I
don’t know where Jesus was heading that day.
I don’t know what he had on his agenda.
I don’t know where his day planner told him he should be or by what time
he was suppose to be there but on this day, Jesus was going about whatever it
was he had set out to do as he was going merrily about his day, he was
interrupted by John the Baptist, who decides that at this particular moment as
Jesus walks by would be a great time to declare to all those within hearing
distance who it was John believed Jesus to be.
I
don’t know if you have ever spent much time comparing the 4 gospels and how
they relate the story of Jesus to their readers and now to us, but each one
tells us about Jesus in a different way.
Many of them will tell us the same the same event in Jesus’ life but
they will tell us about the event in Jesus’ life in a different way. Now the first three gospel writers, Matthew,
Mark and Luke tend to be fairly similar to one another but John, John’s telling
of the life of Jesus is quite different than the other three. The other three pretty much begin their
retelling of Jesus’ life with narrative, while John begins with a theological
exposition about Jesus being the Word of God.
All the other writers let us figure out who Jesus is as the story of
Jesus’ life unfolds but John, there is no mystery, there is no surprise, John
gets straight to the punch line and then tells us the conclusion we are to come
to before he even introduces the story’s
main character. He begins by telling us
who Jesus is and then gives us the events of his life which show us how it is
he came to this conclusion.
John’s
narrative begins with John the Baptist explaining that he is not the messiah
but that the messiah would come after him.
Then John the Baptist tells us, who is actually the messiah. John looks up and sees Jesus passing by and
declares that although he himself is not the messiah but merely the one who
come before preparing the way, this man right here passing by just now is the
Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He then gives an explanation as to why it is
he has come to this conclusion. He knew
Jesus was the messiah because God told him that the one on whom he saw the
Spirit of God alight like a dove would be the messiah and John saw the Spirit
alight on Jesus, therefore Jesus must be the messiah, God’s anointed.
Once
John knows to whom he has come to make the wa, he cannot keep the information to
himself. It is almost as if he has to
make sure everyone he knows, knows that Jesus is the messiah. Because the very next day, he hijacks Jesus’
day again. He is standing around, (it
seems that in John’s gospel, John the Baptist has a lot of time on his hands)
with two of his disciples and Jesus is walking by once again, having nothing
better to say than what he said last time, he tells his two disciples to look,
here is the lamb of God. At this point
John’s disciples must have understood what this cryptic phrase meant perhaps
figuring if they went and checked him out John would stop bothering this poor
man as he walked by every day. So they
left John and began following Jesus.
Now
this is kind of strange. Here Jesus is
just going about his business and two days in a row his cousin calls out to
those around him telling all who will here that Jesus is the lamb of God and
now two of his followers are now following him, so Jesus turns to them and asks
them a simple question, “What are you looking for?”
And
these two disciples being ever so good at understanding and quite good at
following simple instructions and having the ability answer basic questions,
completely fail to answer Jesus’ question by avoiding it all together and
asking him another question, “Where are you staying/abiding?” Since they were already in the game of not
answering each other’s questions clearly and precisely, Jesus answers by
telling them to, “Come and see.” So they
followed Jesus to his home to go and see.
They must have liked what they saw because not only did that stay with
him and become his disciples but one of them, Andrew went to get his brother
Simon, to tell him he needed to come and see this guy, he is the Messiah. Simon then in turn, comes to see this Messiah
his brother had found. Immediately Jesus
sees him and tells him that his name is no longer Simon, but will from hence
forth be Cephas which when translated is Peter. So as we conclude the narrative we are
looking at this morning Jesus now has his first three disciples, the last of
which will be a pivotal figure, not only in his life and ministry but in the
founding and building of the church.
When
I began my sermon, I was going to look at what it meant for Jesus to be the Lamb
of God, but as I worked my way through the passage this week. I kept coming
back to the latter part of the passage when these two disciples decide to leave
John, baptizing by the river and follow Jesus.
Jesus asks them as very good question, “What are you looking for?” And
it seems all they want to know is where it is that Jesus is living at this
point in his life.
Although
it does not come across well in English, when they ask him where it is that he
is staying or abiding, depending on the translation you are reading, what they
are actually asking Jesus is a much more complex question. Thing is translating something from one
language to another is always a tricky process.
Words in one language often times have meaning and connotations which
are nearly impossible to carry over into another language. Sometimes in order to get the full picture of
what one seemly simple word means in one language you need a whole sentence to
explain when you translate that one word into another language. The word used here in Greek is not so easy to
bring into English. The word which is
translated, “staying” or “abiding” actually means two things at the same time
when John uses it here in this passage.
The
first meaning is fairly simple; Andrew and his friend are asking Jesus where is
the location of the place where he is living.
But on another level they are also asking Jesus, “What is at the center
of Jesus’ being?” “What defines who he
is?” “What is at the core of who he is?”
Which then makes Jesus’ answer to them all the more interesting; Jesus does not
tell them what it means for him to be the Messiah. Jesus does not explain to them about being
the Son of God or even give them a brief description about what his purpose was
here on earth. Instead, Jesus turns to
them and simply answers “Come and see.”
So
they went with him to see. Jesus took him to where he lived and by spending the
day with Jesus they saw who he was. They
were convince by what they saw in Jesus, they saw in whom he abided, they saw what
was at the center of his being, they caught a glimpse of who Jesus was and what
he was up to and decided they wanted to be a part of that.
