John 3:22-30

11/30/08
John 3:22-30
Hudson UMC

As we begin this Advent season, let us remember that, before God sent His only Son on our behalf, He sent His servant, John the Baptist to pave the way and prepare the world for the coming of Christ. God did so much to prepare the way for the coming of His Son; He sent prophets who predicted Jesus’ life and ministry with startling accuracy, He worked it out so that the great Roman census would enable Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem so that the Son of God, who was also the Son of David, might be born in David’s city. After Jesus was born, God gave the message of the good news of His birth to the shepherds of the fields and those from far away so that He was worshipped by the most unlikely people imaginable, though He was ignored by His own people and had to spend His first days in a manger.

John the Baptist was also part of this preparation process. He was not only a forerunner in the preaching arena, but also in being a miracle baby. The classic Advent story at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke ties the birth of John with the birth of Jesus. Our passage for this morning tells us that, though he is not there yet, John will be put into prison. The point is that, from the beginning of their public ministries, John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ are leading parallel lives, supporting one another. Both are getting disciples, both are baptizing (though, we read in chapter four that it is Jesus’ disciples that are doing the baptizing), both are proclaiming the kingdom of God. Most of us are not God who has taken on flesh; most of us are human beings who are ministering along with Jesus, not as Jesus. I think that John the Baptist has something to teach us about what Advent means, about what will happen and how we should act when Jesus comes into the world and into our lives.

Before Jesus came along, John had a pretty good ministry going for himself. People were following him, his influence was growing, things were going well. If you will, he had a growing, successful, and relevant church. What’s more, there was not another church like it. John’s ministry was definitely not “Church As Usual”. To go to John the Baptist’s church meant that you didn’t do things “the way we’ve always done them”, like they did in the synagogues. It was not led by the dime-a-dozen scribes and Pharisees, but by a real prophet of God, a charismatic leader who not only spoke the word of the Lord with boldness, but also commanded the respect of the leaders of the time. Yes, John had a growing, dynamic church. What could go wrong?

Jesus came on the scene and everything changed. First, Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John himself, then He goes and starts gathering His own disciples, teaching them to baptize others and gather more people together. In fact, in many ways, it seemed like Jesus was just copying the ministry strategy that John had been using and, not only was He using it, He was getting better results.

The question that we need to ask is, “How did John feel about this?” After all, he was the up and coming young religious leader. He had tasted great success for a short period of time, but this success was being cut short by someone else stealing his thunder. John would have every reason to be upset, he would have every reason to be angry and bear a grudge toward Jesus, but he does not do these things. What does he do? When he is told, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing and all are going to him,” he merely responds, “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.”

John the Baptist, when his ministry, when his influence among the people, when his job is taken away from him, simply says, “You know, everything will be fine. God knows what He is doing.” Not only does John believe that God knows what He is doing, not only is John not particularly upset that people are flocking to Jesus and not to him, he approaches it as if his ministry has been simply to point out Christ’s ministry all along. He says to his followers, “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of Him.’” He knows that Jesus is the Messiah who had been promised so long ago, who had come to rescue people from the wiles of the devil. John had been called to go ahead of the Messiah and prepare the way. The way has been prepared, the Messiah has come, and John now rejoices to be laid aside so that the Messiah can be followed. I wonder how well this church growth strategy would go over today. It seems somewhat counterproductive, but I think that there is a tremendous lesson here.

John continues on, saying, “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.” Later on, the apostle Paul would describe the church as the Bride of Christ. John is showing us here that he already understands that crucial point. He knows that the people of God are, in a sense, betrothed to Christ and that he was only to serve a finite role. If he were to demand that his ministry should always be vibrant and influential, he would be stealing the bride away from the bridegroom. John is not upset that people are leaving him and going to Christ. In fact, he says that it is “for this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.” Before Jesus came on the scene, it was not bad to have many good things, including a growing ministry. However, when Jesus came, John had to decide whether he would insist on doing things his way or if he would entrust all things to this coming Messiah. His conclusion was that he needed to decrease so that Christ and His ministry might increase.

I think that we can learn from this in our modern era. Churches, throughout America are shrinking; sometimes, people are leaving one church to go to another, sometimes people are leaving the church entirely. Many congregations are in a panic, wondering what they will do. I think that John’s example can be a great lesson for us. Now, when people leave one church for another or leave the church entirely, it is not an exactly parallel case, because all churches, whether they realize it or not, are to be united in the common ministry of Christ. I do not think that the lesson we should learn is to simply resign all things and not do anything. I think that the incredible thing that John the Baptist understood that human beings in general and church leaders in particular have a hard time understanding, is that his ministry was not his own; he served someone who was greater than himself.

