"He must increase, and I must decrease."
Any excuse to post this Caravaggio painting of a young Jesus daring ageing Peter and Andrew to follow into an unknown future. Discipleship is risk and trust, and following becomes a way of life in which self fulfilment might mean giving ourselves away for the sake of something bigger than our selves.
Walter Brueggemann turns John the Baptist's ambitious lack of personal ambition into such a way of living, relating, reconciling and healing.
Decrease / Increase as a rule of life triggers deeply subversive responses to the life around us, and within us.
- Decrease what is greedy, what is frantic consumerism, for the increase of simple, life-giving sharing.
- Decrease what is fearful and defnsive, for the increase of life-giving compassion and generosity.
- Decrease what is fraudulent and pretense, for the increase of life-giving truth-telling in your life, truth-telling about you and your neighbour, about the sickness of our society and our enmeshment in that sickness.
- Decrease what is hateful and alienating, for the increase of healing and forgiveness, which finally are the only source of life
Walter Brueggemann, The Threat of Life. Sermons on pain, Power and Weakness (Fortress, 1996), page 68
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