He must increase, but I must decrease
Sermon for the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. Kvinnherad Church and Ænes Church, Norway, 25. June 2023.
Texts: Judges 13:2-7.24-25; Hebrews 11:1-2.32-34.38-40; Luke 1:5-17. If not otherwise noted, Scriptural quotations from the NRSV.
The icon is a Byzantine icon of St. John the Baptist. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Today is the feast of St. John the Baptist. In Norway, we usually celebrate him on the eve, on the 23rd rather than the 24th. We celebrated him, quite traditionally, yesterday by eating hot dogs, but we will celebrate him in Church on Sunday. What follows, is the sermon for Sunday, starting with who St. John was.
If we read in the Gospel of Luke, we find out that he was a relative of Jesus. We do not know exactly what family relationship they had, because it only says that Elisabeth, his mother, was a relative of Maria, but we know that they were related. St. John was born about half a year before Jesus, and therefore we celebrate him in June. I will come back to why it is important. We don’t hear much about him, but what we do hear is quite interesting, and probably the opposite of what we expect from a ‘celebrity.’ Take, for instance, the Gospel of St. John, chapter 3. There we read that St. John the Baptist baptised before he was thrown into prison. It says that his disciples got into a discussion with a Jew about the purification, i.e. about the baptism, and they went to St. John and said: “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him” (John 3:26). The one they talked about was Jesus. St. John’s disciples were clearly upset because Jesus supposedly ‘stole’ people from him. But the Baptist knew better, and answered (John 3:27-30):
No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” 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. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.
St. John was no diva, and here we find the core of his life and work – but also of ours. St. John’s mission was to preach Jesus, to prepare people for His coming. As the angel said to Zechariah, St. John’s father, in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1:17):
With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
This was St. John’s mission, and in many ways it is also ours. We must bear witness to Jesus. But this practice of testimony is not about preaching in a way that puts the focus on us. As St. John says: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” We also see this in St. John’s life and work. He criticised the authorities, especially King Herod, and was taken prisoner. And there, in prison, he lost his life. He became a martyr. The martyrs, of whom there have been many throughout history, show us precisely this, that Jesus will increase, while we decrease. They sacrificed everything, but in that sacrifice they also receive everything, for they gain unity with God, who is the ultimate end of all things. But we also see this in the fact that we celebrate St. John’s birthday, not his death day, which is the usual thing for martyrs. Because there is a special relationship between the feast of St. John and Christmas. It is not important if St. John was born in June, but it is not improbable either. We don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, but I’ve read enough to conclude that it was actually not unlikely that He was born in December. But here it is not so important. The important thing is what these two times of the year tell us.
Last night, the sun was up until 11:04 pm. Light and the sun are usually images of Christ, but they can also be an image of us, and St. John, when we share in Christ. As Jesus says, we are also light to the world, because Christ shines through us (Matthew 5:13-16). But the point is not that we should point to ourselves, but to Jesus. But if the sun is a image of St. John the Baptist, then we see something interesting. Because now the sun is at its strongest. We celebrate St. John and we look to him. He shows the way, he is a witness, he reveals Christ to us. But he also reveals that we, and he, must make room for Jesus. Towards Christmas, the sun gets weaker and weaker until it is at its darkest. Then Jesus is born. Because Jesus will increase, we will decrease. In this way, creation can tell us something about the centre of it all, that Jesus is the centre, and that we as Christians should become more and more like Him. We can call this sanctification or deification, which is an important theme in the Bible. Here is a small excerpt:
1 Corinthians 1:30: “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
2 Corinthians 5:17: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
Ephesians 4:22-24: “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
2 Peter 1:3-4: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature.”
Yes, we become participants in the divine nature. Justification, the forgiveness of sins, is important. But that’s not all. God will also transform our lives. Salvation is not just having sins forgiven, but the restoration is us of the image of God, through God’s work. As we read from Ephesians 4:24: “Clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” This new self, is, essentially, Christ. He is the new man. He is the perfect human being and salvation is to become like Him. We clothe ourselves with Him and we become more and more like Him. In Romans 8:28-29, we read: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”
We are to be conformed to the image of the Son of God, we are to become like Him, and that is exactly what St. John the Baptist reminds us of. Jesus shall increase, we must decrease. But this is not about having a bad self-image. To be humle is not thinking less of yourself, bit thinking of yourself less.1 We must have a good self-image. We must know that we are created in God’s image, that we are seen and loved by God. Yes, God loves us so much, yes the whole world, that He did everything for us. As Jesus says, in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Yes, we must have a good self-image. But at the same time, nobody likes those who are conceited or self-absorbed. In many ways, that is actually quite inhumane. But unfortunately we often are, because this is original sin. Both Augustine and Martin Luther has said that we, as human beings, are turned or curved inward on ourselves (Lt. incurvatus in se), that we often focus inwards, even though we know perfectly well that this is wrong. For, as Jesus says, we have a higher call (Matthew 22:37-40):
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
But I rarely live up to this, and I know that I have a tendency to focus too much on myself. And often I ignore what I should do, and I can ignore the fact that I don’t do it. But that is exactly where Jesus comes in. In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that Christ is “[God’s] only Son, our Lord,” that He “was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary,” that He “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” And all of this, He did for us, and for our salvation. Jesus does not come first with a series of demands. He comes with grace and renewal. He died for us, He bore our sins. But salvation, as I said, is not just about turning away from sin. We are not baptised with St. John’s baptism, which was about turning away from sin, because when Jesus was baptised with this baptism, He transformed it into something more, something greater, into a means of grace that saves. In baptism we receive the Holy Spirit and we are united with Jesus Christ to a new life.
The baptism Jesus gives us is a baptism that is not only about turning away from sin, but about turning to the Good, to the Holy. When Jesus was baptized by St. John the Baptist, “to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), this was about more than sin and repentance. Because the righteousness we get through Jesus is about us sharing in God’s righteousness, by having fellowship with Him. Luther called this the ‘happy or blessed exchange,’ that Jesus took on our attributes – our human nature, our weaknesses, yes, our sins, without being sinful Himself – and he gives us a share in His attributes – fellowship with God, God’s justice, God’s eternal life. We give our sins to Jesus, He gives us His righteousness, His love, and His holiness. Yes, we get to “become participants in the divine nature.” He took what is ours upon Himself to give us a share in what is His, as St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
We got this wealth in baptism. By allowing Himself to be baptised for us, by St. John the Baptist, Jesus took our sins upon Himself so that we, by being baptised into Him, would receive all that is divine as a gift. And then we see, paradoxically, that we will not just decrease, but increase. For as we decrease, we grow. We do not become less ourselves, but we come closer and closer to what we were created for, to be one with God. Then it is a bit funny to think about the guy who misquoted St. John, by saying, “He will increase, but I must increase.” But even if though he was wrong, he was also right. Because the more we become like Jesus, the closer we come to what we were created for. And then we grow, but we grow outwards, towards others, towards God, not inwards in our own self-righteousness. We grow in the likeness of Jesus and we become more ourselves, more what we were created for, and more focused on others. And we get all this because Jesus came as one of us and gave us a share in His, and allowed Himself to be baptised unto our death. We are saved because Jesus took on our sin and judgment, because He died for us, and because He was raised again to new life, and all this, we receive in baptism. The wealth we share through baptism is precisely Jesus Himself. In Him, everything is transformed. For He must increase, we must decrease – and then paradoxically increase.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
Amen