I also had a burger for lunch. A nice change from locusts and wild honey!

Now, you have probably heard me described in a hundred sermons as "a colorful character", and then of course, "the forerunner of the Messiah," my cousin Jesus. Well, that makes a nice story but I've come back because I suspect you have never heard "the rest of my story."

And I have the impression that you may need to hear it, especially you hyper-busy, got-to-prove-yourself, save-the-world type of characters.

The rest of my story is my own personal struggle, and this gets quite personal.

I never got to tell it before. I was "cut off," so to speak!

And though my reputation is for preaching to sinners, now this may be most important for the "good" people to hear.

Especially if your expectations of yourself are very high or if you take on other people's expectations.

If you try to take care of everybody: have perfect kids, a wonderful marriage, a fulfilling career, a life of service, you know, the "save the world" type. If that's you, then you may need to hear the rest of my story.

You'll find hints of it in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, my namesake.

It all sounds quite pious and nice as John recounts it, but it hides what for me was the make-or-break struggle of my lifetime.

The text says that the authorities in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask me, "Who are you?"

Wow! I had gotten the attention of the highest authorities in my world. And make no mistake, I knew what they were asking,

They wanted to know: "Are you the One? The one we've been waiting for?"

Now, what I want you to know is that I was tempted! Tempted to say, "Yes, I'm the one, the Messiah you have been waiting for."

Now, before you rush to harsh judgment, let me say that I had good reasons to have messianic temptations. Maybe more than you have!

Just take a look sometime at the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1, and you can imagine the inflated stories that I grew up hearing about myself. As you know, it says there in Luke that my father Zachariah was one of the priestly caste, that my mother Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron, and that both of them were "just and blameless in the eyes of God." Good stock.

Now, Luke puts it euphemistically, that my Mom was childless and "advanced in years." What a joke. My mom, Elizabeth, was in her eighties. Can you imagine your great grandmother getting pregnant?

Well, it fell to my father's lot to enter the sanctuary to offer the prayers and incense.

And while he was fulfilling his priestly function, no one less than the angel Gabriel appeared to him, the one "who stands in the very presence of God."

Gabriel told my Dad that he would have a son, me, and was to call me John. No one in my family was ever called John.

And then Gabriel said, "This child will be great in the eyes of God, will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb."

Now that's heady stuff!

Who could fault my poor old Dad for being flabbergasted? He was struck dumb for his lack of faith. A bit harsh, I've always thought!

But can you imagine the kind of rumors that were flying before my birth, given my mother's age and my Dad not able to speak.

Can you imagine the jokes that were going around?

"Hey, old Zach has lost his tongue."

"Yeah, but look at what he found. Ha, ha."

Then, at my circumcision my father's tongue was suddenly loosed and he was "filled with the Holy Spirit." He launched into this great prophecy about me, saying, that in me God was "visiting and ransoming the people" and that I would become "the prophet of the Most High."

Can you imagine growing up with these stories being told about you?

And the rumors did fly, in fact, as Luke writes correctly: "They talked about all these things throughout the entire hill country of Judea."

And many people asked, "What will this child be?" Or, as John's Gospel says, it was clear to everyone that "The hand of God was upon him." On me.

I overheard such talk everywhere I went: in school, at play, at the well, at family gatherings.

That kind of stuff could go to anyone's head!

Then as I grew to adulthood, I had this unquenchable feeling inside of me that I did have some great mandate from God: a special role to play in God's plan of salvation.

That's what drove me out into the desert—with this crazy lifestyle—to prepare myself for whatever my role might be in God's work of saving the world.

When I started to preach repentance, trying to get people to change their lives, to live their covenant with God, I discovered that I was a rather gifted speaker. I could hold a crowd in the palm of my hand. I could move people to real repentance.

As your Gospel of Matthew, chapter three, says correctly, "They were coming from all over, from Jerusalem, Judea, and the whole region along the Jordan." The world was flocking to hear me.

And now the very highest authorities were sitting up, taking notice, and sending messengers to ask: "Are you the one?"

Who could blame me for being tempted! I mean, are you ever tempted to be the Messiah? Ever?

You know, "Save yourself!" "Pull yourself up by your boot straps!" Save everyone else while you're at it. Be totally responsible for all the outcomes: your relationships, your family, your kids, your job, and everything in between. You should be the one!

Well, let me admit it: I was darn tempted!

You can even still get a hint of this in the text of John, chapter 1, verse 20. It says there, "John admitted, and did not deny it, but admitted, ‘I am not the Messiah.’"

Ah, but is "admitted" a complete translation of the Greek verb that is used there, homolagaeson?.

Well, it does mean admitted, but it was also the term used in the world of my time when someone submits reluctantly after a mighty struggle as when the loser in a war is forced to concede defeat.