But
it did not stop there. Andrew was so
impressed by what he saw in Jesus that he sought out his brother and decided it
was pertinent for Simon to also come and see where Jesus abided. Jesus was not just another rabbi, he was not
just another teacher or a prophet he was the real deal, he was the one they had
been seeking for and it was evident in who he was, it was evident in how he
went about his life, it was evident in all he did and all he said. It was evident and he wanted his brother to
come and see what he saw.
I
don’t know why you are here this morning.
I could fool myself into thinking that you have come here this morning
because you have figured out what profound speaker I am and that that you came
here this morning just to hear what amazingly profound wisdom I would bring
before you this morning, and if that is the reason you came this morning, I am
a little more than flattered that you think so highly of my speaking
abilities. But let us be realistic, we
all come to church on any given Sunday for our own reasons. Some of them are good and noble reasons, of
us are here for some more self serving and sometimes we get up, get ourselves
ready and find ourselves within these walls out of habit and little more. We have, for whatever reason, found ourselves
within these walls, listening to this sermon this morning, standing with John
on the street and hearing him say, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the
sins of the world.”
There
are several places we can be this morning, when it comes to this passage. We might be among those who are simply here
this morning. We came because it is a
good place to be. Our friends are
here. We have always gone to
church. We like church, but there is not
much more to it than that. We are
bystanders in a way, just there on the street, or by the river or where ever it
was when John looked up and pointed Jesus out that day.
We
are here. We have heard John’s
testimony. John is telling us that right
here, is Jesus is the messiah, God’s anointed, the one who was God and is God,
and the Word of God and with the Creator when the earth’s foundations were laid,
here is the one who came to take away the sins of the world.
Here
we are, just minding our own business, going about our lives and suddenly we
see Jesus, someone points him out to us.
Someone tries to explain who he is.
Perhaps, what they have to say to us makes sense, perhaps it does
not. What does it mean that Jesus is the
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world? What is this person talking about? Perhaps, they speak words about Jesus and
suddenly the whole thing makes sense.
Either
way, we find ourselves looking up and seeing this Jesus for the first
time. He is right there passing by, what
do we do? Are we like these two disciples who have heard the witness of John
and know that this Jesus is someone worth checking out. Do we see this man, this teacher, this
messiah and want to tag along to see what he is all about? Perhaps we don’t even know why we are going
to check him about, but something about him, something about what is said about
him, something attracts us and we find that we are interested, that we want to
see what this man is all about. We want
to know what it means for him to be the messiah. We don’t completely understand but the idea
of him taking away the sins of the world sounds pretty interesting.
So
some of us are choosing to go check this Jesus fellow out for the first time
this morning, but there are others of us who have already been checking him
out. We have already decided he is worth checking out. And as we have checked him out. We have listened to what people have to say
about him, followed him around for a while.
Spent some time getting to know him, trying to understand what he is all
about, coming to an understanding of who he is, and what is at the center, the
core of all that he is. As we have come and seen, we find that we like what we
see. We want to be more than mere
observers, we want to be a part of what he is all about. We want to follow him, learn from him, and
learn to be more like him. We have seen
who he is, we have seen what he is all about, and we want more, we want be
disciples.
But
being a disciple is not like being an observer.
It more than simply coming and seeing.
Choosing to be a disciple is the choice which moves us from watching and
observing, to doing. Choosing to be a
disciple is the choice which moves us from coming and seeing, to going and
doing. It is the choice to embrace the
one we have been observing, to follow his example and to seek to live as he
lived, to speak as he spoke, to love as he loved, to learn from his teachings,
from his life and from who he is and seek to be a person who is like himn, to
be moved by the one who moves him, to have at the center of our beings the same
God of love, mercy, justice and forgiveness who is at the center of who Jesus
is.
You
see there is more to following Jesus than just showing up and listening. There is more to following Jesus than coming
and seeing. Once we have seen once we
know who Jesus is we must them choose to stay, and not only to stay but to do
as Andrew did and be moved to action by what we have seen, moved to action by
who we have seen and do our best to share with those around us who it is we
have come to believe in. To invite those
who we love and those who we encounter in our day to day lives to come and see
what we have seen, to come meet the one we have chosen to follow to come to
know what we have come to know.
This
passage is a circle. It begins with John
saying, “Look!” Which causes these two
to go and see who it was John was calling for them to behold. They went and saw and who they saw and it
changed them. Who they saw caused them
to choose to follow, to choose to be disciples and in turned caused Andrew to
then go and invite his brother to come and see and Simon heeds his brother’s
invitation and chooses to come and see for himself who this Jesus, messiah is,
bringing us full circle so to speak.
As
people who here this morning we are somewhere on this circle; we may be at the
top of the circle, with someone calling to us to come and see, we may be
somewhere along the circle observing, “seeing” what there is to see, judging
for ourselves what we think of this Jesus, messiah person, we may be among
those who have chosen to follow Jesus, to be his disciples and as such there is
nowhere else to go but be changed by what we have seen, infuse our lives with
who Jesus is, and what Jesus is all about and then like John and Andrew invite
those around us to come and see, to come and learn, to come so that they may
know what we know, so that they may know who we know and also be changed by who
he is.
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