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if you've never stood in the pulpit before, it won't be long before you stand in this one for this or that politics course in which a professor or two and a class of colleagues will coax out of

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you. What maybe your very first words of public proclamation, pulpits I think are fascinating things and preachers I have to admit to you are suckers for pulpits . You go into a church just to see the

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inside and if you're a preacher, you, you climb up in the pulpit and ask somebody who works there at the church to take a picture of you . They're in the pulpit. If it's a nice

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pulpit, I've got pictures of me standing in the pulpit of the Washington cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Princeton University chapel, the Mother Church of the South African Reformed Church in Stellenbosch and the john lang Reformed

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Church of lusaka Zambia and oh I could go on and on, I could pulpit drop for the next 30 minutes, preachers are suckers for pulpits and you see all kinds of things. From the angle of

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vision that a pulpit offers, it's often the case that from the insides of pulpits you can find lots of clues to the congregations instincts about preaching in many churches. For example, from the pulpit, the

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preacher sees something that nobody else sees because she sees on the opposite wall of the pulpit, a big clock. Now, why would a congregation put a clock on the opposite wall of the pulpit. Some

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pulpits are carved with sayings. This puppet is carved with grapes. I should have checked that out before I got in this pool. But some puppets a carved with figures that say something important in the chapel

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at Duke University for example, there are various saints and figures from church history who are carved into the pulpit and one of them is in Selma who is writing something. At first glance, you might think

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that that ancient Divine is busy writing his theology. But I am told that No, it was the architects intent that Anselm living in his time, is taking notes on what the preacher is saying now.

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And Selma taking notes on Will Willimon, for example , that says something to me that's important about the Communion of the Saints. But it's not just we who living in this time depend upon the wisdom of

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those who have gone before upon those upon whose shoulders we stand. But that it's also the case in some mysterious way that they depend on our wisdom and sell still learning from the preachers who stand now in

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this day and time, in that Pope making those words of the Epistle to the Hebrews come alive. Apart from us, they are not made perfect. You can learn a lot from the insides of pulpits

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. My favorite piece of pulpit wisdom though, comes from the pulpit that I preached from when I served a church on Long Island new york. That church is now two years away from being 350 years old

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. The fifth oldest Presbyterian Church in America beautiful Federal style meeting house that sits on the village green in the midst of a Revolutionary Era cemetery. It was built when that community was a fishing village. And

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now that community is sort of an upscale suburb of new york city. That old church has clear glass windows and pews with doors on them in galleries on three sides and a steeple so tall that it's a

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landmark on all the nautical maps that help sailboats sailboats navigate their way around that portion of Long Island Sound . The people who came to the church there when I was, there were a mixture of a large

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number of professors from the State University of new york at stony brook scientists at the National Laboratory, aerospace engineers who developed smart bombs and military aircraft, a collection of school teachers and doctors and lawyers and bank

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presidents, and a small number of commuters who took the train into Manhattan every day. Quite a brain trust, I always thought, And from the Great Pulpit of that church, which occupied most of one

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wall and seemed to loom about 20 ft up in the air. It was a little brass plaque on the upper right hand side of the pulpit desk, where the preacher puts the notes which only the preacher

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could see. It bore these words from our text , from the gospel of john. He himself was not the light, but he came to bear witness to the light. He himself was not the light

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. He himself, of course, was john the baptist, who, as everybody agreed was a great and stirring preacher. Yes, he was strange. Yes. He had a bizarre wardrobe. No,

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you would not want to go eat lunch at his home, but none of that mattered. When he opened his mouth and started to preach, he was a no nonsense preacher, as near as I can

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tell. Probably not a manuscript preacher, not a microphone preacher, not a lot of poetry, mainly just meat and potatoes. Right between the eyes, utter honesty. He began at least one of his

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sermons with these words, You brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Now my sense is that you should never start a sermon like that, unless, unless they've already collected

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the offering. Mhm. But he would just open his mouth and let it rip. The new testament attests to how extraordinary john was in. Mark's Gospel . Mark introduces john as the beginning of the good

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news of jesus christ, the son of God, john, the gospel writer begins this very chapter of his gospel from which our text is taken with a him to christ to him all about light. In

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the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does

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not overcome it. And right there in the middle of singing this hymn, he pauses long enough to insert a footnote, which is our text. Uh , there was a man sent from God whose name

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was john he himself was not the light, but came to testify to the light. Just a little clarification and then singing again, he was in the world, the world came into being through him.

