The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Hope In A Jail Cell" (December 3 Midweek Prayer Service)
What if the clearest sign of hope isn’t a headline-worthy rescue, but a street-level repair you can name by heart? We step into Advent’s quiet tension with John the Baptist—not the fiery prophet at the river, but the truth-teller in a cell—asking whether the story he gave his life to is still worth trusting. His question to Jesus is raw and recognizable: Are you the one who is to come? Instead of a promise of escape, Jesus points to evidence that can be seen and heard: sight restored, bodies mended, dignity returned, the poor receiving good news.
We follow that trail of signs to what hope really looks like in hard seasons. Isaiah’s vision of a way in the wilderness becomes concrete—streams in a desert of isolation, chairs pulled up for the weary, music that gives breath back to a crowded month. Through Lauren Wright Pittman’s artwork, we picture a lamp-warmed cell, clothing stitched with open birdcages, and dancers whose number stops at six, a tender reminder that the work of peace is not complete. The image invites us to recognize inner freedom before outer release, and to let small glimmers sustain us when outcomes don’t match our timelines.
Together we rethink power and peace. Instead of palace showdowns, we look for community restoration: barriers removed, the marginalized welcomed back, people no longer reduced to their wounds. That shift is both spiritual and social, and it calls us to become part of the seventh dancer—joining God’s unfinished work with courage and care. If you’re carrying doubt, grief, or the ache of waiting, this conversation offers language, stories, and a way to notice the lantern light already moving in your room. Listen, share with someone who needs steady hope, and if this helped you breathe easier, subscribe and leave a review so others can find it too.
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All right. I know it seems a little bit silly to use the microphone with with so few of us, but uh we do have uh usually have at least one or two people that join us on the live stream. So um that's that's why we do that. So welcome to the four of y'all. And if anybody is watching this online now or later, we are grateful that we could join together and have a little bit of a pause as we go through for what many of us is the busiest month of the year, uh time of the year that has much joy in it, and for others, some some sadness and lament as well. So wherever you are um this day or some mixture of that, welcome to this space. And um Dr. Bill's gonna gather us with some music. All right, Mary Go ahead, thank you.
SPEAKER_03:God is healing and creating, redeeming and dreaming, calling and sending, listening and loving. Yes, indeed, God is at work. So may we worship our God who never gives up hope. May we worship our God who holds on to hope. Amen.
SPEAKER_04:Mike, and who wants to do our first scripture reading? Lynn will do that. All right.
SPEAKER_01:Merciful God, we need bread and we need laughter. We need music and we need a hand to hold. We need a chair to sit in and we need work to do. But maybe more than anything, we need your word and a reason to hope. So move through this space today and speak to us as only you can. Speak a word of hope deepened into our weary bones. For we need bread and we need laughter, but most of all, we need you. Amen.
SPEAKER_02:From Isaiah 43, 19 to 21. I am about to do a new thing, but now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself, so that they might declare my praise.
SPEAKER_04:Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. All right, y'all can remain seated, but if you all like to, we'll sing together this paraphrase of Isaiah 43 that uh Dr. Bill's gonna do to um Hyferidal, which y'all probably know as uh calm thou, foul or no, uh, calm thou long expected Jesus. Let us sing.
