A Wounded Faith

A Wounded Faith

Matthew 11:1-6

February 2, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When I was in high school, I was in several of the plays that the drama department put on. I never had a big part so I was never on stage when “it” happened. But in every play, “it” did happen. “It” was that moment every year when one of the leads would try to throw everyone off. We had, of course, rehearsed the play for weeks leading up to the performances. We all knew our lines and the way we would move about the stage, but behind the scenes there was always a “plot” to throw in something that wasn’t in the script—to surprise both the director and the rest of the cast. It might be a different line, or an unexpected prop, or a reference to an inside joke—all intended to make the cast on stage laugh but sometimes it just confused us because it wasn’t what was supposed to come next. It wasn’t what we expected.

Sometimes life is like that, but usually not in a funny way. Sometimes stuff happens that throws us off, causes us confusion. Sometimes stuff happens that causes us to doubt the things we thought we knew, and sometimes it even causes us to doubt God and his goodness. For the next few weeks, leading up to the season of Lent, we’re going to explore the way life sometimes throws us curves and how doubt invades and intertwines with our lives in those moments. And by “moments” I don’t mean that they last just a few seconds; sometimes our experiences with doubt last months or even years. But here’s the main thing I want you to hear today and throughout this series: doubt is not an enemy to faith. In fact, doubt is not the opposite of faith. Sometimes well-meaning people will tell you that doubt is a sin, but that’s not true. Think of the person in the Bible with whom doubt is most associate: the disciple Thomas. Jesus doesn’t condemn his doubt; he invites him to believe (cf. John 20:24-29). Unbelief is the opposite of faith; unbelief is the sin the Bible condemns. Doubt is a sidekick to faith, and sometimes doubt is what drives us toward greater faith. So we’re going to be considering different people over the next few weeks, people who found their faith challenged by doubt. And this morning we turn to John the Baptist, whose doubt came about because of something unexpected.

In case you jumped into the middle of the story, we need to recall that John is a relative of Jesus’, and that he recognized who Jesus was even before he was born. While he was still in his mother’s womb, he leapt for joy when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, entered the room (cf Luke 1:39-45). He’s about six months older than Jesus, and he confined his preaching activity largely to the desert south of Jerusalem. Next year in Israel we will have a chance to go to a place near where John was likely baptizing people and renew our own baptismal vows in the Jordan River (yes, that is yet another seamless plug for our Israel trip). People from all over came to that place in John’s day to hear him and to be baptized, and John wasn’t afraid to say exactly what was on his mind, even if it involved powerful governmental officials. Even the king. You see, King Herod was not a model of virtue. This was not, by the way, the same Herod that was around at Jesus’ birth; this is one of his sons, called Herod Antipas, and once on a trip to visit family, he had fallen in love with his brother’s wife. When he returned home, he announced his intention to divorce his current wife and marry his brother’s wife, which he did, a move that John the Baptist criticized…loudly (cf. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pg. 323). “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife,” John told Herod (Mark 6:18). So when you’re the king and some crazy desert preacher is calling you out, what do you do? You arrest him and you lock him up in a desert prison. That’s where we find John at the beginning of the passage we read this morning.

We don’t know how long John has been in prison, but it’s probably been a while, long enough that he begins to hear stories about what Jesus is doing up in Galilee. Jesus is healing people. He’s preaching sermons and telling nice stories. He’s hanging out with poor people. And John begins to think: this isn’t what the Messiah was supposed to do. This isn’t what he expected of a savior. This wasn’t the sort of thing he had given his life for. Why wasn’t Jesus getting on with doing Messiah stuff? Why wasn’t he more like Elijah, who took on the prophets of the false god Ba’al and called down fire on Mount Carmel (cf. 1 Kings 18:20-40)? Why wasn’t he confronting Herod, taking over the literal, earthly throne? Why was he wasting his time up in Galilee with the nobodies rather than taking on the power brokers in Jerusalem? Bit by bit, day by day, John begins to have doubts. Jesus is not what or who he expected. The “play” that is going on is not what he thought they rehearsed. And doubt sets in while he wastes away in Herod’s prison (cf. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pg. 125).

