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They came to John and said to him, “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 answered, “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.” –– John 3:26-30
Luke speaks of a crowd. Mark and Matthew reported that people across the whole Judean countryside in addition to all the people of Jerusalem, were coming out to the Jordan to be baptized by John. However you describe the throng, it is evident that even if we’re not talking in terms of Billy Joel’s sellout at Madison Square Garden, we are also not talking about the thin rabble seeking refuge from boredom in the company of a going-nowhere garage band at a dive bar. If not a phenomenon, the attention John was attracting was certainly newsprint worthy, enough that the self-appointed holiness cops came out to investigate. They would find that the rumors were true, there was a whole lot of splashing going on down at the riverside.
However, this was not to be like the line for vaccines during Covid, where we queued up, received our shots, and quickly returned to our homebound hibernation. Rather, like the Deadheads of yore, those who came out to see John, came out to the concert and stayed. To them, John wasn’t a service provider meeting a need (“Has your insurance changed since your last visit?”), John was a leader worth following, an authority worth serving, a master teacher to whom one might hew one’s life. John acquired disciples, though he was having none of that.
John preemptively sought to dispel any idea that he was the one to follow, the main event, the answer. He was not the Messiah and he was not the light. John said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness … “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” Yet, despite John’s protestations, followers continued to see John as the answer, to the point that when Jesus began teaching, John’s faithful followers came to warn him, “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’s disciples saw Jesus as competition ––John, some upstart is out there stealing your thunder. What are you going to do? Should we try to stop this Jesus, whoever he is?
How did John respond? “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him’ … 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.” What’s the advice given to today’s parents of the groom? Wear brown and sit down. It’s not your gig. You are not the featured attraction.
John, here, provides us with a powerful witness of what it means to follow, serve, and be a disciple of Jesus. John knows he is not, and was never meant to be, the featured attraction. It’s not about him. In fact, John declares that his heart is at its fullest, his joy is overflowing, not when he is applauded, but when Jesus is praised. John indicates he is whole when his life points beyond himself to Jesus. Here, he offers such an essential truth for each of us who follow Jesus –– “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
In a culture of candidates, influencers, narcissists, and self-ordained messiahs who claim sole ownership of the map to the promised land, there is always someone calling for our loyalty, but what John declares that whenever we are not pointing beyond ourselves to Jesus, we are only leading others, and often ourselves, astray. “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.”
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