The gospel for Saturday after Epiphany is taken from John 3:22, 30th verse. Jesus and his disciples went into the region of Judea, where he spent some time with them baptizing. John was also baptizing at Enon near Salem, because there was an abundance of water there and people came to be baptized by for John had not yet been imprisoned. Now a dispute arose among the disciples of John and a Jew about ceremonial washings. So 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 everyone is coming to him. John answered and said, no one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.

You yourselves can testify that I said that I am not the Christ, but that I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom, the best man who stands and listens for him. Rejoice greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase. I must decrease.

Can you imagine what it was like for John the Baptist to see his cousin Jesus fulfilling what John knew he was there to get people ready for? Can you imagine the joy he must have felt in seeing it unfold while he was still alive? And what’s interesting in this passage is that John was baptizing with water. Jesus was nearby, but Jesus wasn’t baptizing anyone. It was the message of the Kingdom of God that drew people to him. John was living that message.

How do we accept the fact that all the promises of the Kingdom of God, the ability we have to participate in transforming the world from darkness to light, how do we believe that’s ours without it becoming something we claim we can do? We must decrease. The kingdom must increase. After the music, I will close with a prayer. Foreign. The closing prayer.

Father, the power, the beauty, the awesomeness of your promise is still beyond our imagining for so many of us. And we live in a world that is not at all connected to this power that is ours by inheritance. Bless us with the capacity to believe that we too, like Christ, have come to the world to heal and to transform. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.