“And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:22-36
We are continuing our study of the Gospel of John. Here is the situation on the ground:
“After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in AEnon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.”
The opening phrase of the first sentence, “After these things,” signals first of all when, in time, the next event occurred: it was after he performed the sign of cleaning the Temple and declared his own human body to be the Temple where the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be found; and it was after he performed the miracles in Jerusalem, fresh from cleansing of the Temple, when it is said that many of the citizens of Jerusalem, as well as pilgrim Jews who were there for the Passover “believed in his name;” and after his wide open visit with Nicodemus — after all those things Jesus and his disciples left the Jerusalem traveling north into Judaea; which is to say he left the city and went into countryside of Judaea. We are not told how many of his disciples were in his company, but we are told that they came to a place close to Aenon and for a few day settled down with Jesus. One more thing, Jesus had attracted lots of attention in Jerusalem and when the pilgrims traveled back home after the Passover they told everyone about Jesus’ actions, his deeds, his signs and his miracles. And when the people who heard these stories about Jesus from their family and friends got the news that he was in walking distance of home they made their way to him and the Gospel tells us that Jesus’ disciples began baptizing, in the presence of Jesus, those who came to him.
Now, as it turned out, John the Baptist had moved from the Jordan and he was baptizing at a place very close to where Jesus was sojourning and it was close enough that comparisons were made. According to the text there was a dispute between the disciples of the Baptist and a Jew, or a group of Jews, over the issue of ritual purification. This issue of ritual cleansing is a major irritant in all the Gospels, but all we are told here is that the issue of purification came up; we are not given any details. But the next thing that happened was that the disciples of the Baptist went to him, John, and instead of raising the issue of purification, they reported that Jesus, the one he had baptized in the Jordan, was now baptizing people himself just up the road and furthermore there were far more people coming to Jesus than coming to John. Then we have the last words of John the Baptist recorded in the Fourth Gospel and they are remarkable words indeed:
“John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.” John 3:27-29
John calms his disciples not by giving them some 1st Century Jewish version of a church growth platitude, but rather he sees this event as signaling the end, as in the completion, of the work the God of Israel has sent him to do. “You know perfectly well and you all can certify that I have never said that I am the Christ. The One who sent me, sent me to identify and declare to Zion that her Messiah has come; I am the Voice come out of the Wilderness announcing the day of the Lord.” And then John deepens his meaning for his disciple; he opens up the deeper meaning of the phrase, “the one sent before,” when he declared:
“He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.”
It is not that the Forerunner appeared upon the scene preaching and baptizing as the envoy, the attache of the Messiah. John’s own grasp of his mission has grown and thus his understanding of Jesus’ identity and Jesus’ mission has grown as well. No, no, John’s work could not be circumscribed as a messenger though he certain was a messenger. But his life’s work, which involved finding his own voice, was to be the Friend who would identify the voice of the Bridegroom. Previously, at the Jordan he declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God and he was told, by the One who sent him to baptized in the first place, that the One upon whom he would see the Spirit light is the one who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. John, at that point could not have known what that meant in its entirety. But since that time, which must have been only a handful of weeks, John the Baptist has come to understand that this man he baptized was the Unspeakable One himself come down from Heaven to rescue his Bride Israel from death and oblivion. Though the iconography was not much discussed in his day, John would have known such imagery and metaphor from the Old Testament:
“And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.”
It would have been just such an Old Testament image that John was responding to when he realized that his work was the work of the Friend of the Bridegroom. And we know through the Word of God given in St. Paul’s epistles that the Bride is Holy Mother Church and Holy Mother Church is the fulfillment, the fruition, the actualization of the Israel of God. St. Paul wrote:
“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present [you as] a chaste virgin to Christ.” II Corinthians 11:2
These are the Saints drawn in the lesson from the Revelation given for this All Saints Sunday.
“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb…” Revelation 19: 7-9
What I want you to see is that this particular revelation came through John the Baptist. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, John reached back into the great store house, the treasury of value and meaning that we call the Old Testament and he retrieved a Pearl of Great Price that has drawn together for him, and all of us, the different threads of sense and purpose, message and signification, of his own worth, final cause, revelation and virtue — he drew together these many threads of his narrative into the seamless garment of his life’s project — John is the Friend of the Bridegroom; his was a singular vocation, never to be repeated: to listen for the voice of the Bridegroom, to watch over the Bride and to initiate her preparation for her Betrothed. The Forerunner, the Friend of the Bridegroom has himself now blossomed into Old Testament Holiness, and like an Old Testament saint who carried about himself the fragrance of fields of wheat and sheep; John’s sweet fragrance, is not his own but the Bridegroom’s. His joy was fulfilled when he heard the voice of the Bridegroom drawing near. “He comes, he comes, your Husband comes to his chosen Bride.” The Baptist cries out from the Wilderness, and he is the dying of the Old Man. The Baptist cries out in the Wilderness and in him the Old Testament has reached its end. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have a title for the Baptist: the Terrestrial Angel, the Earth Angel, whose whole life is filled up and perfected as the Friend of the Bridegroom. Jesus testifies of John that no man born of a woman is greater than John the Baptist, and yet Jesus also says that John is less than the least in the Kingdom of God. John will not become a follower of the Messiah, he will not become a disciple, he will not hear the sweet words of Christ to his disciples when he said to them words that would have meant so much to John, “your are my friends.”
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” John 15: 13-15
John vocation was to tune his ears for the voice of the Bridegroom and when he heard it, and it seems that at this moment, when he and Jesus were so close geographically doing the work of God, it seems to me that was the moment he heard the voice of our true Husband and his vocation was complete and he knew like he had not known it before:
“And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” Matthew 25:6
There came a moment when John’s vocation was complete and he knew it; his joy was complete, plero, his joy filled up to capacity. And his joy was disclosed, opened up, discovered through his self-renunciation, through standing aside, through decreasing. Self-mastery, self-renunciation, and eschewing self-esteem are not today high on the list of virtues. But the Baptist discovered a more complete meaning of his life-story only through decreasing. The Bridegroom found a worthy and loyal Friend in the last Old Testament Saint and the Bride found an honorable advocate and defender. As I have said before, John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of God, the Bearer of the Eternal Word are the two holiest human beings to have ever lived — they are more glorious than cherubim or seraphim because he and she lead the Patriarch, Prophets and Saints in the supernatural worship of the only begotten Son of the Father, the Savior of the World.
That is enough for today, but we shall soon see just how astonishing and offensive is both the Bridegroom and his frequently strange Bride.
“He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.”