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Yet the world did not know him on and on and on. Why did he interrupt himself like that in the middle of that him? It was because folks might otherwise assume that the him was about john

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Herod Antipas for example, after john was dead when he heard about jesus, he said it's john again , luke writes in the Book of Acts. When Paul was on one of his journeys, he stopped

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in Ephesus and ran into a group of disciples and visited with them, talked with them, discovered that they were disciples not of jesus, but have jobs 50 years after the death of John, There were

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disciples of John on three continents, all through the gospels. If you look for it, you find evidence of a deep relationship between these two charismatic and visionary men, john and jesus standing there together at

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the hinge of history. It started with their mothers remember the text and luke when the angel Gabriel goes to mary and foretells that she will bear a son who will be great and whom she will name Jesus

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. The very next thing that we read after that is that mary goes to visit Elizabeth and when Elizabeth here's mary's voice, the child that she's already carrying leaps for joy, that's john if luke is right

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then john and jesus were only about six months apart in age and they were close in other ways to john baptized, jesus, john taught jesus, hm politics and as fred craddock says, the first sermon

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jesus ever preached, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What's john's and what's more Matthew mark and luke all agree that Jesus didn't even begin his preaching ministry until john was muzzled there in prison

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awaiting his own beheading. As if to say, okay, I'm done. It's your turn now go for it. Which is to suggest I think that in spite of john's stature and the profile that he

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cut across the landscape of salvation history, john new his place. He knew his vocation, his sense of calling the purpose for which he was intended. That he himself was not the light, but came

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to bear witness to the light. There's a wonderful painting by Matias grew novel that serves as the centerpiece for the altar at the old church in Isan Heim Germany, it's called the ISan Heim altarpiece. It's

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famous, was one of Carl Bart's favorite paintings. You'll read some bart while you were here. That german theologian of the 20th century kept a print of that painting above his desk. And I'd like to

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think that Mark must have spent a good bit of time meditating and reflecting on that painting. Maybe when he was taking a break from reading or from writing , he would just like one of his pipes and

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put his feet on the desk and kind of look up at that painting. It's not what you would call pretty picture. It's a heartbreaking crucifixion scene in its center is jesus and he's painted an enormous outsized

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proportions. He's almost dead, mary. Magdalene kneels before him in tears and off to the side there's a smaller man opponent pointing a long bony finger at him is john the baptist. And that painting seems

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designed to emphasize that the act of pointing away from himself and toward jesus is john's vocation in his life , his job, his most important moral task. In fact, right next to where john the baptist

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stands in that painting, pointing there is a latin inscription Elham or protect chris sherry, may autumn menu . We he must increase, but I must decrease . That's what john came to realize as his own

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job description and it's what I hope you will come to realize too while you're here. I wonder if at some point somebody in that church up on Long Island decided that that was the message that one of

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the occupants of that pulpit needed desperately to here, church people are discerning in that way, you know that we are on the cusp of introducing a new curriculum. It was approved by the board just this

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past spring and we will begin rolling it out this time next year. Sometimes the seminaries curriculum gets decided in a very short period of time. There is an urban legend here About how our last major curriculum

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revision got done two or three decades ago Nadine. So the legend goes, took the curriculum committee to a little motel outside of fredericksburg where he is said to have lock them in the room and told them

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they could not come out until they had a new curriculum. Well we spent a good bit more time on this curriculum. We spent something like four years on it and before we did any brainstorming about what

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we should or shouldn't teach. The very first thing we did was this, we sent teams of faculty members to buy to all over the country, not just the Southwest, which of course is our bread

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and butter, but everywhere Seattle boston, Southeast, midwest, mainline groups, racial ethnic minority groups, evangelical groups. These faculty teams interviewed focus groups of pastures and focus groups of lay people, asking them

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a series of open ended questions and just taking notes on what they said. One question was what personal virtue does a pastor in the 21st century most need to have in order to be effective. And then

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all these interviews were over. They began slicing and dicing all the information. They discovered that the overwhelming majority of lay people answered that particular question with one word humility. What personal virtue does a pastor most

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need to have in the 21st century in order to be effective humility? And the truth is that we often get a clearer picture of what humility might look like when we get one of those many close up

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looks at its opposite. Tony Campolo is a liberal evangelical italian southern baptist minister from philadelphia. Not very often that I use that particular string of adjectives in the same sentence, but Tony Campolo is one in

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a million. He's a great preacher. He tells a story somewhere of driving on a certain expressway through the middle of philadelphia was one of those early expressways built before World War Two and now part of our

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interstate system, but certainly not the wide, expansive , convenient multi lane expressway with apples, shoulders that we have come to expect in more recent years. In newer cities like Austin or Atlanta or Dallas or

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Houston, This expressway simply had two lanes going in this direction and two lanes going in that direction. And if you had a breakdown on this expressway, you are simply out of luck. Well, Tony

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Campolo had a breakdown, a flat tire and his only option was to stop in the lane he was in to fix the tire. Turn on the flashers , open the trunk, get the tire iron and

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the other cou tools out. Try not to get hit while behind you. There's this ever growing line of stopped cars blowing their horns. It was a boiling hot day. He had the windows down,

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his radio going and suddenly the radio programme was interrupted with an emergency alert. A grim radio voice announced that rush hour all over philadelphia was at a virtual standstill because of some as yet unidentified problem on this

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particular expressway. At about that same moment he heard this noise above and he looked up. It was a helicopter and there was a guy with a mobile cam leaning out to film every bit of his tire