We’ve been there, most likely. I know I’ve been there, and I’m willing to bet you have been, too. Not in prison, but in doubt. Disappointed by Jesus. In much of the Christian culture, we’re taught that we shouldn’t say such things, that we can’t be disappointed by Jesus. I was in seminary when I came across a book by Philip Yancey that actually admitted such things were possible. The book was titled Disappointment With God (though the publisher tried to get Yancey to change the title), and in it he deals with what he calls “three questions no one asks aloud.” The three questions are these: Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden? We’ve likely asked one or maybe all of those questions from time to time, just as John did in the darkness of that prison. I remember sitting with a woman who had just gotten a life-threatening diagnosis (in fact, the disease would take her life relatively quickly) and she looked at me and said, “It’s just so unfair!” I had no response, because she was right. Is God unfair? A couple of weeks ago at our LifeGroup, we listened to a testimony from a man whose son went down the path of drugs and addiction and eventually took his own life, and the father said he had prayed more for his son than he ever had for anything else in his life, yet his son died. He wondered why God didn’t answer. Is God silent? C. S. Lewis, the great theologian and author of the Chronicles of Narnia series of children’s books, married late in life only to have his wife, Joy, die of cancer. His grief was so raw that he first published his book A Grief Observed under another name. Listen to the way Lewis wrestled with his faith during his time of grief: “When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” Is God hidden? In the dark and difficult times of our own lives, we’ve known doubt.

But I want you to notice what happens to John in the midst of his doubt—or, rather, what doesn’t happen. He doesn’t walk away—and neither does Jesus! John’s doubt does not cause Jesus to abandon him, nor does he ignore or disregard John’s questions. And John stays in the conversation! When some of his disciples visit him at the prison, John is in the depths of despair, wondering if he has wasted his whole life. He’s spent his time preparing for and pointing people toward Jesus, but now Jesus doesn’t seem to be acting like the Messiah he had hoped for—was it all a sham? Has he wasted his time? Has he failed God? Where are all the things he expected? John asks those questions, like we do, in the dark night of his soul. But he decides there’s a way he can get some answers, some clarification, so he sends his own disciples to find Jesus and ask him: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (11:3). When we come to that dark point in our lives, we ask the same question. Maybe not in the same words, but we ask questions like that. Are you really the one? Are you even there, God? Can you see what I’m going through? Can you see me here in this prison? Are you the one, or should I start looking elsewhere? What I love most about John’s question here, though, is that he asks it. He doesn’t walk away from Jesus. Deep in his soul, he already knows the answer. He may be disappointed but he isn’t going to walk away from Jesus until Jesus tells him to. He stays in the conversation.

Jesus receives the disciples’ question with no condemnation, but neither does he move to defend himself. He provides evidence, not proof (cf. Augsburger, Communicator’s Commentary: Matthew, pg. 144). There are two parts to Jesus’ response. First, he shows them what he has been doing. The blind see, the lame are walking, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised and the poor are hearing the good news (11:5). These are, in fact, signs of the Messiah that Isaiah the prophet had spoken about a long time ago. It’s just that the people had, in general, come to accept another, more militaristic, image of the Savior; they had forgotten what they were told he was actually going to do. That’s the trap John fell into; John wanted Jesus to bring judgment, and he will, but first he brings mercy and healing (cf. Wright 126). Did John even hope Jesus would come and take Herod’s throne, replacing the king so that he could get out of prison (cf. Wright 125)? Whatever is exactly in his mind, we know this: John substituted his own expectations for what God had actually promised to do. Do we ever do that? Do we ever put our own expectations ahead of what God wants to do? Do we ever forget that God wants the best for us, even if we can’t see it yet? So Jesus points back to the evidence, evidence that was even confirmed in the Dead Sea community where John was brought up (cf. Wright 126).

Then Jesus offers a blessing, a dividing line blessing: “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me” (11:6). Literally, it should read: “Blessed is anyone who is not offended by me” (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 108). It is not somehow more holy or righteous to pretend that there are not times when we are offended by Jesus. In the prophets and the apostles (cf. 1 Peter 2:8), we’re told that Jesus will be a stumbling stone; the word in the original text is “skandalon,” from which we of course get our word “scandal.” Jesus is a stumbling stone; he gets in the way. He doesn’t always do what we expect him to do, and he certainly doesn’t always do what we want him to do. If Jesus failed to meet John the Baptist’s expectations, he is sure to fail to meet ours (cf. Card 108). And we’re not alone. Martin Luther, the great reformer who brought about what we know as the Protestant reformation, was once approached by an elderly woman who was troubled by her doubt. He asked her if she believed the creeds she recited in church. “Yes,” she said, “most certainly.” “Then go in peace,” Luther said. “You believe more and better than I do.” Billy Graham, who has arguably done more for the kingdom of God than anyone else in the last century, was asked when he was ninety years old if he thought God would say to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” after he died. Graham paused and, after a moment, said, “I hope so.” Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Hitler’s concentration camps, was once asked to describe his faith and he chose the word “wounded.” He said, “My tradition teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith is as solid as a wounded faith” (Ortberg, Know Doubt, pg. 24). We think of it the other way, don’t we? We think we have to be bold, certain, an uncompromising crusader who has no questions. But that’s not reality. I know I expected that as I get older, my faith would become more solid, more certain, and yet my experience is it’s gone the other way. The older I get, the more questions I have, and yet I find that in the midst of that doubt, those questions, I trust in God more than I ever have. I think Wiesel was right: there is no faith as solid as a wounded faith.

