After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized— John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.
Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’ John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.’
-John 3:22-30 NRSV
After years of trying, a young actor got his break and scored a bit part in an upcoming film. He was cast as a grocery deliveryman in one scene but he had a couple of lines. A friend of his heard the news and asked him, “So, what’s the movie about?” “Well,” the young actor excitedly replied, “it’s about this grocery delivery guy who shows up at this apartment…”
The person who told me that story years ago intended it to illustrate that, if you want success in life, nothing beats seeing yourself as the protagonist of the narrative. Be the hero in your own story!
I get the feeling John the Baptist would have strangled that guy.
Is there a more American word than “More”? Is there a less American word than “Less”? We are conditioned by our culture to be singularly excellent. Has anything been as mercilessly mocked as the so-called ‘participation trophy’? We applaud and reward the drive for individual excellence and build our social systems around competition in ways that feed the belief that achievement necessarily means beating out others for what we want, that nobody will hand you anything in life.
John’s joy is not in his own story. What a refreshing attitude to take in the midst of a meritocracy where the pressure is on to focus entirely on ourselves, whether touting our successes or minimizing our vulnerabilities. In the face of his own disciples’ competitive jealousy and disappointment with their teacher’s waning influence and impact, John is at peace.
“No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.” That doesn’t mean a life of passivity – quite the contrary, in fact – but it does recognize that outcomes are not the sole judge of our efforts. Success and achievement are the consequence of more than just our own intent and labor. Planning, preparation and hard work are important and good, but none of them obligate God. What used to be called ‘providence’ is the capacity to rest in knowing that all of our efforts in life are prayers offered in faith to a loving God who is the true actor in the world’s story.
John recognizes that his own life is in service to the One who comes to save all of humankind. “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’” He relishes his role as the forerunner, as the one pointing to the real Messiah. He doesn’t feel that Jesus is stealing his thunder; to the contrary, his whole purpose has been to reveal the glory of God. He understands that his work is meaningful to the extent that it points to Jesus and he rejoices in that role. As a consequence, he is liberated from the need to validate his own existence with a long resume, a shelf full of trophies or thousands of followers.
I wonder sometimes if the focus of Christmas is also the danger of it. The little Christ child in the manger doesn’t compete with us for the role of protagonist. He is meek and mild and entirely unassuming. He doesn’t intrude at all on our lives or make demands of us. He has a role with no lines. Locked away in perpetual infancy, he’s the perfect little Messiah for a self-involved age.
John is the prophet of Advent because he relentlessly reminds us that the child we adore is, in Eliot’s phrase, ‘the still point of the turning world.’ Jesus is the center of the world’s story. We ourselves are not unimportant to that story as long as we remember our lines: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!”
The Rev. J Michael Matkin
Rector
St. Andrew’s, Stillwater