In other words, and this is the truth, after an awful struggle I finally managed to say it, "I am not the Messiah."

It wasn't easy to say, but once I had said it, it was as if a ton weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I felt like a free person, free just to be myself. Free not to have to save the world and free not to take on the task to be anyone's messiah, not even my own.

Oh, I could point or pave the way for the Messiah, but I didn't need to succumb to my crazy messianic temptations.

Maybe the rest of my story could lift a ton weight from your shoulders, too. To know for sure that one Messiah is all we need. And we have one, the best we could have.

You don't need to try to take his place.

Maybe you might even want to make my struggled statement a kind of daily mantra prayer. One that you could say, I suggest, at least three times a day.

"I am not the Messiah."

So, your marriage isn't what it could be, your kids aren't who they should be, or you're not fulfilling your full potential. And you're certainly not meeting everyone's expectations of you. Hey, just sit back, put your feet up and say, "Well, I am not the Messiah."

Or even on the best of days when you are feeling very pleased with yourself and everyone else seems to be pleased with you, too; maybe that's the most important time to just sit back and say your mantra prayer:

"Well, I am not the messiah"

Why don't we say it together now: I am not the Messiah.

But Jesus is!

And that's enough!

Goodbye.

Floyd Brown: That was a marvelous presentation—a most unusual presentation—and we thank you for it.

Thomas Groome: Thank you, Floyd.

Brown: How nice to have you with us!

Groome: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Brown: Yours is an interesting and challenging life in that you're dealing with youth. You are teaching. You are guiding people all the time. I hear your title, Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College and I think: what an inspiration! Each year you have this wave of new students who are coming to you. How do you challenge them when they come on campus? As John the Baptist?

Groome: Well, I try a lot of different things, Floyd, as you can imagine, because one has to keep growing with them and because the students—not to date myself, but I've been there a while—that I taught in the late 70's are not the same as the students of the 80's and they're different from students of the mid-90's.

Brown: How so? Please touch on that a little bit.

Groome: Well, I think the students in the 70's—if I can remember that long ago!—were more engaged by social and political issues. I suppose the social following of the 60's was still echoing in our ears and I would say they were more politically astute. Now it would be unfair—or politically alert perhaps—to represent this crop of students as not being politically concerned. They are, but perhaps in more realistic ways and I do miss the idealism of those early years. I find the challenge to be perennial, through all the generations of students. That challenge is to take this great religious faith of ours and to integrate it with their lives, to present it—or rather, I even now say, to give them access to it—because it's not so much me telling them, but giving them access to the rich faith tradition in ways that are likely to lead them to a living faith. A faith that integrates life and belief and is a vibrant, living, life-giving affair.

Brown: I'm going to jump now from the campus to the congregation. Are the congregations today still asking the same thing of ministers and from church leadership as they did in decades past?

Groome: Well, I suppose that they're asking a very similar question but they're asking it differently. They're coming with different needs. But I suppose my conviction always is that the primary purpose of our churches, of our synagogues, of our places of worship is spiritual. People come there for spiritual reasons. However, if we give them these heavy doses of spirituality that sound terribly removed from their lives they won't hear that either. So there is always the challenge to take life and faith and bring them together. That’s the role of the preacher, teacher, religious educator, theologian, or whoever can truly engage people's lives in the real issues—the ultimate and the immediate questions. These questions are not just the far away, transcendent ones, but they are also the great, immediate, instant ones. To educate the preacher, teacher, or minister of the Gospel who can take and engage people's lives and then give access to this great, rich tradition of faith and bring these two together, perennially, is my challenge. That's my proposal. That's my conviction and what I try to do.

Brown: There are a couple of other points I would like to bring into our discussion, if I may. You mentioned in your talk about the mantra: "I'm not Jesus", but you also mentioned "picking yourself up by your bootstraps." I think that's what prompted me to ask you the questions about teaching in theological schools and what happens in the pulpit today. Everyone is deluged with information today and I think this is where the pressures come in that you were talking about: "I'm just one person and I’m not the Messiah." Where does the church stand here? What should we say to those people who are being deluged with all this media information? What should we say to them?

Groome: Well, I still think the message that we do have a Messiah is a powerful, life-giving message. I always worry and critique it when our society says to people, "You have to save yourself." And very often there is that type of political message that can come to us quite readily that a person indeed can pull themselves up as if they should be their own Messiah. I think it's a false message to give them and certainly not a message of faith.

Brown: You've prompted my thoughts and I'm thinking a lot. Thank you so much.

Groome: You're very welcome.

Brown: Just a marvelous talk. Thanks again to you, Dr. Groome, for being with us and for a most interesting program.