Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.' (Jn 1:29)
A contemporary journalist David von Drehle who wrote a book called, “Among the Lowest of the Dead.” It consists of his observations of death row inmates in Florida. He said that what united these criminals, without exception, was their narcissism. No matter how violent they were, no matter how heinous their crimes, each imagined himself to be a victim. Whether by family or classmates or society at large, they imagined they had been driven to their crimes. Very often they were subjected to terrible abuse, but of course none of the abuse they received rose to the level of the crimes they themselves had committed.
One of the inmates interviewed by von Drehle was the serial killer Ted Bundy, who was eventually executed in Florida. He reported something really astonishing about Bundy. Bundy told the reporter that he was surprised that anyone missed his victims. He thought that with all the people in the world, he was amazed that anyone noticed they were gone. He was so caught up in his own ego and vanity that he couldn’t imagine that these were people with lives, with loved ones who cared about them and would miss them and start looking for them once they were gone.
These are extreme cases of malice and self-absorption, but we shouldn’t think of ourselves as so different, at least not as different as we would like to think. We could easily point an accusing finger and write them off as deranged monsters, and few would disagree. But I think we should think of them like a character in a Flannery O’Connor story. Flannery O’Connor’s stories were full of characters like the sort of people one would expect to meet on death row, and so she was asked why she created such violent characters and wrote such difficult stories. She replied that most of us suffer from spiritual maladies in their low-grade chronic form. She said that she created characters that suffered from the same spiritual maladies in their extreme, fully advanced form so their natures were easier to recognize.
We all suffer from narcissism. Every time we indulge in the self-pity of counting up the wrongs committed against us, every time we indulge self-fantasies, sexual or otherwise, every time allow our appetites and passions to lead the way rather than controlling them and ordering them towards what is good, we open ourselves up to the same darkness we see in these terrible criminals, even if our actions never rise to the same anti-social level.
We live in a culture that encourages this narcissism. Advertisements bombard us with flattering images: use this product and you will be adored; drive this car and life’s pleasures will open themselves up to you. Television show heroes always have the last word, always win arguments with clever insults; how often is a humble refusal to answer one wrong with another celebrated during primetime television. How often is a brave stand in favor of chastity depicted?
We may not buy this culture as some do, but we would be fools to think we aren’t affected by it. We participate in a culture of death that is a narcissistic serial killer. Since the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade something like 40 million children have been killed, most often simply because they promised to be a little costly or inconvenient. They are killed because those involved couldn’t imagine them as persons connected to other persons, as lovable and capable of loving.
We see the very opposite of this narcissism in John the Baptist. A few weeks ago we heard him addressing those approaching him. He answered their questions rather abruptly saying, “I am not the Christ.” That’s not much of a confession of faith, but it is the necessary first step in any confession. The end of narcissism is when we can say and believe that we are not the center of everyone else’s lives, when we can say and believe are not the king of the universe and so do not expect to be treated as such, when we do not expect other to serve us slavishly.
We see in today’s gospel that John the Baptist makes good on his beginning. The negative confession – “I am not the Christ” – is followed up by the positive one, “Behold the Lamb of God.” John is capable of putting away his own narcissism and embrace Christ as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “He must increase, and I must decrease”: these words of John the Baptist should be inscribed on every human heart.
Jesus is the king and center of every human heart, but we see too that he is not an egoist either. We heard during Christmas that Jesus is born “for us” and “for the world.” We hear him saying consistently that he comes not to do his own will but the will of the Father. He hands himself over to the Father’s will which is that world be saved. This life culminates on Good Friday where Christ gives himself to the world on the Cross, and where no narcissism is to be found. If Jesus had bested his opponents with clever sarcasm or struck down Pontius Pilate and King Herod with his divine power the culture of death might have impressed. But this would have left undone the main purpose of Jesus mission, the conversion of the culture of death.
And we see that even risen in glory and seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus does not serve himself. He comes to us even now in the form of the Eucharist, as food for our nourishment and as an impetus to become like him and to stand in the world as he stood, as “ones who serve.” By doing this, by being transformed by Christ we accomplish his work on earth we spread a culture of life, a culture oriented towards what is really life giving: the humble love of the kingdom of God.
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