by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin
There is little doubt
that tabloid news – both in print and online –
revels in tales of the crash-and-burn, such as the recent
stories of the sudden implosion of a cryptocurrency exchange
and the descent of its CEO’s into financial hell;
the debacle of high-flying rap artist Kayne West
abandoned by Gap, JP Morgan Chase, Adidas
and a stampede of others, or
the erasure of British royals named Andrew
since Mum is no longer around to protect him.
The English word for taking pleasure from the misfortune of others
is the impossibly arcane epicaricacy,
but most often we use the German Schadenfreude –
literally “joy from harm.”
Many languages have an equivalent:
in Hebrew it roughly translates
“There is no joy like malicious joy,”
and in Japanese
“The misfortunate of others taste like honey! “
It is a very common human (and only human) phenomenon, documented among workers when they hear
that the cutthroat colleague didn’t get the promotion
or among jilted lovers when they learn that the ex
who dumped them is now having relationship problems.
One study found that children as young as two years old
showed signs of Schadenfreude
when an unfair situation involving their peers,
is finally rectified.
Some argue that Schadenfreude served the evolutionary purpose
of biologically enshrining our aversion to inequity
as well as a useful strategy for bolstering our self-work.
I’m not sure such evolutionary explanations, however,
give us an adequate picture of why Matthew
in the gospel tales from last week and this week
provide us a brief but graphic picture
of the striking decline in fortunes of one John the Baptist.
This once high-flying prophet
who so dramatically roared out of the wilderness
with a fearlessness that attracted droves of followers
even as he chastised and called them to repentance,
who even appears to have counted cousin Jesus as a disciple
sensationally baptizing him in the Jordan
and anointing him as God’s own lamb,
is now not only in prison, but
staring down an all-but-certain death penalty.
He also seems possessed of an uncharacteristic self-doubt:
did he baptize the right messiah?
did he anoint the right lamb?
did he embrace the right cousin?
did he too easily fall into the “speak to power” trap?
In a phrase: was his life, his prophetic ministry for naught?
While I am coming to understand that the accumulation of years
can trigger such reflections
I believe there is more than advancing age goading us to wonder
if we have made the right key decisions in our lives.
It happens at so many life junctures,
often in moments of self-doubt, when we wonder:
did I choose the right education path, school, major?
was this career track really suited to my needs?
should I have … did I … love another
and where would that have taken me?
does this church, this religion, this God
serve me on this life journey?
Such soul-searching sometimes leads to that ultimate question:
has my life been a waste?
It is a question so pervasive, so enduring
that every year in this season tens of millions journey into
Frank Capra’s retelling of this soul-searching dilemma
as George Bailey contemplates ending it all
in the Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
A more recent version appears in Matt Haig’s rapturous novel
The Midnight Library:
a tale of Nora who has lost so much
that living has become too much of a chore
and then, teetering between life and death,
she unexpectedly journeys into a magical library
where every one of the thousands of books on the shelves
is an alternate life ahead of her,
the dilemma is which one to choose
or whether life is worth choosing at all.
The Baptist we know as John
did not craft a Capraesque movie
nor pen a novel exploring his dark night of the soul,
but he apparently took another route
pursued by so many others before and after him:
he dispatched a missive from prison.
Letters from prison are a recognized literary genre
even a part of the New Testament canon
as St. Paul is documented writing from there.
Such epistles are often a source of great wisdom.
Other famous examples are those penned by
the Lutheran Pastor and Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
arrested and eventually executed for his part in a plot
to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Then there is the celebrated 1963 Letter
from the Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
offering his rationale for why it was a moral responsibility
to break unjust laws and take action.
More recently the letters of Nelson Mandela
who spent 27 years in prison, much on Robben Island,
for his anti-apartheid struggle
were published in celebration of his 100th birthday.
These and others like them
offer a unique glimpse into the soul
providing a kind of justification for one’s existence
and testimony that their actions, their arrests, their lives
were not for naught.
While we do not have a fulsome letter from John,
only a few lines – actually only one furtive sentence –
that one potent sentence
sparks my imagination, as I wonder
what a complete epistle from him might have sounded like.
I envision him writing something like:
“t is dark and quiet here but I am not alone
… that same spirit that I wrestled with in the desert;
that same spirit that filled the air
when I first started preaching repentance;
that same spirit that hovered over the Jordan
the day I baptized him.
That spirit is here … brooding, and prodding,
and wanting to wrestle with me still.In this wrestling, I am grateful
that you took my questions to Jesus,
difficult as that may have been,
risking to appear like so many Pharisees
setting a public trap for my cousin.But he understood it was not a trick
but a trauma … a dark questioning of the soul
that prompted such a question.
I really did wonder if he was the one:
the messiah who would liberate us
and overthrow the Roman army,
who would engineer the demise
of puffed up, overfed clerical leaders
and their religion tuned only toward self-preservation;
or whether he’d simply turn out to be one of them.His answers about the blind, the deaf, the lame and the poor
frankly shocked me.That is not what I baptized him for:
where is the holy revolt,
his taking on the pompous elite,
winning over the masses,
steamrolling the priests and politicians,
and reestablishing the house of David,
the throne of Solomon?I am deeply disappointed; but ultimately only in myself,
for in the midst of preaching repentance
I gave into the temptation of wanting my own messiah
who would speak and act the way I hoped
the way I had dreamed.But cousin Jesus appears to be filled with God’s spirit,
not mine.
And so he has not toppled the mighty,
he has not silenced clerical pomp
he has not ended greed and abuse
or the trampling of the poor.
But he has exposed it.That means I might be seeing him here soon,
maybe in a cell next to mine
awaiting his own execution –
the price of such deeply authentic ministry.Is he the true messiah?
I suspect that he is.
But we will only know, my friend,
if the spirit of his good news
burns in the hearts of his followers,
and they take up his mission:
in times of doubt to raise up hope,
in times of darkness to radiate light,
in times of greed to manifest generosity,
and in times of hatred and rejection, to respond in love.Until we meet again … be at peace
and, no matter in what prison you might dwell,
no matter what darkness threatens to enfold you,
take up his good news
choose to be part of the proof
that I did truly baptize God’s own messiah
an unending source of consolation and light
and his name Jesus. [1]
Though an epistle imagined, this gospel daydreaming,
I believe, brings us into the center of a Baptist’s heart:
a heart confined but not silenced;
a heart assaulted but not despairing;
a heart wounded but deeply graced.
We, like John, might not always experience
The messiah we hope for, dream of, even demand,
but he is the one the world profoundly desires
and desperately needs:
This boundary-breaking
peace proposing
humanity embracing teacher
who invites us
no matter what darkness enfolds us
or oppression threatens us
to take up his good news,
to be extensions of his own incarnation
and prove to a doubting world
that John did baptize the true messiah
Emmanuel – God with us
whom we call Christ the Lord,
and the Church says: Amen.
[1] I can no longer find the original source or inspiration for this fictional letter; if anyone knows, please contact me so that I can rectify this ascription.
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