SPEAKER_00:Now, when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities. When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come? Or are we to wait for another? Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those in a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. What did you go out to the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft roads are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written. See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. Truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
SPEAKER_04:Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. So uh typically this is this is the second we're coming up on the second Sunday of Advent, which is uh the uh when we light the candle of peace. Hope was last Sunday, and peace is the second Sunday. And usually in the revised convectionary, which we're not following this time around, John the Baptist appears in the second week of Advent when he's calling um the scribes and the Pharisees a brood of vipers and warning them about the wrath to come, because nothing says peace. Quite like John the Baptist calling a bunch of people a brood of vipers. So um, this is a different uh part of the story of John the Baptist. This is not at the beginning, this is towards the end, um, when John the Baptist is uh in prison and probably is about to be executed. Does anybody remember what got John the Baptist landed in prison? Anybody remember? Why was John the Baptist in prison? Yes, he was preaching against Herod. So we're gonna talk a little bit about Herod again this Sunday. Please note this is a different Herod than the one we talked about last Sunday. Um last Sunday was a different Herod that was around when Jesus was born. This is obviously 30 something years later, and now this is a different Herod. I believe it's Herod Antipas, which is one of his sons, uh, was also a rather ruthless leader. But yes, John um criticized uh Herod, specifically who he chose to marry, and um but Herod did not like that and threw John the Baptist in jail. So remember, John the Baptist begins his ministry by pointing to whom? Not a true question, but Jesus. Um pointing to Jesus and saying, This is the Messiah. Remember, he says, I'm not even worthy to untie the song of his sandals. And when Jesus goes to baptize, to be baptized, what does John the Baptist initially say? He says, No, you should be you should be baptizing me. So um so at the very beginning of his ministry, John has the very clear idea that Jesus, his cousin, is the Messiah. And now fast forward, um fast forward some amount of time and is in jail, and now he's asking the following question. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for him? Sounds a little bit different. What do you hear in that question that John sends from the jail cell? Does that sound yeah, that sounds, it sounds, it sounds doubting. Um I think the reason that the folks at Sanctified Art included this story of John the Baptist is is the uh well, the the sermon title for this week is When We're Running Out of Hope and God Is at Work. So kind of this idea of how do we uh how do we keep our heads where the keep ourselves where the light is, so to speak, when we aren't seeing the fruits of our labor, right? Um and so that's kind of what we're gonna talk about, because this piece of artwork that you see right here, um which I know uh Barbara and uh Lynn have already seen, was uh was made by Lauren Wright Pittman, who is a Presbyterian pastor. And um this is does not really look like somebody who would be in prison, right? What do you notice in this depiction of John the Baptist? He's smiling, right? Um he's smiling. What else do you note? There's a lot of light. You would think that a a jail cell, a jail cell would be dark, damp, dang, but it's warm. All colour palette palette's very warm. He's got a bit of a smile. What else do you notice? Lynn said he knows that he's free even in jail. So there's um the bird cage? Oh, that's right. Thank you. Um yeah, I can I can zoom in. If you look at his clothing, thank you for that, Lynn. I'd forgotten about that. If you see on his clothing is uh a bird and cages, bird cages that have the doors swung open. Thank you for that, Lynn. I'd forgot about that. Um and then you'll also see figures around him that look like they're doing what? Look like they're dancing, right? Yeah, well, maybe. Anyways, this is this is our devotional for the day, and this is this is what Lauren said about this. She said John the Baptist was thrown in prison after publicly questioning the legality of Herod's marriage. Uh that's in Matthew 14, Matthew through 5. He was not afraid to go toe-to-toe with powerful uh with the powerful, and perhaps he expected Jesus' ministry to look more confrontational and politically strategic. In questioning Jesus, I wonder if John sought a particular answer to hang his hope on that maybe the Messiah would be how he'd imagined him. Maybe Jesus would bust him out of jail and take things straight to Herod, but Jesus offers something else. In this image, John sits in prison letting the disciples' testimony settle in. So John has the message, and then Jesus says, uh what does Jesus say? He says all those things about go tell John what you hear, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have brought have had good news brought to them. So this image she imagined of John's reaction to hearing that response from Jesus. I decided to um uh I decided to image this good news through the dancing light of a lantern in John's prison cell. I chose dancing figures because dancing feels like a primal response to the radical healing taking place outside the prison walls. As these six dancers illuminate the cell, I imagine John, even for a moment, breaking into a bit of laughter at the magnitude of Jesus' ministry. Jesus was quite literally doing the unimaginable. He was removing barriers so that the marginalized were no longer reduced to begging and sitting on mats, shoved to the edges of society. He was not only healing physical ailments, but perhaps more importantly, he was restoring people to community. Out of all the miracle miraculous actions mentioned, the news did not include release of the captives. With this message, John would know that he was not going to be freed. And so the number of dancers would remain one short of seven. As we know all too well, God's work isn't completed in Jesus' time. We are still woefully short of realizing the fullness of God's desire for all of creation, and the work is ours to see through. Until then, let us keep our eyes peeled for the glimmers of hope dancing all around us.