Beneath a Party of Favors

A party of luxury raged through the night, full of laughter and dancing and vice. Drapes in vivid blues and purples hung through the hall, and the table was bursting with a feast of overly spiced meat and wine. Firelight cast shadows into hidden alcoves and set the gilded trappings to a warm, golden glow, and servants wove their way around merry guests as they indulged Antipas. Outside in the corridor, a young girl prepared to perform a special dance for her stepfather under the careful instruction of her mother.

Far from the revelry, in a dark place made for forgotten men, a jailer sat with his prisoner. The two were a study in contrasts; the prisoner with shaggy hair and a full beard, arrayed in camel skin and several weeks’ worth of grime, and the jailer neatly groomed in a linen tunic. The jailer stood calmly outside the cell, one shoulder propped against the wall, and the prisoner shuffled from wall to wall, hands clasped behind his back and head bowed in thought.

“You know you could be free if you would just tone down that bit about sin, don’t you?” The jailer said, eyeing the so-called prophet. “Herod likes you. He listens to you.”

“He hears me speak, but that does not mean he listens,” the prisoner said. “If he listened, I would not need to tone down anything, he would simply repent and turn away from the sin in his life.”

“Ah, but there are certain sins that can’t just be walked away from, John. Would you have him abandon his wife?”

“He schemed and stole that wife of his from his own brother,” the prisoner said. “That is adultery.”

“Yes, but even you must admit that the situation is complicated. You can’t expect him to leave the woman purely on your say-so.”

At this the prisoner stopped his pacing, lifting his head to stare at the jailer. His brow furrowed over deep-set eyes and even in the shadowy space the jailer could see the man’s frown. The jailer knew, though it had not been said aloud, that repentance was not to John himself, but to God. And therefore, the say-so was not from John, but rather from the God he served. Perhaps Herod could ignore the urgings of a prophet in the desert, but he should never ignore the urgings of God.

Feeling defensive, the jailer pushed away from the wall and shrugged. “I’m just saying that the matter isn’t as cut and dry as you’re making it sound.”

“Yes, it is,” John said, sounding a little sad.

After a moment he resumed his pacing, shuffling from the wall to the iron grates and back again. The shackle on his ankle scraped across the floor with each turn, drowning out the sound of other prisoners snoring nearby. Some might still have been awake but neither the prisoner nor the jailer bothered to check if they were being observed. That hardly mattered in a place like this.

“You can’t just repent, be splashed in a bit of water, and then pretend like the life you led before never happened. There are other people involved here.”

“There are always other people involved,” John said.

“So you really are saying he should ignore his own responsibilities?” The jailer frowned, crossing his arms and shaking his head. “A man has got to take care of his own, John. Otherwise, what are we?”

The prisoner stopped again, turning to face the jailer. He sighed, meeting the man’s gaze across the quiet space. “No, that is not what I am saying,” John said. “A man has always got to own their mistakes, that’s half the point of repentance. Repentance can only come when we first acknowledge that what we have done is wrong. And then we must stop sinning.”

“Well, he can’t unmarry Herodias. Wouldn’t that be committing the same sin all over again?”

John chuckled and shook his head again. “It is not my place to decide what shape a man’s life might take after baptism. That would be between God and the man in question. The issue here, my friend, is that by denying his own sin, Antipas is not only ignoring his responsibilities as a man but offending God in the process.”

They were interrupted by a knocking at the dungeon door. The jailer turned and made his way up the cramped staircase, muttering something under his breath about the stubbornness of this particular prisoner. There were two men outside asking to speak to John, both were disciples of the prisoner and, since it was apparent the jailer was getting nowhere in their discussion, he let them in.

The disciples weren’t as shaggy as their teacher, but their garb had seen several days hard travel. Dust caked their sandals and dirt made stains around the hem of their robes. There was the smell of the desert on them too, dust baked into their skins and beards. Interested in what they had to report, the jailer positioned himself close by the gate to listen.

“We found him,” the younger of the disciples said. He was an excitable man, not a hint of grey on him, and every sentence he spoke sounded breathless. “He’s not at all what I’d expected…”

“What was his response to my message?” John asked, moving to stand beside the gate.

The disciples shared a look and for a moment there was silence. The jailer watched on, curious until the elder of the disciples answered.

“He told us to report to you what we have seen,” the man said. “That the blind are receiving sight and the lame are walking. Leprosy cured and the deaf can hear.”

“He raised the dead!” The younger man cut in. “A man named Lazarus was several days dead in his grave and Jesus called him out. I wouldn’t have believed it myself except that so many people saw it happen.”

The prisoner rocked back on his heels, his shackles shifting across the stone floor again. This was not the answer he had been expecting. He had hoped to draw Jesus out, to corner him into an open confession of who he was and perhaps spur some action. The Messiah was meant to free them from their bondage, to break the chains that bound them to Rome and yet, Jesus made no move against their captors.

Silence pooled through the prison, but it was a moving silence, a silence with purpose, and the prisoner turned to shuffle through his cell again. He stroked and tugged on his beard, remembering the day he’d baptized this Jesus. There had been no doubt then, no question of who his cousin was, and yet the man never claimed to be the Messiah.

Why did he doubt now?

The question lingered in his mind and he did what he always did when faced with a perplexing situation; John prayed. Behind him, his disciples began murmuring to each other, asking what this meant and what they should do, but John ignored them.

What had he missed?

The blind see, the lame walk, and the dead are raised. And yet for all these things, Jesus never preached about the destruction of Rome or the physical freedom of the Jewish nation. No, the man’s teachings laid on the freedom of an individual, on the love God held for each person.

There was the sound of keys at the top of the dungeon stair and a moment later heavy footfalls coming down.
John straightened, realization lighting through him. If history taught them anything, it was that there were always chains. From Egypt to the Roman Empire, their people had been in and out of slavery for ages, but there was a deeper, more sinister bond holding them captive; sin.

The same sin that John had spent his life preaching against, urging them to renounce in favor of following God. The chains that bound them to first sin, to the fall of man, undoubtedly meant more to God than a temporary slavery to the Roman Empire.
Smiling, he lifted his head, scarcely noticing the horrified looks on his disciple's faces or the remorse that pulled at the jailer’s mouth. He understood now and wondered at his own obtuseness for missing it.

 “But you can’t!” The younger disciple said. He moved as though to stop the jailer, who had lifted his keys, but the older disciple held his arm, pulling him back.

John noticed the newcomer then, a heavy-set man with a dour expression and a small parchment bearing Herod’s seal. The conversation became clear; his disciples were arguing that an execution could start a riot, to which the newcomer seemed neither inclined to agree nor impressed enough to argue because he simply gestured to the parchment.
The heavy scrape of the key in the lock made them all pause. The jailer stood there, motionless, key still in place, and met the prisoner’s gaze.

“Teacher, what should we do?” The disciple asked.

With calm steps, John made his way back to the gate. He gave an encouraging smile to the jailer, who still had not turned the key, and addressed his disciples. “Go and find Jesus,” he said to them.

The key turned, metal scraping against metal as the gate swung open, and John shuffled out to the executioner.