John the Forerunner: His Perspective John 1:29-34 & 3:22-30

Transcription

1 John the Forerunner: His Perspective John 1:29-34 & 3:22-30 March 26, 2017 Laurel Neal 1

2 John 1:29-34 (NIV) John Testifies About Jesus The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave this testimony: I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is God s Chosen One. John 3:22 (NIV) John Testifies Again About Jesus After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. 2

3 John the Forerunner: His Perspective John 1:29-34 & 3:22-30 March 26, 2017 Laurel Neal I So I was driving home from work one day several years ago when we lived in Oklahoma City. I remember I felt tired and demoralized. It was one of those days all of us have, no matter what kind of work we do. The kind of day when we work hard but don t accomplish much of anything. The kind of day when what s important gets overwhelmed by what s urgent or, worse, by what s trivial. The kind of day that ends in discouragement and exasperation. Anyway, I was headed home on a day like that. I was sitting at an intersection, waiting for the light to change when I noticed the bumper sticker on the red pick-up truck in front of me. A bumper sticker that posed this very profound and probing question: What if the hokey pokey is what it s all about? Well, I m glad some of you laughed, because I did, too. There I was, heading home in a funk, wondering whether my work even mattered wondering why God had invented churches and pastors in the first place when a bumper sticker, of all things, managed to restore my sense of perspective. II After all, perspective matters. How we see God, others, and ourselves, determines almost everything else we decide and do. This is true for us and it was just as true for John the Forerunner, whose perspective was as clear as his purpose and his preaching. We re traveling through Lent with John who s better known to most of us as John the Baptist, but among Orthodox Christians is known as John the Forerunner. This is because John s purpose, given to him by God prior to his birth, was to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. God was 3

4 about to arrive on the scene in person in Jesus and folks needed a heads-up. They needed a chance to get ready for God s visit. John s job was to help them do that. John fulfilled this purpose mostly through his preaching which was intense and focused on calling people to repent. Repentance, as we learned last week, has nothing to do with feeling sorry for our sins. Instead, repentance involves life change: it involves changing our mind, heart, direction, behavior, and relationships so they re in alignment with God himself. Here was John s message: that God himself was about to arrive on the scene. His fellow Jews had been longing for God s intervention for decades and they thought they were already ready for it. But John knew they weren t ready, so his preaching was all about rousting people out of bed. His preaching woke people up. It shocked them into paying attention, into getting their lives in order. It s hard to believe, but this prickly message of John s made him incredibly famous. Thousands of people trekked out to the desert to see him and hear him preach. Those who took John seriously, repented which means they changed their lives. They rearranged themselves in relationship to God and then they confirmed this realignment by getting baptized. This is what got them ready for God to arrive. When the time was right, Jesus trekked out to the desert to see John and even Jesus wanted to get baptized. Reflecting on this event, John says that he, himself, did not know him and he says this twice, in John 1:31 and John 1:33. But Matthew and Luke both tell us that John and Jesus were cousins, so what does John mean when he says this? As cousins, we know that Jesus and John did know each other at least to some degree. So the verb John uses here is important. He uses a verb that means to know in the sense of recognizing something and recognizing it with certainty. And he puts this verb into the pluperfect tense, which is rarely used in Greek. So what he s really saying is more like this: God told me to announce the arrival of the Messiah, which is what I was doing but I had no idea exactly who the Messiah was. Only God knew. I was 4

5 surprised, I can tell you, when the Messiah turned out to be my own cousin, Jesus! Even I d never seen that coming could never have known or guessed such a thing on my own. But God made it plain to me who my cousin Jesus really is: the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! Because of this new insight, John was reluctant to baptize Jesus but Jesus insisted. And after the baptism, John was even clearer about who Jesus was: This is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me I have seen and I testify, John declared, that this is God s Chosen One. John was clear about who Jesus was and this meant that he was increasingly clear about himself and his own role in the world. III Moving on to John 3, John is being interrogated by some of his own disciples. Interrogated about Jesus, whose fame and popularity are now outpacing John s fame and popularity. It s fair to say that John s response has reverberated down the centuries: He Jesus must become greater; I must become less. He must increase, but I must decrease. At the heart of this response, we discover John s perspective. His perspective on his own role and his perspective regarding his own importance. Regarding his role, John appeals to Jewish wedding customs. It was customary at Jewish weddings for the groom s closest friend to handle all the arrangements. And this is the role John sees himself playing in relation to Jesus. The role of doing everything necessary to bring off a wedding between Jesus and Israel. Not to be, in any sense, the bridegroom himself. Just a few weeks ago, I told you about what happened when my dad proposed to my mom. It was My dad was serving in the Army Air Corps in the South Pacific, and my mom was working in an office back in Pittsburgh. I told you how my father dispatched his father to buy a ring 5

6 and pop the question to my mother on his behalf. At the age of 72, my grandfather did as requested, secured an affirmative response from my mom, and sent that famous telegram to my dad in New Guinea: Ring purchased, paid for, presented. Trust you can carry on from here. Here s why I m bringing this incident up again. My grandfather made the arrangements for this marriage but my father was the bridegroom. My grandfather prepared the way, but he didn t get in the way. Like John, he knew who he was and who he wasn t. He knew his role. He knew he had an important part to play in getting the bride and bridegroom together. But just like John the Forerunner, my grandfather was very clear about not being the bridegroom himself. IV So John was clear about his role. But this clarity about his role also shaped his perspective about his own importance. John sounds modest and self-effacing in translation, doesn t he? He must increase, but I must decrease. But in Greek, what he says sounds a little different: He must increase, John says. But I must be decreased. Here s what I think is going on with John. John was an important person a key person, really in salvation history. But he knows he s not the main event that Jesus is. So he thinks it s right that Jesus become more important and more prominent. But he also knows that for this to happen, he has to become less prominent. He knows he s done his job and fulfilled his purpose. He s done everything he could to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So John graciously passes the torch to Jesus. But what John also seems to know is that he can t actually become smaller on his own. He knows he ll probably have to be acted upon: made smaller made less important and less prominent by others. 6

