"I must descrease. He must increase."

Willie James Jennings
and the Jazz Cadence
of Christian Theology



The great jazz drummer Max Roach once remarked that the
drummer doesn’t call attention to himself. Rather, as timekeeper
and rhythm-bearer, he “sets the feeling or mood of the band.”
This description aptly describes the work of theologian Willie
James Jennings, who on June 30, ended his tenure as senior
academic dean of Duke Divinity School and returned to the
faculty. Working closely with Dean L. Gregory Jones, Jennings
for nine years has served the divinity school’s institutional mission.
As somebody once sermonically said, Jennings has been
DDS’s “drum major instinct.” At great professional sacrifice,
he slowed the advance of his own scholarly agenda to care
for others—students, faculty, and administrative staff alike.
Paul F. Berliner, the great theorist of jazz, has remarked that the
modern jazz drummer is different from his forebears in that he not
only sustains the song’s rhythmic cadence. The modern drummer
also improvises within that cadence in order to “provide an intense
musical commentary on the featured soloist’s performance.”
Dean Jennings, we celebrate your work as intellectual and administrative
rhythm bearer. You’ve decreased that others might
increase. You’ve worked for new possibilities in 21st century
theological education. The stage is now set; the cabaret now
has a smoke-filled ambience. It’s now your time, your turn to play
your intellectual-theological riff on the featured soloist.
That soloist is the Jew from Nazareth, Jesus Christ; his song is
the song of redemption. So play on, my brotha’, play on: It’s
now your time to utter the jazz cadence of Christian theology.




The following text are words of life.
These words were given as a sermon, entitled,
John 3: 28-36 The Proper Imbalance

(A Sermon preached by Senior Associate Dean Willie J. Jennings
at the Duke University Chapel
For the 2003 Baccalaureate of Duke Divinity School)

The text is begun after the first paragraph...
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What does it mean to have your life defined as
preparation for another?
John, John, this fire-breathing dragon, this locus and wild-honey eating, camel hair-skin
wearing wild man -- He appears in the wilderness shouting the demand to repent. John
has been thrust into the midst of his peoples’ hopes and pains, fears and longings.
Expectation and interpretation will forever surround his life and there will never be
escape. John has become like so many before him -- prophet, servant.
Words, Words surround the life of this servant. Words about him, questions to him,
interpretations of him and his actions. Endless words. Yet John has only one word, one
weak word for his life –Preparation. Prepare – prepare the way of the Lord. John prepares
the way for the Messiah. John’s life has become nothing more, nothing less than the stage
upon which the Messiah, the deliverer will appear. John has become an occasion, an
event that marks the coming of the savior of the world. God has done this to him. You
can see God’s fingerprints all over this. This is God’s work.
My sisters and brothers, the God we serve places women and men in the terrible cross
currents of peoples’ pains and longings, their desires, their delusions, and fears. And in
these cross currents, the servants of God are pushed and pulled by peoples’ expectations
The Proper Imbalance (2)
and interpretations. The servants of God are always vulnerable to the words of others.
They can and will be cut and ripped by those words and they may even be killed by those
words.
We could not come right out and say this to these graduates. If we had told them this they
would never have come to Divinity School. We would have never received their tuition
dollars. So we waited until now. Listen soon-to-be graduates -- anyone who would be a
disciple of (Jesus the Messiah) must pass through the fire that is John the Baptist. You
must take the same path that John took. You have entered a new interpretation of your
life.
He must increase but I must decrease. These words capture the character of Christian
ministry. We who live in service to Christ must interpret our lives through these words.
That crucial exegesis of our lives through these words can never end, because God will
never bring it to an end. This exegesis is eternal.
There is a truth in John’s words so basic, so terrifying that we often ignore it. What is that
truth? God does not share. God does not share our lives with our family, with our friends,
with our churches, with our spouse. God does not even share our lives with us. God in
Christ seeks to re-pattern our lives so that his voice and his message become our life.
There is no balance here. No Christ and me, fifty-fifty, half and half. Failure forms in our
life in trying to find a place for the Messiah’s life in our lives. There is no balance, only a
holy imbalance.
God has come into this world to do what we cannot do. We must never forget this. We
cannot resist the lure of violence as a power that allows us to get our way. We cannot
overcome the horror of death. We cannot drive away the despair in peoples’ lives. We
cannot transform this world into a beloved community.
John understood this – Christ must increase. This is both a plea and a statement of fact.
The cunning of reason crumbles before the stratagems of the evil one. The power of the
strongest body fades at the onslaught of the forces of death. We can save no one. We
have no power to transform any life. Christ must increase. And increase he shall – God in
Jesus has broken the power of death and has taken hold of all creation as the focus of
God’s redeeming love. This will be seen. This will be known by all flesh.
All that remains is the decrease. You are not the Messiah. My friends, anyone in ministry
must say this to themselves at least once a day. But you must also say, “I prepare the way
for him.” The decrease gives us everything. The decrease is not about taking away, but
giving way. It is giving Jesus the stage of our lives to do his work. John the Baptist got it
just right. The stage must be set (prepare the way) -- all that remains is the decrease.
The journey of ministry is the giving way. The journey of ministry is not a journey of
self-discovery, or self-realization, or self-revelation. If you are using ministry as a way to
search for yourself, get out now. It’s not too late. Go do something else with your life. I
The Proper Imbalance (3)
say this only to save you from the disappointment that awaits you. You will never find
yourself in ministry. Never!
It is not about you or me. It is about Jesus Christ. We preach and live Christ not
ourselves. We prepare the way for him. All that remains is the decrease.
And with this
decrease, the one sent from the Father will pour out his Spirit on us without measure.
With this decrease, God’s restoring and renewing power will be seen in our lives. With
the decrease, the Son of God will be exalted and glorified through our lives.
My friends, the moment is critical, the hour crucial. Lives are at stake. Christ must
increase and we must decrease! Will you yield to the Spirit of the living God? Will you
give way to Jesus Christ? If you do, then the journey you will take will be filled with
awesome surprises. And with each step and at every stop God will be there.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.