At its core, the Christian faith is not about believing the right things. Doctrine is important, and studying the Scriptures is vital, but knowing the right answers does not get a person into the kingdom. James says even the demons believe (James 2:19); the devil knows Christian truth better than we do. The Christian faith is first and foremost about following a person, about being connected to Jesus. He never said, “Believe my arguments.” He said, “Follow me. Do what I do. Live like I lived” (cf. Ortberg 52). John believed all the “right things.” He knew the accepted doctrine of his day, but that didn’t stop the doubts. What he needed was a fresh connection with Jesus, and he couldn’t do that until he admitted his doubts. So the first step in dealing with our doubts is to admit them, maybe even say them out loud. It’s not faithless to do that. It doesn’t threaten Jesus. He can handle your doubts, he welcomes your questions, and he most of all wants you to stay in the conversation. Even if answers don’t come, or they don’t come in the way or the form we want them to come, stay in the conversation. Underlying all our doubt is the firm conviction that it is a good God we are following, a faithful savior who will stay with us no matter what. So be honest about your questions and your doubts, about the places where your faith is wounded, especially in this place. Friends, if we can’t come here and be honest about our struggles, if we can’t come to our small group and to trusted friends and admit that we are having a hard time, then we are not doing church right. Mount Pleasant should be a place where it’s okay to ask questions, where it’s okay to wonder, and where we hold onto the hand of our unfailing God even as we ask those questions. And those we surround ourselves with ought to be the kind of people who will hang onto that hand for us when our grip gets weak. It’s been fairly well documented that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs began life in a Christian church, and one Sunday when he was 13 years old, he approached his pastor and asked if God knew everything. The pastor said yes, and Jobs them pulled out a copy of Life magazine and asked if God knew about the starving children on the cover. “Steve,” the pastor said, “I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.” And the pastor dismissed Jobs’ doubts and struggled, telling him just to believe. For Steve Jobs, that was the last time he was in church because it wasn’t a safe place to ask questions (cf. Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pg. 70 Apple Books edition). If this is not a place where we can ask questions and admit our struggles, then we’re doing church wrong.

I wish we had a scene with John the Baptist when his disciples went back to give him Jesus’ answer. I wish we could sit with John in the darkness of the cell as he hears the evidence of Jesus’ messiahship. But we don’t. What we know of John next is that, during a dinner party, Herod Antipas makes a horrible promise that results in John’s death (cf. Matthew 14:1-12). John dies as a prophet who struggled with his faith in the one he prepared the way for, though I like to believe that somewhere in the midst of Jesus’ answer and the prayers he offered in that prison, he found his faith strengthened. Maybe he did not have all of his questions answered this side of eternity, but my hope and my sense is that he faced his death as a man with a wounded faith but renewed hope. 

I think we might say the same about the disciples of Jesus as they approached their last night with their master. We do know that at least twice Peter, who usually speaks for the rest, had questioned Jesus’ plan. When some people were walking away from Jesus, the Savior asked his followers if they, too, wanted to leave. Peter answers for them, but not with a definite, “No!” He says instead, “Well, where else would we go?” (cf. John 6:67-69). It’s almost like, “If I had a better option, I’d go, but I don’t, so I guess I’ll stay.” And then, of course, there’s the time at Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus first begins telling them that he’s going to die and rise again. Just minutes after confessing his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, Peter turns on him and basically says, “Uh, Jesus, your plan is not what we expected. It’s not a good plan, so let’s see if we can make it better.” Jesus calls Peter “Satan” just a few moments after he had blessed him (cf. Matthew 16:13-28). Our shattered expectations can get in the way of truly following the one who is leading the way; Peter is proof of that. And with all of that simmering in the background, these thirteen men come to an upper room in the lower part of Jerusalem to share a final meal. That night, as Jesus flipped the script of the Passover meal, as he infused new meaning into an ancient ritual, he gave the disciples enough doubt that most of them were not even present when he was crucified the next day. Only in the light of the resurrection were they able to gather at the table again and follow his command: “Do this in remembrance of me.”

And so we gather at his table this morning, imperfect disciples all, sometimes full of doubts and other times full of faith—but most of the time, a mixture of the two. We come to the table not because we’re worthy but because he is. We come to the table not because we’re good but because he’s great. We come to the table to receive his grace because we need it. In the midst of a wounded faith, he offers grace and mercy and peace enough to go another day. Thanks be to God!