Okay, so I made that quote up but it came to mind as I was thinking about the gospel passage for this coming Sunday.
First we have John the Baptiser having a wobble:
"When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’" (Mt.11:2&3).
Perfectly understandable: first of all John's in prison which perhaps doesn't seem fitting to him but might be part of the programme if the Messiah would then actually do something to bring about the Promised renewal. restoration of national life under God. But Jesus doesn't seem to be set to do that. So, is it all for nothing?
Then there's also the doubt that Jesus seems to be addressing when he turns to the crowds. Presumably, John's followers had come upon Jesus in public and asked their question in public; meaning that the doubt that John implies by his question is communicated to the crowd. If they have the same sort of particular Messianic script in mind as Jesus needs to address and subvert and reconceptualise in the apostles at other points in the gospels, then how much more the crowd? And how much more important to frame what they've heard helpfully.
I find it encouraging that doubt is not dealt with harshly -indeed it's not even named as such here. In some Christian contexts doubt has become "Doubt": it's a big thing, the beginning of the end, the start of a descent into lostness and to becoming one of those people that our church or our ministry sees as a enemy to the Gospel. I think, though, that doubt is a continuum one end of which is faith destroying, the other end is potentially faith-building, It is worth recalling, to help us understand doubt, that 'faith' is ambiguous. On the one hand we might mean something like 'a system of propositions about the nature of life/reality' on the other hand it may be about 'trust and/or commitment'. True enough: the two are linked -if your cognitive doubt is sufficiently foundation-shaking of the belief system, then the trust and commitment ebb away. And, of course, in some cases the commitment overcomes evidence or selects evidence of a more cognitive nature to support the commitment.
But some doubt is not so existential. Some doubt is mostly about trying to see things whole. It's about recognising differences of perspective and apparent dissonances in experiences or interpretations or some combination of those. And a lot of times that is more about 'making sense' brought about by changes in circumstances which change our reflex perspectives, or help us to see things from a different point of view, perhaps gaining sympathy with someone or an idea that previously seemed 'out there' for us. Sometimes it arrives with an increase in knowledge which questions something we'd previously assumed or makes a different line of thinking seem more fruitful, plausible or explanatory for us. The thing is, all learning, all making-sense, is initially disorienting to some degree. And this can feel like doubt. In some senses it is: it is a questioning or re-evaluation of what had previously been believed. And if that previous belief had been important to us or remains important to those around us whom we trust, then the doubt can feel quite frightening. In response we may try to ignore it, reassert the old perspective more vehemently to try to force it from us or we may face it with boldness or humility to learn what lies the other side. This kind of doubt is the vulnerability of the hermit crab between shells.
So, how do we see Jesus responding here (to John, via his followers)? In short, it seems to me, pragmatically and sympathetically. There is no deriding the 'wobble', nor is there a forceful restatement of the right position and/or an exhortation to believe. To be sure there is that at one or two other points -but let's take those also on a case-by-case basis, remembering that here it is dealt with sympathetically, I think that there are different ways of responding to doubt because there are different kinds of doubt and we do ill if we treat all of them as if they are Doubt.
Jesus treats John's doubt as sense-making disorientation: events have overturned John's prior understanding of the Messiahnic script and he needs help to reorient faithfully. So Jesus draws John's attention to some salient facts about what he's doing, and does so using phrases which echo Messianic passages in Isaiah, but which also point to another area of 'messianic scripting' that doesn't involve nationalistic, other-punishment or violent fantasy-stoking which may have been the script playing in John's mind and now being doubted. Jesus does a bit of pastoral re-framing to help John re-integrate his experience as it is now in such a way as to keep him true to the important things now: 'blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me'.
There's an implicit warning in there as well as encouragement to stay true. One might fall away because having hoped that Jesus were the Messiah, his following parts of the script that were previously not noticed or not weighed sufficiently heavily might cause one to throw over the whole plot rather than adjust ones expectations and understandings in the light of an expanded appreciation which reframes the former beliefs.
Then Jesus has to turn to the crowd who've been listening in on the exchange and drawing their own conclusion and perhaps finding their own doubts or skepticisms amplified and played back -perhaps even as they murmur to one another. So I imagine that 'Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me' is also said with the crowd in mind -to encourage and challenge them too. But with some further perspectives to supplement. He tells them, in effect, that those of them who went to see and hear John's ministry were right to do so and that John was indeed the fore-runner. This is a reassertion of the plot but with a further dimension drawn to attention: that the forces arrayed against them are the rulers and the interests of wealth-accumulation. Implicitly a reminder that they shouldn't be expecting an easy shoe-in to earthly power but rather powerful opposition. And, of course, we realise that this is also a prefiguration of Jesus' own life-narrative.
There are forms of doubt that can make us less likely to stay true to the plot when it contains suffering and misunderstanding by others. There are forms of doubt which enable us to put aside perspectives which would keep us from staying true because they are perspectives which would deter us, lead us to take mis-steps or even end up working against the God-plot and for the Powers-plot instead. In this latter case, doubt is part of the way of faith.
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