Joy Is A Practice Of Faith

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scriptures: Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-11

The story of John the Baptist is a little confusing in the Gospel of Matthew. In today’s reading, John is quite suddenly in prison after just last week he was in the wilderness of Judea, baptizing people in the Jordan and calling them “to prepare the way of the Lord.” Right after he lashes out at the Pharisees and Sadducees, in that same chapter, Jesus comes to John to be baptized himself. When John baptizes him, “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” So you would think that John the Baptist would have been pretty clear on Jesus’ identity after that.

Yet in today’s gospel, John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What changed? What’s causing John, who was so committed to, so assertive in heralding the coming of the Lord, to doubt?

Well, as I said, he’s suddenly in prison. And in another confusing narrative choice from Matthew, we find out why he’s in prison a few chapters after today’s reading: For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been telling him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.”

Even that’s a little confusing, so let me explain: Herod, the ruler of Judea at that time, had divorced his wife and married his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. John the Baptist did not approve, and as we heard last week, John had become quite the popular prophet among the people, so his disapproval rang loudly through the community. So Herod threw him into prison.

So what changed John? What caused him to suddenly doubt what he had been so sure of, what had been made so clear to him, before? Prison changed John, being torn from his community and call. Adversity caused him to suddenly doubt. After all, he’s only human.

It’s so much easier to claim our faith, to preach with conviction, to be sure of God when things are going smoothly. It’s also the product of what I would call an unhealthy theology that permeates so much of our American Christianity: that if you’re believing right, if you’re praying hard enough, then good things will come your way. Health, wealth, and ease.

Jesus himself tells us today that this isn’t the way to think about faith. He says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.” In Jesus’ eyes, John is the greatest among prophets and disciples on this earth. And yet John sits in prison. Later, Jesus goes even further to debunk this theology: If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Our faith in Jesus isn’t transactional, it’s not quid pro quo. Our struggles are not reflective of our lack of faith, nor are our worldly health and achievements reflective of its strength. God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Both pleasure and suffering are just what come with life on this earth in these bodies among all of God’s creation.

But still, when suffering is extreme or senseless, as it so often is, it can be easy to tilt your head to the sky and shout, “Where did you go, God?” Why is my child sick? How could I lose my benefits just before Christmas? How will I feed my family? How could you let ICE take away my father? How are people still being massacred in Gaza? How are people still walled off from one another in Bethlehem where your son himself was born?

When things get hard, we doubt just like John doubts from his prison cell. “I thought you were the one to come, Jesus, but maybe not.”

And here I turn to the scriptures we heard from Isaiah, as Jesus and John the Baptist so often did. As you know, the people of Judah had been exiled to Babylon. They had lost their houses and gardens. They had lost their neighbors and their places of worship. Their sacred city had been destroyed. They had lost their home in nearly every sense of the word. And it was good news, of course, when after nearly two generations, they were allowed to go back. But the trip back to Judah from Babylon was not an easy one. It was a 900-mile trip via the conventional roads, which took them far out of the way north into Syria, because the direct route went through what seemed to be an impassable desert.

But Isaiah tells the exiles, “no, take the direct route through the desert.”

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

and rejoice with joy and singing.

...

Strengthen the weak hands,

and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart,

"Be strong, do not fear!”

God tells the exiles, you will be surprised by what you’ll find when you have the courage to enter the desert. If things get—WHEN things get hard—I will strengthen you, so don’t be afraid. Even in the desert, you will find joy.

Jesus also points John in the direction of joy. What Jesus doesn’t say to John’s question is, “yes, I’m still the one to come so don’t worry.” What Jesus says to his messengers is ““Go and tell John what you hear and see.” And what the messengers have seen is joy. Healing, wholeness, life, good news.

But joy isn’t the same thing as happiness. As Henri Nouwen wrote, happiness depends on circumstances—getting what you want to get, what you hope to get—healing, wholeness, life, and good news, which are all amazing, beautiful things to get. But joy is something deeper than getting what you want..

Nouwen writes, “Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing — sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death — can take that love away.”

Healing, wholeness, life, and good news are examples of love come to life, but so is the devastation you feel when you see your loved one in pain, so is the desolation you feel when you lose someone or something important to you.

Joy is, as Jesus tells John, seeing and hearing love in every circumstance, even in the desert, even in prison. If we’re not willing to walk through the wilderness of loss, of suffering, of grief, then we’re not willing to experience the fullness of God’s love, which means we can’t know joy.

Nouwen writes, “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”

Which means nothing can take love away from us. Faith is the practice of remembering and living into that knowledge day by day, moment by moment, in the easy times and in the difficult times.

Which means joy is always right there, in the laughter and in the tears.

Amen.