Josephus puts JB's imprisonment down to Herod's fear that his influence over the people could lead to rebellion, rather than his fulminating against Herod's marriage. [Antiqu.18:5:2]. John still gets the chop! His musing about Jesus: "If you're who I think you are...what am I doing in here...get me out of here!" isn't unreasonable! What when the One Who Has Come doesn't appear to be taking up our cause either? We can theologise about it, but if we're going to be imprisoned, or even die inside this mystery we need at least a few answers that help us live inside it. Are there any particular 'God mysteries' puzzling us as we hang on in there despite what's imprisoning us?

Jesus builds on IS 35: 5-6 & 26:19. [Cf. LK 4:18+] but he doesn't just talk about mighty acts, he demonstrates them. Medical science may be the way God does many of these same might acts today, but dare we imprison God within the laws of science? Who set those laws in place anyway? Bp. Jack Spong has problems with theism [Here I Stand, Harper Collins, 2000, p.468], but gut God as much as he appears to do there, & surely we gut ourselves in the process? Then, where are we? Where's God? Reaching out a hand to us, likely a human one, bloodied at that, to staunch the flow. But if we've abolished God in any meaningful sense, & that hand's no more than a human helping hand, where do we go from there? Which do you want first, the Bad News or the Good News?...... The Bad News is that there is no Good News!

Some years ago a totally deaf member of the congregation plucked up the courage to tell me how boring my sermons were! Not because he had to sit and listen, but because he couldn't hear them! Cliff could pick up the rhythm of most of the Eucharist, but sermons were a great black hole. So my colleagues & I immediately undertook to give him printed notes of what we were going to say each Sunday. At Cliff's funeral, I was moved to say this was the first sermon of mine he'd ever heard, & I hoped it wasn't as boring as all those other ones he didn't hear! Cliff's plight impressed upon me that preaching is only a black hole if people can't hear it (& I don't just mean with their ears). If it's not connecting with those who need to touch base with God. To be healed in some sense. As often as not that healing touch will be mediated through some human helping hand. Even that of an insensitive & slow to respond Rector!

Church often puts caring for the poor in the too-hard basket & distances itself - that is, we distance us - from personal involvement by setting up 'caring agencies' to make provision. Agencies can't love people. Only people can love people. Being loved is the way the poor or anyone else hear the Good News 'preached' to them. If God has a preference for the poor, maybe we need to choose the company we keep a little more carefully?

A reed, a fancy dress show, or a Prophet? There's a lot of bending this way & that in today's church. Not to mention dressing up. It's no good looking back to JB.  Can we recognize any genuine Prophet amongst the reeds & fancy-dressers lately? Being God's authentic word? Is any- one nurturing us in becoming the recognizably authentic, prophetic, compassionate, hands-on word of God for each other?

Jesus says JB's the greatest human up to that stage of history. The Gospel of Thomas [Complete Gospels, Harper Collins '94, ch.46] may throw some light on this with its: "whoever among you becomes a child will recognize God's Rule & will become greater than John". Everything depends on recognizing God's Rule present among us in Jesus. Since John fails to do so, fully, he therefore ranks below the 'children' who do recognize it. Where do we 'rank'?