It was all going wrong.  John has been arrested by Herod and swaps desert for dungeon.  His wilderness voice must find a way through the prison bars.  Authority figures do what they like to do best - silence what threatens them.  But notice what Jesus does.  He moves immediately right into  the  heart  of  Herod's  domain,  steadily  into  the  teeth  of  resistance.   This  is  a  dangerous move.  But it was always so for those who carry light into darkness, life into death.  What will happen to Jesus now?
 
Notice again Matthews insight. Underneath the machinations of human monsters, prophecies are unfolding. As Jesus fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah he is no fool, playing into the hands of evil men. He is moving according to Gods plan, proclaiming a message that cannot be locked up or silenced.  The torch has passed from John to Jesus. The voice that cried in the desert now zings down the town streets, into residential areas and into the houses of Gods' children.  The Kingdom of Heaven is closer than you think.  If you are sitting in darkness and the shadows of death, God is arriving as the remedy.  As Light and Life! Problem: God is now but people are not!
 
So, Jesus needs help to uncover the hidden heaven.  He needs people to fish for people.  But first they must let go of one way of seeing the world and embrace another.  If they are going to swim in the spiritual sea where all people swim, they must come to see the deeper and wider dimensions of life.  They see hints of this in Jesus and move to follow Him.  He will teach them that people  are  not  fish  and  that  they  will  'catch'  people  only  by appealing to the deepest desire of their hearts.   
 
 
Jesus  is not  hiding  from Herod.   He  is teaching,  proclaiming and  healing  through all Herod's territory.   He  is  on  a  mission.  Johns'  imprisonment  is  not  going  to  stop  Him  and  people  are fascinated by him.
 
Here we must pause to remember all the people who have fascinated us in our life.  Can you remember those you admired and wanted to imitate?  Every day, people are leaning into life and coaxing it towards redemption.  These are people who make the world a better place.  When we catch them 'at it' we are fascinated and want to know more.  When we see someone thinking, speaking or acting in a way that we are not yet able to but we wish we could - we apprentice ourselves to them.  Isn't a disciple just a fascinated person who desires to know and do what they see in another?  We gravitate towards them and learn something new.  We have probably been doing this all our lives
 
I heard a story once about a drug rehabilitation centre.  One day, an ex-resident turned up in the reception  area  with  a  cricket  bat,  shouting  and  screaming  and  banging  his  bat  on  the furniture.  Everyone dived for cover.  But the manager came out of her office, walked right up to the guy, put her arms around him and gave him a big long hug.  His violence transfigured into sobs.  She held him in that strange embrace for a while then led him to a chair and waited for the police to arrive.  He never let go of the bat.
 
I want to know what makes this woman tick! And I have a hunch that she knows exactly what drove Christ back into Galilee.

John the Baptist doesn't just see Jesus, he sees into the heart and mission of Jesus. His invitation to 'Behold' means something worth looking at is before us.  John calls Jesus the 'Lamb of God' and so do we. Yet, the sin that He takes away cannot just be seen as the individual transgressions we might make.  What is taken away is the experience of being isolated from God.  Jesus frees the temple animals, because they are no longer needed. The disciples go with Him at the time when animals were sacrificed in the Temple and find everything they need in Him.  What is needed is to have communion with the Beloved Son of God.
 
John also admits to what he does not know.  He has to grow in his understanding and relationship with Jesus.  John is granted a  sacred  communication  that  Jesus  and  the  Spirit  are inseparable.    He  has  to  work  at  this  insight  to  make  it  bear fruit.  Coming to see the truth of Jesus takes time, patience and a genuine desire to come and see what He is revealing. We see a  pattern  develop.   John  sees  Jesus,  witnesses  to  Him  and creates new disciples. Two new disciples see Jesus, witness to Him and create more disciples.  It seems that we have to find out  the  truth  about Jesus for  ourselves  but  others who  have already discovered it can show us the way.
 
We should ask ourselves a question about our relationship with Jesus and how we share this with others.  We don't do this by having yes or no, right or wrong answers but by sharing the adventure we have been enjoying.  It means we have to be honest about how our  faith  in  Him  has  changed  and  developed.   This  kind  of  uncompromising  honesty means that our sense of the adventure might be complex.
 
I  came  across  a  story  about  three  people  who  arrived  at  the  door  of  a  spiritual teacher.  She asked all of them the same question. "Did you come to me because of others  or  because  of  yourself?"   The  first  answered  that  they  had  been  sent  by others.   They  were  dismissed.   The  second  answered  that  they  came  of  their  own accord.  They were dismissed.  The third stammered that they had heard of the teacher from others and yet, they also felt that they had come on their own - part curious, part frustrated, part searching and a whole lot of other reasons and motives which were hard to  describe.   The spiritual teacher said, "You'll do."   The  honest,  complex person  was accepted.
 
I don't know all of the reasons I am drawn to Jesus and struggle to follow Him.  But in my own mind, hallmarks of genuine testimony begin to take shape.  Honest self-examination, complexity  and  humility.   If  my  testimony  is  meant  to  attract  others  to  Jesus,  I  worry sometimes that after hearing or seeing me they might look elsewhere.  But I also see that I must not over worry on this point.  If I try to package Jesus, I lose the only truth that sustains  me.   You  might  agree  that  giving  testimony  is  tricky  ground.   But  what's  the alternative?

The Galilean stood high on the hill, 
alone on the hill.  Safe on the hill. 
and he did not like it. 
 
Like a God, Paul said, who, 
alone in the Heavens, high in the Heavens, safe in the Heavens, 
one day looked down to catch the eye of every human being looking up. 
And the slow tear of God began to make a tear in the Heavens. 
 
From toe to knee the tear was Compassion  
for all the blood that would never again find a vein. 
From knee to chest the tear was desire  
to unbreak every broken heart. 
From chest to eyes the tear was love, 
to kiss all who must enter the cave of death. 
 
From eyes to earth, the tear became Jesus, 
watching the brown river breaking against the waist of John the Baptist,  
who was busy burying people with his big shovel hands  
and then lifting them fresh and new  
with a force more violent than childbirth. 
 
The Gospel is filled with stories in which people come to see and love in 
themselves what Jesus sees and loves in them!  Jesus sees the child of God in us with 
such clarity that we begin to see it in ourselves.  But first he must know it in himself. The 
One who awakens others to love must first himself be awakened.  In the Gospels, Jesus 
walks the pathways of Love and helps us to do the same.  All that he says and does - 
his meetings, his stories, his teachings, his deeds - are in the service of this awakening.  
 
I think that the way we come to reverence and love our true self is the real reason that 
Jesus allows John to baptise him. He not only shows us how to allow ourselves to 
welcome the Spirit, and listen for the voice of the Abba. He shows us how to disentangle 
ourselves from all that is not Love. What he learned at the Jordan was this: 
 
ONLY WHEN WE ASCEND OUT OF THE WATERS WHERE WE ARE GIVEN A NEW 
HEART WILL WE SEE THE DOVE OF PEACE AND HEAR THE VOICE OF LOVE.