Sometimes people wonder.

Sometimes people who have invested much in a project wonder whether they made a mistake. Sometimes people who have risked everything on a belief, who have given up their lives, their reputations, their income, their homes-sometimes those people wonder.

• The wondering may happen the day, the week, the minutes after a significant period of success. Everything went well, everything was going great. Then it’s the day after the event and you are exhausted and you think, “what’s the point?”
• The wondering may happen when you are struggling and everyone else is going along as if your struggles don’t matter.
• The wondering may happen when you put all your faith in a person and they have a plan that makes sense and they start to be successful and then it looks like their plan isn’t working as well as you thought.
• The wondering may happen when Herod locks you in jail and Jesus leaves you there and it’s his fault that you got arrested in the first place.

Okay, maybe it’s not exactly his fault, because you were preaching before he stopped by, but certainly, you were preaching that the kingdom was close and then Jesus showed up, and you thought that maybe, just maybe, the kingdom was here.

And then you end up in jail. Behind bars representing the old kingdom.

And so you wonder. And you send some of your followers to ask Jesus, “Are you the one, or should I look for someone else?” “Have I wasted my life, cousin?” “Did I let the family connection blur my thinking?” “Was I listening too much to mom’s stories about Mary?”

Real questions. Realistic questions. Questions that many like John have.

Jesus didn’t attack the questions. He just answered.

“Go and tell John what you see.”

Matthew 11:1-2

In Matthew 10, we have the beginning of an internship. Jesus, having lived in front of disciples, is now sending them out to do what they have watched.

It’s a great strategy for teaching. At some point, if you want people to be able to live something out, you have to give them safe opportunities to try it, to find out what they know.

Jesus tells them where to go (and where not to go). He describes what they are to do (what he’s been doing). He tells them what to pack (nothing). He tells them where to stay (with supportive people). He tells them how people will respond (including the negative responses). He tells them what will happen to them (they’ll go to jail). He tells them what their support system will be (God). He tells them how to respond (with confidence).

If you read the paragraph above without the parentheses, it’s a pretty familiar description of topics, to be found in any internship description or short term missions invitation or even some travel guides. If you read just the parentheses, you would never ever go on this kind of a trip.

And if you look at the text itself, it gets worse.  Jesus is analyzing whether it’s better to be afraid of the one that can kill your body or your body and soul.

And we think, “I’ll take door number three, Jesus. I want the person who won’t kill either.”

But the options Jesus is presenting don’t include that safe option, not for peopel who want to take the next steps in following, not for people in the serious course.

The interesting thing is that the disciples apparently went. And survived. At least long enough to report this.

I think it’s safe to follow when he sends us.