How often do we say, either in everyday conversation or when we are thinking to ourselves, that this is “our” church? I think that it happens all the time; I do it, too, and there is a sense in which we are correct to call it “our” church. After all, it is the body of Christians to which we belong, it is where we are active in ministry, so we are not wholly wrong when we say this. However, if we are not careful, we forget to make distinctions in what we think, so that we imagine that, when we say that this is “our” church, we mean, not only that we participate in it, and that we are united to it, but that we possess it, that it belongs to us.

In reality, though this is, in one sense, “our” church, in another sense, it is not our church at all. It is Christ’s church. He was the one that called it into existence, it was He who paid the price of admission into it, and it is He that empowers it and makes it fruitful. I think that it is all too easy to forget this and take ownership for ourselves. When we pay the bills and when we organize the programs and when we sit on the committees, is it not difficult to remember that we are stewards of the church and not its owners? That we are its caretakers and not its rulers?

I think that this desire to control the church is at the root of many problems. If we think that the church belongs to us, we understandably panic when numbers go down. If we see our congregation as an institution to be preserved, we would be crazy to ignore the latest and greatest outreach strategies to flood the church with attendees. However, if the church is indeed not ours but Christ’s, if we are indeed the friends of the Bridegroom and not the Bridegroom Himself, our motives change entirely. Once we begin to see the church as belonging to Christ, our whole view of evangelism and outreach changes. We no longer want to reach out to people because they can give money and sit on committees, we do it because we truly believe that Christ Himself is already reaching out to them and is ready to transform their lives into the very image of God. It shapes how we organize our programs and our ministries as well. We don’t say to ourselves, what can we offer that will attract people to our church. Instead, we ask, how can we help people meet with God and encounter His grace? It even impacts how we run committees. When we think of Christ as the one who owns and controls the church, we stop trying to get our own way, because it is Christ’s way that matters; we stop trying to talk behind people’s backs, because we can pray directly to God. I don’t mean to imply that I think that we are having these kinds of problems but I think we can always be reminded that, in the end, we are not in charge.

Another thing we can learn from John the Baptist is in the fact that, even though he was mainly hoping that people would follow Jesus, he did not stop doing what God had called him to do. You see, he wasn’t called to be the greatest preacher in the world, he was just called to preach. He was not called to have the biggest ministry in the world, he was just called to minister. Ultimately, he was not called to accomplish anything in particular, but simply to be faithful. This is our calling as well. We are not called to be the biggest church in town, but to be faithful. If our being faithful means that the unchurched people in Hudson come and fill our pews and we do become to biggest church in Hudson, so be it, but should not, can not, must not become our goal.

About a month and a half into my appointment here, I had a bizarre conversation. It had come up that I was a United Methodist pastor. I was asked, “What does it look like to win?” I wasn’t sure how to answer this, so I asked for clarification. He responded, “What does it look like to win? If you don’t know what it looks like to win in thirty, sixty and ninety days, how will you ever know if you are winning?” The way I see it is that we cannot use numbers to judge how successful we are being. We are called to be faithful and allow God to do whatever He wants to with that faithfulness. If, for whatever reason, God were to use our faithfulness to fill the other Hudson churches with true believers, we have done our job. If we can point people to Christ, it does not matter if they join us in our ministry, so long as they are joining Christ in His.

When Jesus started preaching, John did not stop. He did not say, “Someone else is better at this than I am, so I should just let them do it.” When John received his call, God did not say, “Preach until a better preacher comes along”, God said, “Preach”. We cannot sit idly by and leave something undone just because someone else does it “better”. There is more than enough work to go around. We can always use more hands and more hearts. God has called you to serve Him and to serve your neighbor however you can. Every little bit goes a long way. If it can point to Christ, even in a broken way, God wants you to join with your brothers and sisters in Christ and make a difference in the world.

Today is the first week in the season of Advent. Advent can be such a meaningful time of year for so many people because we not only celebrate the coming of Christ who is the tie that binds, but also the people that Christ has bound us to, our friends and families. The coming of Christ into the world and into our lives is incredibly important. As we begin to think about the coming of the Son of God, let us remember that when Jesus comes, everything changes. Christ overcomes our traditions, He turns our world upside down, and He asks us to decrease that He might increase. Let us, along with John the Baptist, willingly welcome the Lord into this house this morning, that He might do His will among us and make us into new creations, made to worship and empowered to love. Let us pray.

AMEN