In John 3, we hear the wily baptizer in a different light. Instead of the fire and brimstone-laden messages he usually hurls, he softens and shows his humility and piety. His disciples witnessed Jesus baptizing and they ran to tell John; they didn’t think it was right that Jesus was pulling people away from their current master. “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and they are all going to him.”(John 3:26) Instead of puffing up and becoming self-absorbed, John simply says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30). It takes John less than the blink of an eye to correct his disciples, show his humility, and step out of the way so that Jesus’ work remains uninhibited.
How often do we do this? Are we the type of disciples who puff up and get in the way? Our ministries and works are important to us—they fulfill us to a holy level and allow us to feel useful to the Kingdom. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, yet I wonder how deeply that self-gratitude is buried. Our tendency to do works comes from a good place, a God place. But all too often we become enamored with our own abilities and forget for whom they are intended to glorify. I don’t believe this is intentional all the time, yet it still occurs. We become gatekeepers—kings and queens of our little fiefdoms. Our humility takes a backseat to our pride, our self-worth.
What about increasing the glory of God? How can we become part of the furniture rather than the main attraction?
The answer is simple yet convoluted: We must remember that God gives us the gifts to enact ministry, yet others hold gifts like ours as well. Instead of being afraid of losing our positions, or being untrusting of someone else being able to do the task as well as we would, shouldn’t we let them increase so that we can decrease? In order to keep ministries fresh, new ideas and new leadership is often the recipe of success.
But more importantly, it keeps us humble.
We don’t become so tied to our roles that we forget our identities. Decreasing doesn’t mean we become obsolete; decreasing isn’t diminishing. Instead, this idea of decreasing allows us to move out of the way so that others get a better glance at Christ, to whom all glory belongs, while simultaneously still doing the work He calls us to do.
That type of humility lends itself to piety, which in turn lends to spiritual renewal and growth. If we can simply allow ourselves to be the vessels through which ministry and the Word is carried out, then the ‘work’ of God becomes living and transcendent. We become more by becoming less. And the ministries of God take on new life.
Let God increase. Let us be less so that we can be more.
Faithfully,
Fr. Sean+