The Bigger Picture

I’m sure that many of you will remember the series “Tales of the Unexpected” that had a good run on television in the 1980’s. It was introduced by Roald Dahl, and each episode was a half-hour short story with a twist in the tail.

There’s one in particular that I’ve always remembered, because it was based on fact. It was set in the late 1800’s, and most of it took place in one room where a young Austrian woman was struggling away in labour.

As the story progresses you discover that she’s already lost three young children to illness; so for the whole programme you’re willing her and the baby to get through this difficult labour. And right at the very end of the episode, she delivers her beautiful new son and he’s placed in her arms. And with her face full of joy she turns to her husband and says “We’ll call him Adolphus. I hope his friends don’t shorten it to Adolf”.

Nightmare! You’ve just been rooting for Hitler!

“What is this child going to be?” say the folk gathered to celebrate with Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Luke is the only gospel writer who offers us this piece of the jigsaw - drawing another nativity story alongside that of Jesus – that of his older cousin John.

And given their common heritage, it’s remarkable how little their paths seem to cross in any of the gospels, and how they almost seem like strangers when they do meet, as men in their thirties.

John’s busy down by the Jordan, preparing the way of the Lord, but when the Lord appears asking him for baptism, he seems a little taken aback. And though we find him growing in his understanding of who Jesus is, there are times when even he finds himself questioning. “Are you the one who was to come” he asks Jesus from prison, “or should we be looking for someone else?”

The caricature of the locust-eating, wild-eyed firebrand doesn’t do justice to John.There’s more to his story, and to his character than that.. And that’s why I drew in that second gospel reading this morning, because I think it goes some way to answering the question that was on everyone’s lips at the time of his birth: “what is this child going to be?”.

John the gospel writer tells us that for a spell John the Baptist and Jesus were baptising on the same stretch of the river Jordan. A potentially awkward situation made more awkward by the fact that people were choosing Jesus over John.

Some of John’s disciples come to him and say “Teacher – you remember the man who was with you on the east side of the Jordan, the one you spoke about? Well, he is baptising now and everyone is going to him!”.

Even across two millennia, you can hear the anger and the fear in their voices. Everyone’s going to him.

I wonder what they wanted John to do?

Go and get heavy with Jesus? Call a peace summit where they could agree how to carve out the territory together? Change his tactics so that he could woo back some of those who’d defected to the Jesus movement? Put on a better show than the next man down the river?

We don’t know; but we do know that all of those responses were borne out of an unnamed fear that we’re going to put words to today: “How is this going to affect us?” – that’s the central issue for John’s disciples.

How’s this going to affect us? Is all of this coming to an end? What are we going to do now?

And John’s answer, God bless him, shows why he deserves a place in the story, and to have the third advent candle lit in his memory.

He looks them in the eye, and maybe with a touch of rebuke in his voice he says: “No-one can have anything unless God gives it to him.”

Do you see what he’s doing, there? His disciples gather around him going “we, we, we, we, we” – all the way home.

And John says “No. This has never been, and should never be, about us - our work, our territory, our desires. This is about God and what God is doing. And if God is doing something new in and through Jesus’ ministry, then all we can do is say ‘amen’ to that and celebrate it. He must become more important, while I become less important.”

What immense maturity as a person. To willingly accept the limited nature of your own life’s work, knowing that it’s only a part of something much greater.

So often we do the reverse, even in the church. We act as though our sphere of interest is the only one that matters and we fail to see the bigger picture.

When our interests are threatened, more often than not, we copy John’s disciples. We get defensive and start marking out our territory.

I remember the church I first trained in. It was a union of three different congregations and each church had celebrated communion in a slightly different way. One used the common cup, another the wee thimble glasses we use, and in the third they used spoons which were dipped in the common cup – a practice I’d never heard of.

Decades after the union, communion was still having to be served in three different ways at every communion service because people weren’t prepared to give up the practice of their original church.

So at the heart of a sacrament that’s supposed to be about unity, we had a visible disunity. Talk about losing sight of the big picture!

I read this week that the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, supposedly built over the site of Jesus’ birth, is falling into disrepair. The three Christian groups who have a say in its running can’t agree, so the largely Muslim Palestinian Authority is having to step in and take over the renovations.

When marking out and defending our territory becomes more important to us than co-operating with the bigger picture of what God is doing, then we have left the path of wisdom.

But when we’re able to give and take with generosity, and without fear for our own position, we can achieve a lot. And I think our banner-makers have shown us that this week.

I wasn’t present at those Monday gatherings, so I have no inside knowledge! But I know fine well that when five folk gather together to do something you’re guaranteed at least five different opinions on how it should be done! And to work through all of that together, and to be ready to set aside some of your own cherished ideas for the sake of the greater good, is no mean feat. But you managed it – you kept the big picture in view. Quite literally!

John also saw his own work in the light of the big picture. It didn’t stand alone. And that really helped him when it came to dealing with the changes that Jesus brought on.

He says to his disciples: “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him”. I am the bridegroom’s friend, not the groom himself he said.

John knew from the beginning what his role was. He was steeped in it. He had a particular calling – to prepare the way for the Messiah.

And now that Jesus had arrived on the scene and become established he was happy to accept that his work was done.

Jesus’ success at the Jordan wasn’t a condemnation of John’s ministry. It was the strongest possible affirmation of it. John had done exactly what he’d been called to do: he’d prepared the way for the Messiah, and now the Messiah was on his way. Job done.

He didn’t need the acclaim of the crowds, or the adulation of his disciples to justify his existence.. He knew within himself that what God had put him on the earth to do, he’d done, and that was enough for him.

We need to learn that from John. We take ourselves so seriously, sometimes, don’t we? We obsess about our little piece of the jigsaw, but we forget about the rest of the picture on the box.

Witness the stressed chef in the kitchen, trying to prepare the perfect Christmas dinner so everyone can have a good time, but growing cross and irritable with everyone and stopping them from having a good time!

Witness the exhausted parents, running themselves ragged so they can give the kids a good Christmas, when all the kids want is for mum and dad to be less busy so they have time to play a game or read a story.

Witness the minister, or church member, running between services and social events and other commitments that they have no time to be leisurely with Christ in prayer during Advent.

We all do it. We all focus on our little jigsaw piece and forget the big picture.

Here’s a thought to take away and reflect on.

Of all the things you could do in the build-up to Christmas, what do you think God most wants you to do?

I can’t answer that question for you. It demands a personal response. But it’s a big picture question; And it’s worth spending some time on in what remains of Advent.

“What is this child going to be?” say the folk gathered to celebrate with Zechariah and Elizabeth.

“I assure you” says Jesus, thirty years later in Matthew’s gospel. “John the Baptist is greater than anyone who has ever lived”.

Why? Because his focus was always on the big picture of what God was doing, and not just his part in it. Because he was happy to play the part he’d been given, and not crave the spotlight for its own sake.

In all our living, may God grant us the maturity and the grace to do the same.