The Warm Up Act

I am in Helena, Montana this weekend for the ordination and consecration of the Episcopal Bishop of Montana. The congregation of St Paul’s UMC hosted the service, providing great hospitality for our Episcopal kin. This morning, when I got on the hotel elevator, I realized Kenny G was on the elevator with me! I did a quick google search to make sure it was him—sure enough it was! What was missing from the concert listing was who the warm-up act was.

Warm-up acts are interesting—they play second fiddle (so to speak!) to the people you really have come to see. Most of the time, they don’t have name recognition. But they did get a crowd ready for the main act. Warm-up acts have a very important role to play, as they help get people realy to enjoy the show, and then they fade out of the picture.

Every year in Advent, we set aside one Sunday to remember the ministry of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. John had his own unique role and mission. As I consider John in relation to Jesus, I realize that John was the warm-up act. John prepared the way, and then fades away, yielding, as he said he would, to Jesus, the main act.

John could only take people so far.  He led people to the point of departure from the old life, but could not help them enter into the new.  His warm up act included a baptism of water, a cleansing of the past in which a person was made ready for a fuller, richer word to come, the abundant life brought by Jesus Christ.

He told the people, “The real action comes next: the star in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will change your life. I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kin-dom life.  His baptism—a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.” (Matthew 3:11-12. The Message)

John isn’t preparing people to coo over a baby lying in a manger or cuddle a child. John is preparing his followers to encounter a man who will transform their living, and ultimately, their dying. Jesus, as the main act, will care and comfort us in our brokenness, and confront and challenge us in our sinfulness. People through the centuries have encountered his words, his life, his spirit, this wonderful counselor, this mighty God, this everlasting One, this Prince of Peace, and their lives have been changed forever.

They have felt something being born within them, a spark of hope, a flame of love, a passion for justice, a desire for wholeness, that is truer and purer than anything they have ever known before.  Ever since he came into the world, there have been “countless different kinds of people who in countless different kinds of ways have been filled with his spirit, who have been grasped by him, caught up into his life, who have found themselves in deep and private ways healed and transformed by their relationships with him, so much so that they have had no choice but to share this Good News with others…that in this man is the power of God to bring light into the shadows of our lives, to make us whole, to give a new kind of life to anybody who turns toward him in faith, even to people like you and me.” (Frederick Buechner)

The warm-up act is just about over. Have you been able to clear you life of the past, so that Jesus might come and enter in, be born in you, transforming your life so completely your future will look nothing like your past?  May we welcome Destiny’s Child onto the stage of our lives and hearts and discover the power this One possesses to change us forever.