, setting him up in his wheelchair. She would bend down over his wheelchair and speak to him, looking right into his eyes. She would take him for slow walks, the same walks every day, for he loved routine and repetition. He loved to look at the sky, the trees. Anything out of the ordinary scared him so she made sure that they lived very simply and predictably. She played him beautiful music and read to him, hoping that some of it would sink into his soul. She was never sure what was reaching him, what he could hear and understand. She would feed him at the same time every night and put him to bed. When he was just 18 and Margaret just 58, her son died.

Her friends thought that her life was ruined. She spent 18 years tied to an invalid. But Margaret did not see it that way. To this day, she says that he is the best thing that happened to her in her life. He changed her forever. It was her greatest joy.

God chose to limit the Divine self, to move from the vast expanse of space and the beauty of heaven, to be condensed into a tiny human body, helpless and cold, held by his mother. To be burped and fed, cold and hungry, to grow in a body limited by time and space. To walk and talk, breath and eat, to sleep and wake again. And all this was so limiting for the One who created all things.

Scholars believe that Jesus was born in a cave. The shepherds still dig caves to escape the wind among the hills of Bethlehem. We cannot imagine the dirt and stench of such a place, so most Americans prefer to picture Jesus in a little wooden shack, kind of cozy and clean. But he was born in a cave full of animals. He was born in the dirt.

Jesus was not born into some fairy tale, don’t be fooled. The night was silent and it was holy but it was not fantasy land. It was holy precisely because it was real. Jesus was born in the heart of the Middle East to a homeless couple who did not know where they were going to eat next. He was born into a land with a dictator who was so paranoid that he would order the slaughter of baby boys. He was born in the messy, painful, beautiful world that WE live in, and nowhere else. Jesus came HERE.

I have never heard of a King who willingly gave up power. I have never heard of a powerful person who gave up power. It goes counter to all that we are taught in this world. Every day we hear of people who earn money, spend money. We see ads where people eat, go on vacation, take care of themselves. Everything in this world is about ME, the supreme Me and how do I take care of myself and what do I deserve. But Margaret loved her son more than she loved her life. God loves us that much, to give up being Creator and become man. God just did it. God condensed the whole Universe, decided that it would be better to live in only three dimensions instead of 300 dimensions. And it was God’s joy. That’s how much we are loved. It was and it is God’s joy to become Incarnation, in the flesh.

Why is it that we think we need to get better, to more holy in order to grow closer to God? Why is it that we feel that we must be well behaved to deserve God’s love? There are people who do not come to church because they do not feel worthy. There are people who shy away from God because they feel so small, so petty, so broken. They see this beautiful place, hear this beautiful music and they feel unworthy. Are you one of them? Are you afraid that God will not want you because you are so limited, because you have made so many mistakes?

Don’t buy into the myths about Christmas. Christmas is not a perfect time, when everyone gets along. Christmas is not designed for the perfect family with 2 children and a picket fence. It is not reserved for the harmonious and happy. So you don’t have to pretend to be someone you are not. Christmas is a miracle that happened in the midst of a mess.

God came to us even though we cannot see clearly and we don’t know how to live our lives right. God comes to you and God waits for you. God finds you so beautiful, with all your mistakes and problems and everything. God find you so beautiful.

I looked up at the moon that night and I asked myself, “God, how could you do this for me? How could you leave all that majesty and come down to me? Why me? Why did you come down for me?”

The light shone down as it did that night on the shepherds. And I knew that the answer was so simple, so simple that it is hard to believe.

Because I love you.

Finding Home

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt..."
Matthew 2:13

Something strange happened to me when I was pregnant with each of my three boys. I got this instinct to nest. I wanted their nursery set up just right. Two weeks before my first boy was born, I got kind of rabid and rearranged all the cans in my pantry. Now, if you know me, rearranging cans is not normally on the top of my priority list. But some part of me wanted to make the home perfect and ready for the baby.

Every parent wants their child born into a peaceful, idyllic life. I think that is why we work so hard getting ready, with baby showers, books, the latest gear. Because we want to do our very best, to make the child have the perfect childhood. Stability, love, a good home- Dr. Spock, the baby guru, says that all of these things are essential to a happy childhood.

But within the first week of a baby’s life, something happens. Maybe you burst into tears, or you leave them in a dirty diaper too long. Maybe they get sick or you get sick or your mother-in-law drives you nuts. Whatever it is, the world does not present itself as perfectly as you’d hoped. And the child’s peaceful, stable life is disrupted. And things only get crazier in the toddler years.

