Advent 2 – 2025
Matthew 3:1-12
Marian Free
In the name of God who calls us to point away from ourselves to God. Amen.
I am the first born in my family, so I have very little experience of what it is to live in someone else’s shadow. No one has ever said to me: “You’re not as clever as or as good as Marian.” No teacher, guide leader or other adult has ever been able to compare me with a family member who came before me. No one has had unrealistic expectations of me based on what an older sibling achieved before me. I do know that this is a realty for many younger siblings – always having to live up to some sort of standard set by the eldest, always having their own gifts and talents ignored. It is slightly different if the younger excels more than the elder but differences between siblings tend not to go unnoticed – at least by the siblings themselves.
This week I found myself wondering about John the Baptist, and whether his childhood and youth was overshadowed by that of his cousin, Jesus. John’s calling was predicted before his birth, and it is clear that by the time he was thirty he was living out his vocation and that he had a passion for God that drew a significant following (one sufficiently strong that it continues to this day). It makes you wonder: How did he feel when his younger cousin Jesus came along and started preaching the same message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”?
If Luke’s account is correct John, even though he was the elder by a few months, must have always been overshadowed by Jesus. You can imagine some of the conversations when he was growing up: “John, it is true that God has given you a role to play, but your role is to support not to outshine Jesus.” “John, I know that your father prophesied many things about you, but remember your task is to point away from yourself to Jesus. You are to prepare the way, but Jesus will be the way.” “Yes I know that you and Jesus are the same age that he is allowed to drink, but the angel specifically said that you were not to drink wine or strong drink.”
I wonder if there were times when a teenaged John quietly raged against the expectations that were placed on him – even before he was born. I wonder too, if there weren’t times when he was furious that his younger cousin had so much more freedom, possibly even fewer expectations. Were there moments when John thought that it was simply unfair that Jesus, who didn’t even have his priestly heritage, was chosen for the more important role? Were here times when the idea that he had to serve his younger cousin simply rankled? Later, after John had begun his ministry, fired up with a desire to restore the people to their right relationship with God, calling them to turn their lives around, did he feel just a pang of resentment when Jesus came along to steal his thunder, to draw his disciples away from him and to begin a movement of his own?
From before his birth John was destined to be the forerunner, to always be in Jesus’ shadow. Our scriptures and religious art smooth over any questions John might have had about the clear distinctions between the two but that is not to say that there were not tensions or misunderstandings. After all, prophet or not, John was a real person with real feelings and almost certainly with real failings. To make him a super human is to do him a disservice. It also diminishes his role as a model and guide to those of us who come after.
That John was very much a human being will be made evident in next week’s gospel when, despite his confidence at Jesus’ baptism, John, now in prison, begins to question whether Jesus really is the one who is to come.
In order for us to identify with John we have to see in him characteristics that we can reasonably emulate.
Whether or not John felt the imbalance between himself and Jesus, it is clear from our gospel accounts that at least once he had begun his ministry John understood that his vocation was to prepare the way. This he does with such grace. Even as the people, including the church leaders, throng to him he resists creating his own movement but points away from himself to Jesus, with whom, he says he is not worthy to be compared.
John may well have known his destiny from birth, but as we have the story, he was one of those rare people who was willing to allow himself to diminish so that someone else could flourish, he was able to allow someone else take the credit for the movement he had begun, and to allow that person to take his movement forward and in a different direction.
John, as we meet him in scriptures, models what it is to be people who point the way to God and who draw others into faithful relationship with Jesus. He models what it is to proclaim the one who has come and is coming. He encourages us to prepare the way for God – smoothing away the difficulties that prevent people from engaging with the faith and removing the obstacles of bad theology and bad behaviour that turns good people away. He reminds us that if others take the credit for the ground work we have done, we are to rejoice that someone has come to faith and not be resentful that we have not received praise for simply doing what we are called to do. He shows us that instead of drawing attention to our own talents and abilities, we are to encourage and build up others so that they might discover and develop their own gifts and abilities.
In Advent we the church proclaim the coming of Jesus. May we with John, point away from ourselves so that others might see Jesus, enable others to develop and flourish (even at our own expense) and rejoice when seeds that we have sown take root and grow under someone else’s watchful eye.
Preparing the way, is never about us but always about the one who is to come.
Tags: building up others, John the Baptist, modelling humility, pointing to God, prepare, smoothing rough places
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