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changing maneuver. Tony says that the very first thought to enter his mind at that moment was it's me Tony Campolo. I Tony Campolo have tied up the whole city of philadelphia. I Tony Campolo, m

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a traffic congestion superstar. There's something about much of the contemporary church that seems to encourage ministers to be superstars, to cultivate egos that inflate their own importance . And in this self assertive me first world in

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which we live. Those egos often get fed on an altogether too rich diet of deference and adoration until we strut into our pulpits or strut up to a microphone that a presbyterian conference meeting or strut into just

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about any old setting and all but proclaim it's me superstar, God's gift to the church and the world in our time, the great decider of what is true and good and the enemy of all that is

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false. It's me colossal gift to humanity. A superstar. I want to do a presbyterian minister whose ego was so big That had entered the room three minutes before he did. In fact, it was

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hard to be in the room with him for very long because you ran out of oxygen always sweeping around the room so that his presence and importance could just kind of rub off on the rest of us.

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Once another pastor leaned over to the person next to him and pointed at this guy and said there, but for the grace of God goes God, thanks . Okay. Mhm. What personal virtue are we

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most missing? We pastors an aspiring servants of the church humility, humility is not all shots, not being afraid of your own shadow, not having no convictions, not being endlessly pliable, no humility is

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thicker than all of that. Gordon Lathrop Lutheran scholar , who in my mind is one of the greatest liturgical theologians ever wrote somewhere about a native tribe in northern Canada who are commonly called the Yellowknife, who

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in their own language, have named themselves the Pizza Hot, which means those who know something a little their name, rights. Lathrop reflects the respectful and careful common life of a people surrounded by a vast

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and mysterious land marked by powerful natural forces. No one knows everything about such a land, but their name also reflects a community that treasures the life giving survival enabling skills of the things they know together.

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No, here, of course, means something more profound than be able to think about. It reflects rather experienced hands and eyes and lives in concert with each other and with the fearful and beautiful rhythms of

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the land. Their name says. Lathrop might be used to invite christians to enter into reflections on worship and a humanism with both humility and truth, to know the things we really do know, especially those

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things without which we cannot survive as christians and to be silent before the great mysteries that remain to know together the things that truly unite us and to listen respectfully to our genuine differences. I love that definition

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of humility, knowing something a little knowing those things without which we cannot survive as christians and then being silent before the great mysteries that remain. It's a definition we would do well to remember in this era

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of celebrity pastors and their mega churches, who may privately entertain occasionally self criticism, but whose public persona is so often marked by glory and power. And we would do well to be forever cultivating counter narratives

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to all of that. I'm thinking about Oliver Cromwell of all people who, in the face of some high stakes issue before the Scottish parliament in the mid 16 hundreds said, I beseech you gentlemen in the

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bowels of christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. And I'm thinking still of a conversation up in Dallas just about a week ago with our just retired board chair, the reverend dr john McCoy

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. We were talking about this very subject of humility and john such a wise theologian said to me, you know, the enemy of faith is not doubt . The enemy of faith is certainty. I love

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that. What personal value do pastors most need for the 21st century humility. My dear friend paul hooker , who is a wonderful scholar in Churchman and presbyterian executive says that humility in his words is the antidote

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to the arrogance that assumes we know all the answers to all the questions that count and that we have the truth captured in a bottle or a book humility recognizes that we are not God's kingdom, but only

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the sign to the world that God's kingdom is coming . I think he's right. It is a worthy virtue that we would do well to cultivate in this self assertive prematurely certain me first time in which we

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live. And so it was a good thing sunday after sunday for me to climb up into that ancient pulpit in that ancient church to behold over and over again that brass tablet, he himself was not the

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light. He came to bear witness to the light . What makes the christian faith so countercultural is the persistent claim that we are in fact not the center of the universe and that it's not about us.

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Instead, the scandalous truth of the gospel is that we are people created by God and God is the center of the universe and it is God's son, jesus christ, the one who came to dwell in

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our midst and who's coming again, we await who is the light. Which means, of course for starters that john is not the life. And it also means that I'm not the light. And I've

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got good news for you tonight because you're not the light either. Good news on this, your first night of this year, your seminary education, not having to be the light is what sets you free

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. Good news. Everything doesn't depend on you. Good news. You don't have to carry the weight of the world as if you were atlas. Good news. You don't have to sit on that lonely

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precarious thrown at the center of everything. Good news . You can't and don't have to make everybody happy . Good news. You don't have to be brilliant every waking day or to make all a's to be

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a complete human being. Good news. You don't have to avoid screwing up occasionally in order to be loved. Good news. You are not the light , you are simply called. And that's why you're

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here tonight to bear witness to the light. There's a new yorker cartoon somewhere that pictures to wealthy looking tycoon types and double breasted blazers standing together on the lawn of their magnificent estate, probably in Newport Rhode

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island overlooking the sea. One of them is gazing over the water and he says to the other. Sometimes I wish somebody else were captain of my fate and master of my soul. Well, good news