How do you feel when the ”new kid on the block” steals your thunder, steals your limelight? Or when something you’ve worked long and hard for is taken away and given to someone else? Or perhaps the client-base that you’ve spent so long building up starts to go elsewhere, and your customers find an alternative source of supply? Or perhaps your flock leave to follow another path?
It can feel like a personal insult, a kick in the teeth, you feel you have a right to be hurt, offended, and you begin to question yourself. What have I done wrong? What could I have done differently? Am I no longer good enough and if not, why? It is hard not to take rejection personally, not to feel hurt, betrayed or let down.
In our passage from John’s gospel this evening, John is baptising people. Jesus also is baptising close by, and we are told all are going to him. John is being deserted by many as they turn to Jesus. John does not take this as a personal insult or as a slight against his own baptism. He replies “I am not the messiah but 1 have been sent ahead of him.”
This passage demonstrates the loveliness of the total humility of John the Baptist. Men were leaving John for Jesus and John’s disciples were worried, they did not like to see their master take second place. They didn’t like to see him abandoned while the crowds flocked to hear and see the new teacher instead. In answer to their complaints it would have been easy for John to feel injured, neglected and unjustly forgotten. Sometimes a friend’s sympathy can be the worst possible thing for us. It can make us feel sorry for ourselves and encourage us to think that we have not had a fair deal. This is not however John’s attitude to the situation. He told his disciples three things.
Firstly: he tells them that he had never expected anything else. Instead he reaffirms the fact that his position was not the leading place but that he was merely sent as the forerunner and the preparer for someone greater who was to come. He is merely the indicator pointing the way. Life would be much easier if more people were willing to play a more subordinate role, to support others rather than compete with them. Many people seek the greatness for themselves, but John was not like that. He knew the role that God had given him and he was happy fulfilling that role, and part of that role was to point the way to and prepare the way for Jesus; to prepare hearts and minds to receive the messiah. Preparation is the key to so many things. Perhaps it would save a lot of resentment and heartbreak if we could realise that there are certain things which are just not for us and instead accept with all our hearts the role that God has given us to play and to do it well, for God’s sake. To do any task for God, even if perceived a small insignificant or subordinate role is to be great in the eyes of God.
Secondly: John says that no man could receive more than God gave him. If a new teacher was winning more followers it was not because God was stealing them from John but because he was giving them to Jesus. God will move hearts and minds of men to receive him and if that meant turning from John then so be it. Perhaps it was time to move on. And we too need to recognise when it is time to move on, to follow Jesus more closely than previously, to perhaps leave the comfort of the past behind and to move onto fresh pastures, to new and greater things. We need to be open to the prompting of the Spirit, and the ways of the Lord. We need to recognise the signs and to follow them.
Finally: John uses a vivid picture recognisable to all Jews. He calls Jesus the Bridegroom and refers to himself as the mend of the Bridegroom. One of the great pictures of the Old Testament is of Israel as the bride of God and God as the bridegroom of Israel. The union between God and Israel was so close it was likened to a wedding. The New Testament also uses this analogy when it speaks of the church as the bride of Christ. And it is this picture that John portrays. Jesus had come from God; he was the Son of God, Israel his bride. The one place that John claims for himself is that of the mend of the bridegroom.
The mend of the Bridegroom has a unique and an important place at a Jewish wedding. He acted as a liaison between the bride and the bridegroom, he sent out the invitations and he prepared the way for the wedding.
John’s task was to bring Israel and Jesus together. His job complete, he would be happy to fade into the background. He, like us, is one of God’s servants, with a specific but valuable task to perform. He was happy and honoured to do his bit for God. We too have our tasks to perform, however menial they may appear to us. We should be both happy and honoured to perform them for the glory of God and for the furtherance of his Kingdom.
Jan.