In June Clarissa sat her A Levels a year early and despite having swine flu, managed to obtain 5 starred As, guaranteeing her a place at St. John’s Oxford. Melissa, meanwhile, has been moved up two years at school because she is so far ahead of her peers academically. We don’t know where they get their brains from! John, you will be delighted to know, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature for the second time. It’s a good job I earn so much money in the city that he can afford to sit quietly at home and write. Speaking of which, the £2 million bonus the bank has just given me (how wonderful the bonuses are back on track, I say!) will enable the family to charter a private jet to fly to New York on New Year’s Day for a champagne breakfast. If you read the papers you must know that our son Dominic has been capped for England at both rugby and cricket, scoring a double hundred to win England the Ashes in September and running over the winning try against the All Blacks two months later.
By the time you have finished reading this letter:
- Your serotonin levels have dropped to zero and
- The idea of transatlantic air terrorism won’t seem quite as evil as you once thought.
We once received a spoof letter along those lines which remained distressingly plausible until the sender overstepped the mark with mention of Olympic gold. The journalist Simon Hoggart is Britain’s leading chronicler of the circular letter and with the help of readers who are all too willing to snitch on their unsuspecting friends, has compiled an hilarious book of cringe-worthy stories from the strange sub-culture of Britain’s circular letters (‘The Hamster that loved Puccini’, Atlantic Books, 2005). According to Hoggard, I am ashamed to say, Britain’s clergy are some of the worst bragging offenders.
You often find that the worst competition happens within families. We know about sibling rivalry, but cousins can be even worse because they are fuelled by the sibling rivalry of their parents. And it is worse still when they are both over-achieving cousins. Think therefore how tempting it must have been for Jesus and John the Baptist (cousins after all) to be jealous of each other. They were the same age, ministered in the same places and their spiritual charisma led people to follow them in their thousands. John was famous for baptising his followers but Jesus also, according to John’s Gospel, did some baptising himself. The similarities in their ministries created the potential for misunderstanding and this was something John’s followers tactlessly exploited when they came to him and said: ‘Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan…is baptising and everyone is going to him’ (John 3:26). Not ‘Jesus’ you note or even ‘your cousin’ but ‘that man’ – who is doing what you did first and do best, baptising, and ‘everyone’ is going to him. Who needs rival parents when you have friends like John’s to stoke any feelings of inferiority?
John’s response to their shrill accusations was moving and an assertion of the mutual love and respect which underpinned his relationship with Jesus. He describes himself as like the best man to a groom who is marrying his bride: a supporting role where you share in the joy of a more prominent relationship.
Matthew 11:2-11 finds John sometime later inside a nasty Middle-Eastern prison. The old strength and conviction have ebbed away and doubts have crept in. He is now unsure who his cousin really is. This demonstrates the power that environment can exert over even resolute people. The endless days of incarceration had played on his mind to such effect that he was willing to go public on his doubts, asking his followers to approach Jesus for reassurance that he really is the expected Messiah.
To reach Jesus his doubts would have had to pass through several people. In fact they became so well known that we are considering them now. John was not anxious what people would think of him; he did not feel the need to preserve an image of unshakeable faith. Better to air doubt in order to find stronger ground for faith than let it fester and poison him. When the message gets to Jesus, he shows great composure. Unlike the shallow and egotistical tyrants of history, he does not lose his temper at the loss of faith by a follower. He gently points to the evidence: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor are hearing good news. This is all the proof John needs. And when John’s disciples leave the presence of Jesus, he does not berate his cousin behind his back. He knew what a long incarceration in an abusive prison could do to someone’s mind.
The American intellectual, Gore Vidal, once said: ‘every time a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies’. We can feign shock at his coldness, but perhaps we should allow his honesty to work on our consciences. It isn’t always easy being happy for someone else, especially if you are down on your luck. Our faith calls us to weep with those who weep, but it also calls us to rejoice with those who rejoice. It is strange but true that we often find it harder to rejoice with others than to weep with them. Perhaps some searching honesty about why we find it hard to be glad for people doing better than us might help us to reach the position God is calling us to: godliness with contentment.
There is no room for jealousy or for boasting in God’s kingdom because his undivided love overwhelms competition between us. John the Baptist understood this. He may have been the greatest man born of a woman, but he wasn’t even the greatest man in his own family. Humility learned at home usually stays with you.
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