19 January 14 “God Gets Personal” John
1:29-42
“Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the
sin of the world!
My world is filled
with rich stories this week. The stories began Monday at seminary. There are
nine pastors in the class I am taking. I have heard the stories of
congregations in Austin, El Paso and Athens, Texas. York, Nebraska and Ann
Arbor, Michigan and Mountain Home, Arkansas and Grambier, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania.
They are rich stories of churches small and large, young and old, struggling
and thriving. One great constant is the
passion in the voices of the pastors telling their story.
Perhaps John had a
similar passion as he spoke of Jesus being the Lamb of God. Perhaps that is why
he spoke in the present tense saying he is taking away the sin of the world now! Perhaps that is why he tells his disciples
twice, this man, Jesus, he is the Lamb of God. They finally understand. They
get it. Jesus really is the Lamb of God. Their only possible response is to
follow him.
Jesus notices. He then
asks these disciples of John what seems to be the wrong question. He does not
say, “Why are you following me?” He asks instead “What are you looking for?”
Not “why” but “what.” For their part they answer with a “where.” “Rabbi, where
are you staying?”
Where are you staying?
In the Greek, the world for “stay” (meno) is used in this gospel to emphasize
the unbreakable relationship between Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, and God’s
people. The question, “Where are you staying?” means “what are we supposed to
make of you?” or perhaps “Where do you belong?”
Jesus response is, “Come and see.”
John knows something
others do not. John sees something others do not. With that knowledge he testifies
to who Jesus is. He is not preaching sermons or dire warnings. He is a simple
man who is “not the light.” His purpose is to bear testimony to the light. He
is no prophet. His is a “voice crying in the wilderness.” This first simple
verse in Jesus’ story is from this weak, fragile, insubstantial voice pointing
to this Holy Other saying, “Here is the Lamb of God.”
Where Jesus belongs in
our lives is a key to understanding what faith in Jesus entails. It is not so
much a matter of thinking as doing – and not doing so much as being and
witnessing.
If we will come and
see what new story Jesus has for our lives, we will find he has come to make us
be more holy, more fully human, more like him. Of course, to be more like Jesus is inherently
fraught with danger.
It is one thing to be
a conservative Christian, or to be a Presbyterian Christian. It is another
thing to be a Jesus Christ Christian. To
be a Jesus Christ Christian puts pressure on us to live a life worthy of the
name. We might make it as a conservative
or a Presbyterian. But to be more holy, and more fully human like the human
Jesus? Perhaps this story requires more
faith than we can witness to this morning. Yet, here it is.
The novelist Kathleen
Norris tells the story of a young woman who attended an interfaith conference
at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota. The
speakers were monastics from the Christian and Zen Buddhist traditions, as well
as an Islamic scholar who seemed impressed with the hospitality of her
Benedictine hosts. Instead of the hostile questioning she often receives in
America she was simply asked to share her story. What had she seen in Islam
that attracted her?
She had been raised
as a Christian, as had the Buddhists, but had begun to explore Islam as a
graduate student in Paris. Her endeavor
began not so much as an intellectual pursuit as it was a response to what she
witnessed in the lives of the Africans who were her fellow students.
Appalled at the daily
insults and discrimination they received as blacks and Muslims, she was
astonished at their ability to endure such persecution with dignity and without
bitterness. They attributed their perseverance under pressure to their Muslim
faith, and that caused her to take a closer look, to go and see.
Another speaker was a
French Benedictine who reported on the long standing exchange program that
French monastics have with Japanese Zen Buddhists. He said that after one
Buddhist had been in the monastery for about a month he had only one question.
It seemed to him the monks did not live very well. They worked hard, their food
was neither good, nor plentiful, and they did not get much sleep. “Yet they are
joyful,” he said, “and I want to know, from where does this joy come?” Come and
see.
