Soft Robes & Patient Faith
Text: James 5:7-10 and Matthew 11:2-11
By Rev. Tim Auman
In Matthew’s gospel, John the Baptist is in prison. That’s important, because we tend to
picture John as a Woodstock-going, farm-to-table dining, long-haired, conscientious-
objector kind of wild man. But now he is locked away, silenced by bars, walls, and
chains. And from his cell he asks Jesus a question almost shocking in its honesty: “Are
you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” This is not the question of a
cynic. It is the question of a faithful person whose expectations have collided with
reality.
Some of you may remember The Matrix, where everyone is asking essentially the same
question about Neo: “Is he the One?” What’s interesting is that certainty never finally
comes through an argument or declaration. It comes through the way Neo lives. Jesus
responds to John in much the same way. He doesn’t simply say, “Yes.” Instead, he
says: Look at what is happening. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk. Those
who have been pushed to the margins hear good news. In other words, don’t just listen
to my words—look at the life unfolding around me. Perhaps that is still how we
recognize God’s presence most clearly: wherever lives are being healed, hope is being
restored, and love is taking on flesh.
Jesus then turns to the crowd and says something curious about John. John is not “a
reed shaken by the wind,” nor is he someone dressed in “soft robes.” Soft robes—that’s
an interesting phrase. John lives on the margins, speaks inconvenient truths, and pays
for it first with his freedom and ultimately with his life. Soft robes belong elsewhere,
among those insulated from hunger, poverty, fear, and the uncertainty of living paycheck
to paycheck. Today we might think of Prada, Gucci, Versace, gated communities, legacy
wealth, and extraordinary privilege.
We live in an age of enormous wealth, yet many middle-class and working families find
themselves working harder simply to afford housing, healthcare, groceries, and gas. A
very small percentage of people wear metaphorical soft robes indeed, accumulating
extraordinary wealth, land, influence, and power while everyone else is told to tighten
their belts and wait patiently for their turn at the American Dream. The gospel has never
been particularly impressed by soft robes—not because comfort itself is evil, but
because insulation from reality can dull our compassion. Wrap ourselves in enough
layers of wealth, security, and bulletproof glass, and we can easily forget how difficult
life is for everyone else.
Then Jesus says something even more startling: John is great, but the least in God’s
Beloved Community is greater than he. This is not a dismissal of John. It is a
redefinition of greatness. Our world measures greatness by wealth, influence, titles,
achievement, and power. God measures it differently: by compassion rather than power,
service rather than status, love rather than domination. The greatest are not those who
stand above others, but those who stand with them.
And that brings us to James: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the
Lord.” James was writing to people who genuinely believed Christ would return very
soon. History, as we know, had other ideas. The early Christians were wrong about the
timing, but they were not wrong about our responsibility. James offers the image of
farmers and gardeners, people who know that growth cannot be forced—only tended.
Patience, then, is not passive waiting. It is faithful endurance. Christ-like living was
never meant to be a temporary holding pattern while we waited to escape this world. It
was meant to become the shape of our lives.
John’s question from prison and James’ call for patience meet us exactly where we are.
We know injustice persists. We know the Beloved Community has not arrived in its
fullness. We know that sometimes our best efforts seem barely noticeable. And still we
are asked to live as though God is at work—as though the Spirit still moves across the
face of the earth.
This is very different from the prosperity gospel, which suggests that wealth and
success are signs of God’s favor. Jesus never encouraged us to wear soft robes.
Instead, he invites us to pay attention: to healing wherever it happens, good news
wherever it is spoken, justice wherever it stirs, and the Spirit wherever wind and flame
appear. God’s Beloved Community often arrives quietly, stubbornly, and with absolutely
no regard for our preferred timelines.
So we wait—but not with folded arms. We wait with open eyes. We stand with those
who are frightened, hurting, poor, and marginalized rather than retreating behind walls
and wrapping ourselves in soft robes. John waited in prison. Farmers and gardeners
wait for rain. And we wait in a world that sometimes scares the hell out of us.
As we return to that world, may we resist looking for God only in the dramatic, powerful,
or certain. May we notice instead the quiet work of healing, small acts of mercy,
unexpected courage, and tenderness that refuses to give up. May we have the patience
of farmers and gardeners, trusting that much of what is sacred grows slowly and often
hidden from view. And may we never become so comfortable or insulated that we fail to
recognize Christ waiting beside us in the ordinary, the vulnerable, and in one another.
And may our lives become the good news someone else has been waiting to see.
Amen.