Fear being his mechanism of control, Herod Antipas sought to crush the hope of the people by crushing the prophets. In this week’s scripture, John the Baptist became a political prisoner waiting for a violent state to decide his fate. I wonder what fear felt like in his body. I wonder at what speed hope drained from his heart.

Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee, Sanctified Art’s guest theologian, described a fear that doesn’t just visit, but settles, embedding itself in our bodies, in our relationships, in our posture towards the world. “When fear ceases to be just an episode”, she wrote, “it becomes the air we breathe.”

I think of migrant workers in the States, afraid to go to work lest they be kidnapped by ICE. Or the child afraid to talk back, lest they be punished. Or protestors, afraid to gather, lest they be arrested and jailed too.

Fear settling into his body, John found a way to get a message to Jesus. In Sunday’s scripture reading, he asked, “Are you the one who is to come? Or are we to wait for another?”

John was looking for hope. Sometimes hope looks like sitting in the unknown, feeling the fear, and reaching out to God with hard questions.

Jesus received John’s message and sent a messenger back to him: “Go and tell John what you see and hear.” The blind see. The lame walk. The unclean are restored. The deaf hear. The dead rise. The poor receive good news.

Jesus invited John to perceive what was unfolding beyond the turmoil of fear. This invitation to perceive echoes Isaiah’s promise, which was our second advent reading for last Sunday:

“I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth—
do you not perceive it?”
(Isaiah 43:19)

Yet, in the list of signs Jesus sent to John, Lauren Wright Pittman, Sanctified Art contributor, noticed that Jesus did not include “release of the captives”. He left that bit of Isaiah out. Indeed, John did not get out of prison. His head would be chopped off and served on a dinner platter as an act of vengeance.

This is one of Scripture’s hard realities:

We do not always witness the where and the how of God’s work. The movement of God does not always arrive with clarity. At times, it is almost imperceptible because it does not resolve as we had imagined. And yet, we are still invited to pay attention and to tell each other what we see: “Now it springs forth—do you not perceive it?” “Tell what you hear and see.”

When fear settles in our bodies and hope runs low, we name our fears and questions. We can look out for small signs. We can stay connected. We can care for each other, becoming a sign of God’s movement in our world. We can hold onto the possibility that God is growing new life underground, even when we cannot see it. Even when our own life feels undone.