There is also the story
of a fascinating place in France were people go seeking a spirit filled experience
with God. People make pilgrimages to this place because the worship experience
is said to be different and there is something about the place and the music
and the experience that seems refreshing and filled with the presence of God.
It is called the Taize’
community. To get there you take a plane and a bus and then another bus,
traveling for several days because Taize is way out in the country and not
exactly easy to find. You have to really want to go there. Once you arrive the
brothers welcome you with gracious, yet simple hospitality, show you to your
bunk, and invite you to join them in the daily rhythms of their life together,
all of which revolve around worship. The community gathers three times a day in
the Abbey for morning, midday, and evening prayer, and in between, there are
bible studies, chores, and time for quiet meditation. But worship is the thing.
The meals are Spartan,
the showers are cold, the bunkhouses unheated, but your hardly notice; the air
is luminous and filled with chanting. The community is filled with people, each
of them seeking something, just as we are this morning, seeking something. The
brothers at Taize are prepared just for this, people on pilgrimage, seeking
something worthwhile for their lives.
A familiar bible study
is from our John passage with its question from verse 38: “What are you looking
for?” The brother leading the group asks the folk gathered how Jesus might be
addressing each of them with these same words. “Perhaps you have come here
looking for something,” he observes quietly. What might it be?
The next day John was
standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said
again, “Look, here is the Lamb of God?” These two heard him, they heard him
proclaim the Word of God is here with us, and they in turn followed Jesus.
Isn’t that why we
come to worship each Sunday, to have a glimpse of the Lamb of God? To see if
the story is true. To hear again Jesus turned and saw them following him. To
remember, before Jesus can turn to us, he wants to be sure we are turned to
him.
The brothers at Taize know to ask this same
question for it is the question the world asks. In the gentle brothers question
we should ask ourselves, how might Jesus be addressing us with these words this
morning?
Our answer may be simple, yet essential.
Perhaps we have come looking for a moment’s peace, a time to clear away the
cobwebs in our minds and let a little light in, to find comfort in a singular
truth that brings order out of chaos, to gather ourselves to find the energy
for the rest of our lives.
Yes, Jesus noticed the
disciples of John following him, and his answer to his own question was for
those who follow him to “come and see” where he stands in the world. To “come
and see” what it means that this Jesus, our Christ, is the Lamb of God and that
we are his followers, Jesus Christ Christians.
It really takes a great deal of courage on our
parts to enter into this sanctuary each Sunday, to come to worship in
expectation of actually looking for and finding God. Once found we become a new
creation. We become the church, full of flawed folk who bear the name
Christian.
Isaiah has told us: listen, pay attention. The psalmist asks:
did you ever find the strength to sing a new song when you were in the pit? Or
perhaps we are standing neck deep in the muddy stream of life and have
discovered there the river of life.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, isn’t that why
we come? To become a new creation. To become a Jesus Christ Christian. To
become one with God, one another, and the world. But aren’t we a little afraid
of who we might become in this new creation and what we might do?
One of my classmates told the story of being with a friend
and mentor one evening after a meeting. Walking out to their car a man came up
to them asking for change for a bus ticket. Before the man finished his story
my classmate’s friend was reaching into this wallet to give the man a twenty
dollar bill. The man was surprised. He had not finished telling his story. His
testimony was incomplete.
As they walked on my
classmate asked his friend, what just happened there? He said, “If I want to be
more generous, I have to be generous.”
If we are going to bring
peace, do justice, love kindness, feed the hungry, heal the sick, love one
another, walk humbly with our God, we need to be peaceful, do justice, love
kindness, feed the hungry, heal the sick, love one another, and walk humbly
with our God.
This is good news for us every day of our lives, no matter
how we feel our life is going, no matter how long it has been that we have been
trying to know what we want in life. In the end, it does not matter how we
answer our question, whatever it may be.
Because the only way
to answer life is to come and see our Lamb of God. The only way to be a Jesus
Christ Christian is to then contribute a verse to this human story. What will
your verse be?
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen 011914.gpc
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