The thing that strikes me about John the Baptist is that he knew that he was not the Messiah. This seems obvious to us because we read the scriptures in light of our knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, i.e. the Christ. So when faced with a statement like we read in today's Gospel--"I am not the Christ"--we tend to respond, "well, uh, yes old chum, of course you're not."I suspect it wasn't that simple. Few, of course, start out thinking they are the Messiah. Even if you grow up in a culture where hope for a Messiah is not solely the province of people a few plates short of a full china set, you have no reason to believe that you are the person for which so many are hoping.But then you discover a talent, a gift. Your words have the power to move people. Your way of life has the power to inspire them. First it's just a few, some broken souls who grasp at any hope that comes along. Soon, though, they are numbering in the dozens, and then the hundreds. The words you speak seem to come from somewhere else and you see people in the crowd weeping and beating their breasts. Inspired by examples in your own tradition, you raise your voice against the central religious and political institutions of your society. Rather than driving people away, though, your prophetic courage draws even larger crowds.It must have taken extraordinarily spiritual strength for John to hold on to the conviction that he was not the Messiah. He had to ignore the size of the crowds, the hopeful faces of those coming for baptism, and the growing political and religious crisis occasioned by his preaching. He had to shut out the resounding din of all of that and listen to the still, small voice of God with its simple message: "you are not the one."I wonder how many of us hear that message and chose not to listen. Messiah complexes come in all sizes and few of us--thankfully--face the kind of challenges John faced. From the executive with a pathological inability to delegate to the parish volunteer who runs her ministry as a personal fiefdom, we all face the temptation to ignore DeGaulle's famous dictum: "the graveyards are full of indispensable men."Those of us who feel--rightly or wrongly--that we have been given great gifts of intellect, creativity or leadership are particularly at risk. We are apt to feel that God, Fate, or History is calling us to a higher destiny. As the years go by, though, and that corner office eludes us or that great novel goes unpublished, we are apt to become embittered: "Why would God give me these gifts and then frustrate my efforts to make full use of them?"Christians tend to talk piously about dying to self, but most of us are not terribly good at it. We're genuinely shocked when we come to the realization that God's plan for our gifts bears little resemblance to our own. We might do well to consider the example of John, who faced the temptation of believing that he embodied the fullness of Israel's hopes and was nevertheless able to walk away and accept the lesser role that God was asking him to play. We might do even better if we took his words as a simple daily prayer: "I am not the Christ."