We try to create Eden for our kids and when things break or we disappoint ourselves, we feel as if we hurt or ruined the child. Adults will spend valuable time in therapy discovering how the broken world of their families shaped them and gave them sometimes bad habits or feelings. But there is a myth behind therapy and that is the myth of perfection. The Myth of the perfect home. It simply does not exist. No home, no family is perfect. Not here, at least, not on planet earth.

Look at Jesus. He is born to the most incredible parents. There were both good and faithful people. But Jesus had no stability at all as a child. He was born without a home at all. Presumably, Mary and Joseph settled in Bethlehem. Scholars now believe that the Wise Men did not arrive until somewhere in Jesus’ toddler years. But then, in today’s gospel, Joseph has a dream and God urges him to move. So Mary and Jesus had to walk to Egypt with a toddler.

We like to picture Mary on a donkey, holding a baby. But donkeys were for those who had money, and there is little indication that Joseph had much. And even if they had a donkey, can you imagine walking from Israel to Egypt with a toddler? I can hardly drive in a car with a toddler, and that is with videos, music and snacks. The journey to Egypt was at least 300 miles. No hotels, no rest stops, no McDonalds or playscapes. Just dust and dirt and the stars.

This was not the stable life that Dr. Spock talks about. This was not peaceful, this was not home. There were bands of robbers, people who told stories around fires at night. Camels and slave traders. This was no play date, folks. Jesus definitely did not have a set nap time. Jesus was raised on foot.

I used to sit and pray in the chapel of the Holy Innocents at St. James Church in Kansas. I would look up at the great stained glass window above the altar and think about all those little boys who were killed by Herod because of his paranoia. All those children, dead. It is unfathomable to me, that a ruler could order the killing of babies and children and still worse that anyone would carry it out.

It seems that Jesus was fleeing violence for a good portion of his life. He was hunted as a child, forced to move about to stay alive. And later, he would be hunted and killed as an adult. There was no home for Jesus here on earth. He did not model stability for us. So phrases like a Christian home, what do they mean? Jesus never had one.

Most of us spend our lives searching for the perfect home or trying to keep one. We hold this illusion in our minds of the perfect family in a beautiful house with lots of love and harmony. We long for this. And yet, a home is a building which needs to be cleaned and repaired, which changes over time. Even the best homes do not last long enough.

I spent this past week packing my mother-in-laws belongings. She will be moving to Jacksonville to be closer to us. We will have to sell her five bedroom house in Memphis, Tennessee. She will most likely move to a two bedroom apartment. We spent five days saying goodbye to things and having to make decisions about what to keep and what to sell. Every little trinket had a memory. It was hard work, and not just on the body. It was grieving work, having to say goodbye to so much.

But God does this to all of us when we grow old. We too are forced to move, like Jesus, like Moses, like Abraham. For there is no true home for those who love God here on earth and in the end, we all will be forced to shed all of our things. There is nothing that we can bring with us when we go to meet God. Not even a suitcase.

When we say home, we are really referring to something else. We are referring to a hunger that we have for deep and abiding peace and comfort. We are not referring to a bit of furniture or a house full of relatives. We are referring to something deep inside of ourselves, some longing that we have for stability. We are really longing for God.

The Psalmist writes, “How dear to me is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts!”

Grace Church in Orange Park has a wonderful sign outside of their front door. It is very simple. It says Welcome Home.

When we long for the beautiful nursery or the perfectly stacked pantry, what we are really looking for can be found here. Here is the home that you have always longed for, with a meal that will truly feed you. This place is not perfect, but it can be a place where you can rest, here in the service on Sundays, you can truly rest.

There is a reason why every Sunday we do the Holy Eucharist. We know that you need that comfort, that stability. Sure things change a bit with the seasons, but basically, we do the same thing over and over and over again. And God would have us do it this way for two thousand years because God knows that we need a place where we can rest. And that the children of God need some predictability.

Because out there, everything is changing. You will be moving, like it or not, you will have to say goodbye to your things. Your bodies will change, your minds will change. Your friends and relatives, even your pets will change. But here, on Sundays, we will tell the story over and over again. The sacred words will run over you like water running over a rock, shaping your life forever.

Don’t look for stability out there. Don’t look for comfort. Look to serve. Seek out ways that you can serve God. Try to follow God’s will, for you will be moving, but the question is where…

Come here for comfort, here to God’s house, to the place where the Eucharist is offered. Come Home.

The Doubts of John the Baptist

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.