The doubts that tormented him coiled like serpents out of the dungeon walls. Sitting alone in the dank darkness, he seemed to feel them creep out of the crevices of the rocks, raise their heads, and strike at him with horrible hissing.
For almost ten months he had been waiting in the dungeon of Marchaerus, Herod’s fortress-prison overlooking the Dead Sea, waiting for the kingdom that did not come. Chained in darkness, he had waited—was it twice as long?—yes, almost twice as long as the five months of his brief ministry, those five consuming months when he had preached in the wilderness with all the conviction and fire of his soul: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”
Was it all to end in this—those more than thirty years in which he had been prepared for the task to which he felt called by divine compulsion … his mysterious birth … the Voice that called him as a youth to live in the wilderness … the solitary years of communing with God in which he observed the Nazarite vows of self-denial and dedication … and then the bursting cry that seized him: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah”? So brief a ministry—and now.…
Slowly he turned his gaze to the iron gate. He could tell by the deepening gloom in the corridor that the day was ending. Silence here, like the silence of a tomb. Not the free, vibrant silence of the sun-filled desert with birdsongs and the eternal blue overhead. Silence like death.
Would the gate never open?
Yes, the guard came through twice a day to bring him his scanty meal, or sometimes to take him to the palace when Herod stopped at Marchaerus on his trips to Mesopotamia. His faithful disciples came to visit him, too.
He recalled the last visit of Hillel and Seth. What astounding news they had brought of the preaching and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth—how he made the blind to see and the lame to walk, how he cured all kinds of diseases. But there were always the insoluble questions: Where were the fires of judgment foretold by Isaiah and the prophets? Where was the kingdom? Where was the King? Could it be—the doubt struck him with the horror of blasphemy—could it be that Jesus of Nazareth was after all only a prophet like himself? A miracle-worker sent by God—but only a man?
In the anxiety of his thoughts, the Baptizer stood up, and the rattling of the chain bound to his ankle broke the stillness. He paced the circle of the dungeon, his hands running over the walls that were cut deep into the rock under the fortress floor.
God he knew. The Scriptures he knew—had they not been his daily instruction in his youth? Had not the words of Isaiah and the prophets burned themselves into his soul during those years of preparation in the wilderness?
But Jesus of Nazereth—was he the One prophesied? The One who would come as a refiner’s fire and as fuller’s soap? And as for himself, was he indeed the herald who would come in the spirit of Elijah to proclaim the great and terrible day of the Lord? Or had it all been the product of delusion? Had an eager imagination caused him to see and hear things that were not there?
In the dungeon darkness, tears coursed down his face. He dropped to his knees and cried out in the agony of conflict: “Lord, help me to learn thy lessons! Teach me thy truth! For I am blind as Herod, unless thou openest my eyes.”
And as he wept and prayed, a thought came to him, first dimly, then more clearly. He must go humbly to the One who alone could answer the great question that rocked his soul.
He stood up, and the darkness seemed to fall away. He walked in measured steps from wall to wall. “Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?” Surely it was God who had guided him to this—a thought so bold he would not have dreamed of it had not desperation brought him to it. He would send Hillel and Seth to Jesus with that ringing question.…
The wait was not long this time, only a few days. He had waited long now for many things, waited as if there were no end to waiting. “Wait we for thee, or wait we for another?” With the answer—whatever it might be—waiting would end.
Footsteps and the sound of voices echoed through the rocky cavern beneath the citadel. Then the great key rattled in the dungeon gate, and the guard admitted Hillel and Seth. Even in the gloom, the Baptizer could see that their faces were drawn with perplexity. He offered them his bench and stood facing them.
“Speak, Hillel. I do not fear the answer.” He could see they were reluctant to begin.
“At first he did not answer us” said Hillel. “Instead, he ministered to the crowds that thronged him. Before our very eyes he cured many of diseases and plagues, and cast out demons. To many that were blind he gave sight.”
“Never has there been such a prophet in Israel!” Seth exclaimed.
“At last he came to us,” Hillel continued. “We asked him the question, and this is all he answered ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them.’ Then he added, ‘And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.’ ”
The words touched the Baptizer’s soul with instant recognition. “He turns us back to the Scriptures to find him!” he said. “These are the words Isaiah used as he prophesied concerning the Christ! The Voice of the Scriptures and the Voice of Jesus of Nazareth are one Voice.”
Seth and Hillel returned his joyous look with one of incredulity. “But the Scriptures speak of fiery judgment!”
“True. But they speak of the One who comes in mercy,” said John. “Somehow we have failed to understand what the prophets have told us. We have not grasped the order of the divine plan. I charge you, my friends, go to the synogogue and study in the Book of Isaiah those portions that Jesus has spoken to you. His answer to us is clear ‘This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’ ”
“But we do not understand.”
“There are many things I do not understand either. In this school to which he has led me, I must give myself to prayer. But I know that God has answered. Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Lamb of God who fulfills the words of the prophets.”
MARY’S VISIT TO ELIZABETH
From the German of Rainer Maria Rilke1Mariae Heimsuchung
Her step at first was still as light as air
On the Judean hills; yet, paused for breath
On some steep climb, she was again aware
Of what now led her to Elizabeth—
Her body’s wonder. So she stood to view
Not the land’s plenty but what spread around her
Exceeding all she ever dreamed or knew:
The Greatness beyond earth that held and bound her.
Then going on across the teeming land
Her need to touch the other body there
Grew in her too … And when each laid her hand
Upon the other’s dress, the other’s hair,
These women, filled with their own holy dower,
Leaned on each other, weeping tears of joy.
But, ah, the Saviour in her was still flower
While in her cousin’s womb the promised boy
Leaped in love’s transport in that happy hour.
Translated by M. WHITCOMB HESS
SIMEON IN THE TEMPLE
“For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
What was he seeing as he held the Child
(All aeons’ rack wrought into hope)?
Did he discern the banked consuming fire,
The coiled resolve of All-Weal
Lodged at the Infant’s heart?
Saw he a light clustered at those brows, annealing eyes
Of gaze circumspect and reticently wise?
Heard he the Word declared in Infant’s breathings,
The verb of might unmeasured, potency that bade
Atoms bind with force past knowing,
That summoned from the patient void
Both matter and its bane?
In the stirrings of that swaddled breast
Felt he the tremblings of the mountains of Old Time?
And about him, did he catch
Those muffled shouts of Hosts celestial,
“Behold, behold, behold!
Lord Sabaoth become a child,
Become a pippin-child.
Allelujah!”
U. MILO KAUFMANN
THE WISE MEN SPEAK
We have seen stars
Caught in evening pools of water,
But never one like this
We held between our camels’ ears,
That shut us out from light and warmth,
And merrymaking at the inns,
On our journey past sleepy villages,
Half-a-world to Bethlehem.
We have seen many stars,
But never one like this,
With Fire that glittered on our camel-gear,
And Light that took the fashion of a cross,
Flooding all the earth.
W. E. BARD
THE SKY ON A STRAW
Christmas is Santa for sugarplum minds
who worship the world like a tinseled tree
with drums and dolls free under the boughs;
it’s vacation and wreaths to the more mature
who know you must give as well as get,
who know cows can come only from cows;
it’s a creche for Christians to adore,
to smell the straw on their thick Persian floor,
to let fodder-pricks redeem their door.
THOMAS KRETZ
Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”
