FILO: Advent for the Church Technical ArtistНамуна

Today we are looking at a passage from John, chapter 1, verses 19-34.

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

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 the Baptist is one of my favorite supporting characters in the gospels, partly because he knows that’s exactly what he is. He knows the story’s not about him, but he’s happy to play a supporting role, and I find that attitude conspicuous and compelling.

In today’s full-court press of personal aspirations, public competition, and performance anxiety, I think Shakespeare would have rephrased his famous characterization of life to be, “All the world’s a stage, and we are the stars.” We’re all busily building our audiences, assembling our tribes, and marketing our brand and experiences to the masses. It’s hard not to feel like the story is our story. It’s hard not to feel like we’re the directors, producers, and stars in the extraordinary tale of our lives.

But John reminds the Pharisees and the rest of us that this story is ultimately not our story. It’s God’s. Before creation, God penned the epic tale of redemption and real life that he’s been rolling out ever since. Ironically, these chapters of our lives that we find so riveting aren’t really about us; they’re about bigger things and part of a bigger narrative. We are supporting characters, and the details of who we are and what we’re about serve only to establish the main character, Jesus, and to move his father’s great plot forward. That realization is life-changing and life-giving because it reframes our lives as character arcs in the scheme of greater purposes and a grander story. It recasts our roles as simultaneously so much less and so much more.

Lately, I’ve been watching Marvel movies with my parents. They’re in their eighties, and sometimes the jump-into-the-middle-of-the-action, non-linear style of the production requires me to pause the movie and recap things, so my folks don’t lose the plotline in the commotion. I think that’s a little of what John is doing here. He’s telling the Pharisees not to get hung up on him and what they’ve seen him do because the main character is about to be introduced, and they ain’t seen nothing yet. He tells them everything’s been leading up to Jesus, and everything will be about him in the end.

I still hear the Pharisees’ questions in the daily din of social media and my other interactions. “Who are you? Give us an answer that’ll travel well.” I rise to their challenge too often. I cue the trailer that will hook them on the blockbuster movie of my life, or I let them know my story is epic, and I am too. But John doesn’t do either. He hears the pharisees’ questions as invitations to do his job as a supporting character and points unmistakably to Jesus. He says, “This isn’t my story. I’m not the guy, and I’m nothing compared to him.”

What if that was our go-to message as well? What if we regularly looked past the complications in today’s plot line and recognized that God is weaving them into his greater story of redemption and real life? How would we behave differently if we regularly saw the action and dialogue of our own chapters as foils for making Jesus and his gospel more vivid and compelling to others? What if the cliff notes or summary statement for our stories, like John’s, was: “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One” (v34)?

- Dr. Andrew Johnston