Isaiah 35.1-10; James 5.7-10; Matthew 11.2-11

John is in prison. He’s been put there by King Herod, ostensibly because he had criticised the king for his stealing of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. No one likes their actions, especially if they know deep down they are wrong, to be shown up by another. But I suspect too that Herod was feeling threatened by John’s outspokenness in other areas too, perhaps particularly John’s proclamations about the coming Messiah.

John is having to face up to doubts about the coming Messiah. He had been proclaiming, as we heard last week, that someone much more powerful than him was to come, someone who would bring judgment and fire, who would protect the righteous but condemn the sinner.

John, tucked away in prison, has time to think. We can understand the sort of questions he might be asking. Was I right? I was so sure about the message I was proclaiming, and, yet, he’s not like that. I expected Jesus to come in power. Why haven’t the religious leaders started recognising him if he really is the Messiah? How could I have been so wrong?

All sorts of questions spinning round his head. And they’re the sort of questions that we too are sometimes faced with. Was I so wrong? I remember a time in my life when all sorts of similar questions were racing round my head. I had been recommended for ordination training and had gone off to college to train full-time for two years. But, during my second term there, everything went wrong. I became ill and had to leave the college, stop my training, and wasn’t able to resume it at that point.

I had all sorts of questions - was I doing the right thing in the first place? Had I got my calling from God so wrong? Was God playing games with me? And so on.

Doubts about what we are doing often surface when the plan that we thought had been set out for our lives failed to come to be in the way we expected it to happen. I had expected to train and then be ordained in 1996. John had expected to herald the way for a great Redeemer, a king, a leader who would bring about such change that it couldn’t be ignored.

John’s questions didn’t remain only with him. He needed to have an answer so he sent some of his disciples to see Jesus to find out from the man himself if he was the one or if John had got it wrong.

Jesus didn’t give a straightforward answer - he didn’t say yes or no. Instead he pointed them towards what he had been doing - restoring the sight of the blind, the mobility of the lame, the cleansing of the leper, the hearing of the deaf, returning life to the dead and preaching good news to the poor.

These too were traditional pictures of the messiah. Change your image of what you are expecting is the underlying message. Forget the great and powerful images, forget the images of a rescuer who would bring down fire, and think back to the images of healing and restoration. There are enough signs of God’s mercy in what Jesus was doing to allay any doubts about who he was. Jesus has brought about the time of restoration and healing foretold in Isaiah.

Jesus answers John’s doubts by pointing to the freedom he has brought. The first part of today’s reading addresses John’s questions: who is Jesus? Is he the one who is to come?

The second part of today’s reading addresses the crowd’s unspoken questions: who is John? What had they traipsed into the wilderness to see? A reed? A person in smart clothing? There is perhaps an irony in Jesus’s use of the word reed - Herod used the reed as a symbol on some of his coins, but he could be seen himself as a reed, not stable in what he did, being blown about by every whim - he moved his capital from Sepphoris to Tiberias; he exchanged one wife for another; he would change his political loyalties to whatever would help his own cause most.

But back to John - the people hadn’t got it wrong when they perceived John to be God’s prophet. That’s what he is, Jesus says. He’s more than all the prophets of the past. But the tension between old and new covenants is also in evidence - though John is greater than all the people of the past, in God’s kingdom, even the least is greater than he is.

Christians can be scared of admitting, like John, that they have doubts. But it is often through acknowledging and addressing doubt that our faith grows. Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unanumo said “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.”

We often see doubt as the opposite of faith, and yet in one way, it is certainty that is the opposite of faith. Without the possibility of doubt, there can be no faith. Faith is about trust, it’s about believing in things you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is about trusting a person, Jesus, and the promises of God.

We are called to be like children, to trust, to put our faith in God. Yet I don’t think we are called to have a faith about which we never think or reflect. It has been said that unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind. If we take our faith seriously, we should reflect on it. It’s one of the ways in which we can grow closer to God.

There is a tension about living in the now and not yet time in which we live, the time when God’s kingdom has been inaugurated but not yet fully come.

It is natural in this case to ask questions about the fulfilment of God’s kingdom. John was facing in prison the fact that is dreams of a new age seemed to be broken dreams. It is understandable if we look at our world where there is so much suffering and pain to question that, to ask why, to ask how a loving God can allow pain like that to continue. But we have to learn to live without clear answers to those questions. God’s kingdom is not fully realised and until that happens there will be pain and suffering.

Peter Abelard said “The beginning of wisdom is found in doubt; by doubting we come to the question and by seeking we may come upon the truth.” Doubt is not to be feared but to be offered to God.

Look at what John did with his doubts - he went to Jesus. What do we do when we doubt? Do we push our doubts away, trying to ignore them? Or do we turn to God with them?

To ignore doubt is not an honest way forward. It’s not a way of integrity because it’s a way that seeks to cover up the truth of our feelings. To try and ignore doubt rather than to address it is to pretend, to live falsely.

The best way to counteract doubt is to give attention to one’s faith.

When John was doubting, Jesus pointed him towards the work of God. God never turns away an honest doubter.  Part of the Christian life is accepting that we don’t know and understand everything.

John turned to Jesus with his doubts and Jesus in response to the crowd showed how much faith and trust he placed in John. He didn’t turn round and say - that John, he’s useless, because he’s expressing doubt. He told them that John was the greatest of all who had come.

The danger is that when we meet doubt, we give up on God, rather than come before him with our doubts. If we are too sure about God, there is no room for God’s mercy to surprise, no room for new glimpses of God’s glory, no room for greater understanding of God’s ways.

For, if we are too sure, we become in danger of drawing a big black line around God, of attempting to confine God to what we already know, of trying to limit God’s power. We make God too small when we are 100 per cent sure of what God is like.

In talking about doubt, I am not trying to knock faith. I certainly wouldn’t want to do that, since it is faith that has a central part in my life. But I do want us not to be scared of acknowledging doubts.

In acknowledging doubt before God, we are, in a paradoxical way, making a statement of faith. The biggest danger comes when we are not willing to face our doubt; that’s when doubt can grow, unseen and like a cancer. That’s when doubt becomes a destructive force, not an opportunity for God to reveal more of his love and himself.

So, as we watch and wait in what is left of the Advent season, let us be honest about our doubt, that our faith may grow.