Matthew 11:1-11
Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
December 7, 2025
Perhaps you’ve heard this quote before: “The secret to finding happiness is having something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.”
Sound familiar? It was jingling around in my head earlier this week so I tried to find out where it came from. Turns out, no one’s quite sure who said it originally.
I went off in search of it because a quick re-read of Viktor Frankl’s slim masterpiece Man’s Search for Meaning, made me think of it. Frankl was born in 1905 to a Jewish family in Vienna. A bit of a prodigy, he started studying the emerging field of psychology when he was still in high school. He struck up a correspondence with Sigmund Freud, who was so impressed with the teen’s work that he submitted it for publication in an academic journal.
Eventually, Frankl became known as the founder of the Third School of Viennese Psychotherapy, after Freud and Albert Adler. Frankl called his model Logotherapy, from the Greek logos or “meaning.” He believed that humans find healing and wholeness when we are able to make meaning out of our lives. Without meaning, even the easiest life can become dull and unbearable. And with meaning, even the most difficult of circumstances can still serve a purpose. And Frankl knew a thing or twenty about difficult circumstances because he spent several years in Nazi concentration camps where his mother, father, brother, and newlywed wife were all killed.
Before those horrors, though, he had already spent a great deal of time looking suffering in the face. As a medical student, he established youth counseling centers in Vienna to work with depressed teenagers and was successful in reducing the number of teen suicides in the city. After graduation, he worked in a local hospital with women who were suicidal, again, seeking to alleviate their suffering and reduce deaths.
Through these experiences and others, Frankl came to believe that humans find healing through meaning-making. He believed that we all have the capacity to make meaning, no matter the circumstances of our lives. Over time, his Logotherapy techniques were used all over the world and, in fact, are still being used today.
For Frankl, existential crises are opportunities to find deeper satisfaction in our lives. When we grapple with that age-old question “what is the meaning of life?” we are doing important work. There is, of course, no one-size-fits-all answer. Frankl said trying to find one answer to the question would be like asking a chess master “what’s the best chess move?” There isn’t one, of course. There’s only context and what might be the best move in any particular moment, by any particular player, in any particular game.
While there isn’t ONE answer to the meaning-of-life-question there are patterns to how humans struggle with the question. Frankl said that humans discover meaning in life in three different
ways: 1) by creating and doing, 2) by experiencing others, most often through love, and 3) “by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.” [2]
So the secret to finding happiness is to have something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for. But the secret to making meaning is having something to do, someone to love, and….suffering?
I’d rather find the meaning of life through door number one or two, please and thank you. Having something to do is great. Having someone to love is even better. But suffering? Not our favorite, right?
Please note that Frankl never advocated for suffering as inherently good. In fact, he was always careful to clarify that he was talking about how we move through unavoidable suffering. If we can remove the causes of suffering, he said, we should. But sometimes suffering simply cannot be avoided and it is in those instances where we humans may transcend our initial limitations and do incredible things.
The artwork on the cover of this week’s worship bulletin is a portrait of suffering. Of course, you wouldn’t know that at a quick glance. A man sits at a table with a beautiful lantern in front of him. His wide smile and relaxed posture gives the impression he doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s only when you read the artist’s statement that you come to understand what we’re looking at here: this is John the Baptist near the end of his life, imprisoned for getting on the wrong side of a tyrant. Not pictured is his cousin, Jesus, who is in dialogue across the miles with John in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew.
John, behind bars, is having an existential crisis of sorts. He asks a few friends to go out and find Jesus and ask him: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” In other words, “Is this it, Jesus? Are you our best hope? Or is there something more?”
The question evokes deep sadness and despair. Why, exactly, is John asking this? Does he feel that his work has been in vain? Did he have a different vision for what Jesus would be able to accomplish? Does he wonder if he’s somehow missed an important step or gone the wrong way?
Jesus doesn’t answer the question directly with a yes or no. Instead, he urges the messengers, “Go back to John and tell him what you’ve seen on the outside. Tell him about the changes you’ve witnessed in people’s lives. The healing that is taking place all over. Tell him about the glimmers of hope that are all around us.”
The gospel author’s portrait of what healing looked like in the first century is different from how we might capture it today. Disability activists have taught us that not every person in a wheelchair wants to walk and we shouldn’t see deafness and blindness as conditions that need to be fixed. Disabilities were, of course, understood differently 2000 years ago and artist Lauren Wright Pittman speaks an important word when she gives a slight reframe to what’s happening here. She says “[Jesus] was removing barriers so that the marginalized were no longer reduced to begging and sitting on mats, shoved to the edges of society.” The question for our time is perhaps more in line with that observation: how do we continue to heal society so that people with disabilities have barriers removed and can participate fully, unhindered?
When barriers are removed, those who have been pushed to the margins are restored to community - right where they should have been in the first place. This restoration, along with the proclamation of good news to the poor, is a powerful sign of God’s relentless love and care. As John languishes in prison wondering, “Is this it?” Jesus gently encourages him to fix his eyes on the glimmers of hope that are miraculously breaking through all around them.
John’s friends depart, presumably to take Jesus’s message back to him. And this is the moment Pittman captures in Hope Like a Dancer. The lantern casts light on the prison walls and John is transported beyond the confines of hopelessness. The six figures dancing are a gift: light in the darkness, laughter and joy breaking through the misery for just a moment.
This brief moment of joy and peace doesn’t change the outcome for John. Pittman tells us there are only six dancing figures, not the “more perfect” seven you might expect. Because things are not going to be perfect for John. Glimmers or hope may be present everywhere beyond those prison walls, but for John, this is the end of the road. He will lose his life in this struggle with Empire - just as so many others before and after him. But in this snapshot of joy, we can see the truth Viktor Frankl would come to understand centuries later: we humans are able to transform even the most painful unavoidable suffering into meaning-filled moments of clarity, peace, and even joy. With God’s help, we can transcend even the most horrific situations and find meaning, knowing that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves.
This healing balm - this ability to transcend - goes by many names in the world’s religions. In Christianity we often speak of salvation - the way that the Christ-force acts upon us, binding up our wounds, and pouring out a healing salve on whatever ails us.
As his cousin nears the end of his life, Jesus of Nazareth taps into that Christ-force and gives a blessing of sorts. After John’s messengers leave, Jesus isn’t quite through thinking about John. John, who has done so much, who has worked so hard, who paved the way for Jesus’s ministry. And who is now languishing in prison wondering if it’s been worth it at all.
Jesus tells the crowds about John. He tells them not to forget him. He reminds them that he’s not only been a prophet, but more than that: he’s been a light-bearer in the darkness. He’s been a wayfinder when the road has been a swampy mess. And a hope-monger when all seemed lost.
With Jesus, we, too, give thanks for John’s life and ministry as we seek meaning in our own lives. May it be so.
NOTES:
[1] https://reference.jrank.org/biography-2/Frankl_Viktor.html, https://www.viktorfrankl.org/biography.html
[2] Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 133.
