Second Sunday after Epiphany
John 1
29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30He is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘soon a man is coming who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before I did.’ 31I didn’t know he was the one, but I have been baptizing with water in order to point him out to Israel.”
32Then John said, “I saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and resting upon him. 33I didn’t know he was the one, but when God sent me to baptize with water, he told me, ‘When you see the Holy Spirit descending and resting upon someone, he is the one you are looking for. He is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34I saw this happen to Jesus, so I testify that he is the Son of God.”
35The following day, John was again standing with two of his disciples. 36As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and then declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” 37Then John’s two disciples turned and followed Jesus.
38Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
39“Come and see,” he said. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they went with him to the place, and they stayed there the rest of the day.
40Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of these men who had heard what John said and then followed Jesus. 41The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother, Simon, and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ).
42Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Looking intently at Simon, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of John—but you will be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
This morning I woke up 40. Waking up 40 may in fact be different from waking up feeling 40, but since I have know idea of what 40 feels like, I will need to get back to you on this one.
Back in preaching school, we learned a few valuable lessons to bear in mind before entering the pulpit:
Don't sound arrogant: "You will recall that Jesus said (and I think he was right!)"
Don't psychologize God or Jesus: "He seemed really sad at this moment. Maybe it was something we did."
Don't preach about yourself: I've looked and looked, but there is no Gospel of Michael.
The last is tricky, since the art of interpretation is usually filtered through our knowledge and our experience, and the best preaching is born of personal conviction. It is unlikely that the preacher could edit herself or himself out of the process of writing since it is such a personal act. And yet we try.
Back to 40. I must confess to you that I chose the third hymn not because of some link to the text or theme of the day, but because I like it. Such is the self-involved mindset of the newly early middle-aged. I don't ask for your pity, only your patience.
By wonderful coincidence, the Gospel lesson this morning is a personal favourite, and an excellent starting point for the kind of "summary sermon" preachers like to give from time to time. In a summary sermon we sum-up many of the things thought or felt in a single effort. Again, no pity, only patience.
***
35The following day, John was again standing with two of his disciples. 36As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and then declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” 37Then John’s two disciples turned and followed Jesus.
38Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What are you looking for?” he asked them.
What are you looking for? This seems like a powerful question for each of us as we seek to follow the one described so succinctly as the Lamb of God. And what were the disciples looking for when they left their nets and their homes to follow Jesus into the unknown? What was it about the opportunity to accompany the "Lamb of God" that moved them so readily?
A lamb is a lamb but it is also so much more. In the Ancient Near East lambs were the domesticated equivalent of horses or dogs in our time. Lambs were a familiar object of loyalty and affection and a ubiquitous part of the local landscape. In a culture with rituals of sacrifice for the purpose of forgiving sin, the well-loved creatures were the kind of personal sacrifice required for the ritual to be authentic.
Use of the lamb also points backward to the critical moment in Israel's history where the blood of a lamb was smeared on the doorframe of the house to ensure that the spirit of death would "passover" the home. The psalmist takes on the voice of the lamb, and describes the longing and the trust that inhabits this upward relationship: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."
At the very least, the disciples would have been a little confused. They were, with all the others, waiting for Messiah to come. They waited for a liberator, for the strong arm that would crush Roman power and demonstrate that even the greatest army ever known was no match for the God of Israel. Yet he did not come. Arriving in his place was another version of messiah, the one described by Isaiah as the "suffering servant":
1Who has believed our message? To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power? 2My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
4Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! 5But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! 6All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
7He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins—that he was suffering their punishment? 9He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
11When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. 12I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death. (53.1ff)
***
It is a common dream, I am told, to dream that you have stumbled upon a hidden room in your house. The contents of the room may lead greater meaning to the dream, but the overall motif of the hidden room speaks of longing and finding something unique amid the commonplace of our lives.
In his book "Generation X," Douglas Coupland uses this dream to illustrate the difference between normal times and extraordinary times, a kind of angst-ridden cry of "is this all there is?" The dream of the hidden room becomes a segue to our desire for something greater than ourselves. It can be a dream or recapturing something we have lost, or it can be a dream of finding the thing that will lend greatest meaning to our lives.
I share this because of the almost "dreamlike" state that the disciples enter as Jesus calls them:
38Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
39“Come and see,” he said.
Perhaps unknown even to themselves, the disciples were looking for the Lamb of God. Like a vast and hidden room in a house, the Lamb of God walked into their lives and asked them to follow. Like a storehouse of hidden desire, the room and the lamb offer us the opportunity to name our need, to name our longing, to name what truly matters to us.
The disciples didn't need liberating. The might of Rome would fall under its own weight in time, a certain fate of all the great empires from the beginning of time to the present. "The grass withers and the flower fades" but the dream of God's lamb will endure forever.
***
What are you looking for? I'm looking for a God that is willing to die. I'm not looking for a God that is willing to watch, or listen, or stand by while the suffering of the world unfolds around us. I want a God that is willing to die. I want a God that is willing to enter the centre-most aspect of human experience and suffer and die as we must suffer and die.
It was Primo Levi, in an obvious understatement that said "it is not given to man to enjoy uncontaminated happiness." (Yancey, p. 254) The evidence is all around us, and the defense rests it's case: the pain of the world is tangible and visceral and without end. The disciples knew this, and we know this.
Andrew and Simon Peter and the rest of the disciples wanted more than a travelling companion and more than a wise friend: they wanted someone who would lay down his life for them, and imagined that they could do the same. They wanted hearts of stone to become hearts of flesh, fresh from the recognition that this was the Lamb of God that would take away their longing and take away their sin.
I wish for you a hidden room. I wish for you the same gift that Andrew and Simon Peter and the rest received that day: the recognition that this is a God like no other. That this is a God most deserving of our praise. That this is the Lamb and the dream of God. Amen.
posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 4:34 AM
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