7 I wonder if you ve ever seen the movie The Incredibles. It s one of those fun films from Pixar I think it came out 12 or 13 years ago. The Incredibles pays homage to classic comic book heroes, and it does this with a story that s all about identity and significance. As expected, superheroes protect the world from evil and destruction. But in The Incredibles, the superheroes also cause a lot of collateral damage. This collateral damage irritates the public. Expensive lawsuits are filed. And these lawsuits eventually force all the superheroes out of business and into a kind of witness protection program. Forbidden to reveal their true identities, or use their special powers, the superheroes now live small, cramped, ordinary lives,especially, Bob Parr a.k.a. Mr. Incredible. Bob is married to Helen, who is really Elastigirl. Together they have 3 superhero children with special powers of their own powers Bob and Helen frantically try to keep under wraps. In his days as Mr. Incredible, Bob was a big guy with a big job and a big life. He was important, and he protected his importance his prominence and popularity by always working alone. But as Bob Parr, ordinary citizen, Bob is a big guy with a small life. Now he works as a claims adjuster for an insurance company where he s, literally, too big for his office and,figuratively, too big for his job. Bob is unimportant and he hates it. After 15 years of this smallness, Bob begins receiving clandestine invitations to resume his former identity and save the 7

8 world. He jumps at the chance partly because he really does care about the world, but mostly because he can t handle not being incredible. Back in his Mr. Incredible role, Bob still prefers to work alone. He prefers to be big and he s looking for admiration. He d probably still be working alone if one of his secret missions hadn t turned out to be bigger than he was. If adversity hadn t struck. If technology hadn t changed on him. If his wife and kids hadn t pressured him. In The Incredibles, it turns out that saving the world depends on Bob becoming smaller instead of bigger less important rather than more important. But Bob has to be made smaller every step of the way. He finally consents to it out of necessity, God bless him but it s hard to say he really chooses it, and he certainly doesn t ask for it. It s John the Forerunner who seems to ask to be acted upon in this way. John s a superhero in his own right, but his perspective is that God s mission is bigger than he his. And that Jesus is the main event not him. This perspective leads to John s conviction that he needs to become smaller than Jesus. And then to a deeper conviction about needing to be made smaller in the eyes and hearts of other people. John is, in fact, one of the most important people in salvation history. We see him in the gospels exercising his God-given gifts and living out his God-given purpose: to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. To be the friend of the bridegroom. And this clarity about who he is enables John to set his followers straight when they get carried away. When they invest him with status and authority he doesn t deserve. So he challenges them: to shift their primary allegiance away from himself and onto Jesus, where it belongs. 8

9 V John s perspective is worth thinking about, even in the 21st century in relation to ourselves and in relation to the churches we re part of. If John the Forerunner is right, then we and our churches aren t the main event either. Like John, we re just friends of the bridegroom. We re witnesses to Jesus Christ. We re messengers and servants. Our job is also to make ready a people prepared for the Lord: to prepare the way for Jesus in other people s lives and to get ready, and stay ready, ourselves. To align the story of our lives with the much bigger story God s writing in human history. Like John, we don t always recognize all that God has done or all that God is doing, or all that God is about to do. We don t always recognize everything about who we are or the purpose God has for us. That s what these next couple of months will be about at MPC: discovering more about who you are as a congregation and discovering some of the main contours of your future. Right now the Transition Team is finalizing a church-wide discovery process for April and May and the April newsletter will have all the details the front page. But if you consider MPC your church home, we want you to participate. If you worship here on a regular basis whether regular is every Sunday, or once or twice a month, or just several times a year we want you to participate. Whether you re officially a member of this church or not, whether you ve been here forever or only recently arrived whether you ve settled in for the long haul or are still church shopping we want you to participate. Why? Because there s some stuff God knows and wants to make clear to you: about your congregational strengths and gifts; about the core of who you are as a community of disciples; about what God wants to do in you and through you in the years ahead; about what kind of pastor you need. And, at least, some of these insights will be a surprise something you couldn t possibly get unless God himself revealed them to you. John the Forerunner teaches us to lean into transitions like these 9

10 transitions between what God has been doing and what God is about to do. A big part of this upcoming process of congregational discovery is maintaining our perspective about who we are. Almost 500 years ago, our forbear, John Calvin, said this about John the Forerunner and his perspective: Calvin said John would willingly endure to be reduced to nothing, providing Christ fills the whole world. 1 So how about us? Are we willing to be made smaller so there s more room for Jesus where we live, and work, and worship? So there s more room for Jesus in us? More room for what Jesus wants to do in you and me for what Jesus wants to do in and through MPC? Because this not the hokey pokey is what it s all about. Not more room for us and what we want, but more room for Jesus and what he wants. Until Jesus, as God intends, does indeed fill us and the whole world with himself. 1 0