THURSDAY, APRIL 14
READ LUKE 3:15-16
LUKE 3:15 The people were in a state of great expectancy, and everyone was wondering whether perhaps Yochanan himself might be the Messiah; 16 so Yochanan answered them all, “I am immersing you in water, but he who is coming is more powerful than I — I’m not worthy to untie his sandals! He will immerse you in the Ruach HaKodesh and in fire.
It is a matter of rare spiritual maturity to know that one is not the Messiah. No one throughout my seminary training ever warned me against a messianic complex. On the contrary, I was encouraged to take Jesus as my model, to be a servant of God to the people. In subsequent decades of working with clergy, many of them exhausted from trying to meet the expectations of others and themselves or crushed under the sheer need of their parishioners, I have observed that having a messianic complex is, for many people, indistinguishable from commitment to Christ.
John the Baptist knew better. Though he was more famous than Jesus ever was in his lifetime, John was never tempted by popular accolades or by his indisputable sense of calling to think of himself as the messiah. He had a magnified role to play for God, but he never edged over into identifying his role with that of the Messiah.
Martin Buber once commented that there is something incommensurate between thinking oneself a messiah and being a messiah. It may be that many of us fall into messianic roles because we haven’t died to our egocentric need to “be” somebody. It is just possible that Jesus himself refused the messianic role later generations laid on him. His temptations in the wilderness seem explicitly to have been rejections of the current messianic hopes. Rather than identify with God, he related to God. He found his calling and followed precisely that, whatever later generations would call him.
Can we relate to the same divine powers within us that Jesus related to? Can we be vessels of divine healing without identifying ourselves with the Healer?
Grant me, O God, to be only myself and do only what you call me to do. Amen.[Walter Wink (1949–2012)]
Our mailing address is:
Upper Room Strategic Initiatives
PO Box 340007
Nashville, Tennessee 37203, United States
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