January 16, 2005 - Second Sunday After Epiphany - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Isaiah 49: 1-7
PSALM: 40: 1-6
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 1: 1-9
GOSPEL: John 1: 29-42

BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD! HE TAKES AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD!

I love doing John the Baptist! He is so bombastic. He does that kind of stuff with folks. Remember, as we have been reading about him, he was out in the desert preaching to people, "REPENT; THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND! - Right? He was the one who was to make the path straight for the one who was following him, and then, when they came out listening to his message, he said, "WHO TOLD YOU TO COME OUT HERE - YOU SNAKES, YOU VIPERS - WHO WARNED YOU THAT GOD WAS CLEANING HOUSE?" And then he baptized Jesus, and, the next day, as he sees Jesus, he is pointing Him out, "THERE HE IS! THE ONE WHOM EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE BEEN DOING HAS BEEN LEADING TOWARD; THE ONE WHOM I WAS SENT TO MAKE THE WAY STRAIGHT FOR; THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO REDEEM ISRAEL FROM ALL HER SINS; THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO BE THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD - THERE HE IS!" And then, he told us several things about Him - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not the sin of Judah, not the sin of Israel, but takes away the sin of the whole world, and He is the one who ranks ahead of me because He was before me - the one who was with God from the beginning, and, finally, the one whom he witnessed the Spirit of God descending upon like a dove and remaining with. Just keep in mind that word, "remain", because, if you look over the text there, you will see that the word, "remain", or some version of it, appears over and over, and, throughout John's Gospel, it appears over and over.

But there are some interesting things here. First of all, most people probably were not aware that John the Baptist had disciples. Most people probably just thought he was out there by himself, once they consider what he ate and what he wore, and this was not kind of your average party-sort of fellow. He was not the kind that seemed to attract groups of people, but, in fact, he had disciples. Virtually all of the prophets from the Old Testament - and we consider John the Baptist to be the last of the prophets from the Old Testament - virtually all of them had disciples. Some of them had as many as 300 and 400 disciples who would follow them about. So, John the Baptist had disciples.

Now, this is an interesting thing because, in fact, after Jesus came on the scene, there were some of them that went to follow Jesus, but there were others that didn't. There were others that continued to consider John the Baptist to be the one they were following, and they had a problem with Jesus. They were offended by Him, and do you know why? He let in all those Gentiles. He was not one of the elite, and He did not appeal just to the elite of Israel, but, in fact, He reached out to virtually everybody around. That particular group stayed close to John, and, even after John was dead, they continued to have their own group. They continue, to some extent, to this day in a group called the Parsees, which I believe remain only in Iran today, but they are descendants of John the Baptist's teachings. So, John the Baptist had disciples, and John was telling His disciples about whom Jesus was with that "behold the Lamb of God" thing' and, after he told them, they left.

In five days, we are going to see a transition of one government to another. In our case, it is from the President's first term to the President's second term, but, throughout our country's history, we have had these transitions. We are watching one of those transitions in this Gospel passage. John the Baptist is handing over his ministry to Jesus, and, later on, he will talk about how he must decrease as Jesus increases. The disciples that go to Jesus present us with an opportunity to think about the calling of the first disciples. Most of us are used to the calling of the first disciples that we hear about in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That is where Jesus is out on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and He sees them out in a boat and says, "What are you doing?" They say, "We are fishing", and He says, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people". It kind of gives us the impression that Jesus was just wandering about, and, if He saw somebody, He would say, "Hey! Come follow me!" This passage is very different. In this passage, Jesus isn't soliciting anybody. John the Baptist is pointing people to and heading people over to Him - even his own disciples. So that means that the people who were following Jesus were not people who were just itinerant fisherman and just that second decided to change, but these were people who had been committed to studying the Law, the Torah, and had been following John the Baptist and learning from him. They had been remaining with him, and they had been staying with John the Baptist and had been following him about, perhaps for years; and they got the message - "This is the one that I came to do all that for" - and they followed Him.

Now, interestingly enough, they didn't have any particular agenda. They were just following him, much like puppy dogs, I think. And so Jesus looks around and sees that He has a couple of hangers-on and says, "What are you looking for?" "Rabbi, where are you staying? We want to stay with you. We want to follow you. We want to learn from you." Jesus was not promising them some quick fix, some secret word of wisdom that would give them power. He was willing to be with them to be their mentor and to train them, and they were looking for that shift from John the Baptist to Jesus.

I think that is important because the folks that we see today - and I like the fact that one of them is named Andrew; we never find out the other guy's name - they were people who had been working with John the Baptist over a period of time, and they were seekers. They were not just folks wandering around and, all of a sudden, got a bug to follow Jesus. These were people who had been searching for something, and, for a while, it looked like it was John the Baptist, but even that kind of guru for them, that mentor, told them, "No. Here is the one. Everything we have been doing up until now is just preparation. This is the main event".

Well, that is important for us today because every one of you here are seekers. Now, you might say, "Well, wait a minute. How does Andrew know that I am a seeker?" Do you have any idea how I know that all of you here are seekers? Because you are here! You are here! As I said this morning, you are not waiting here thinking this is the line for one of the last films of the film festival, and, at Communion, a woman came up, and I recognized her as a member of the film society, and she was, indeed, here to get Church before she went to the film festival! But, the truth is that, of all the places you could be on Sunday morning, the golf course or any place you could be, you are here. You are here because you are looking for something from God. Now, I don't propose that I know what you are looking for. I would bet that, for at least half of you, you don't even know what you are looking for, but you are looking for something that is going to help you to understand that God is more real in your life and how you can develop that. Some of you are looking for ways to get in touch with that forgiveness of sin that the Lamb of God is supposed to deal with. Some of you are looking for that sense of empowerment as one upon whom the Spirit of God rests and remains. But all of us here - all of us here are seeking. All of us here are the people who come to Jesus to say, "Master, where are you staying? We want to stay with You". We aren't interested in just one word, one secret, that is going to give us power over all of life's problems (and, especially because we know that is not possible and so we are not interested in it). We are interested in being mentored in the spiritual life and being mentored so that we can grow in faith. We are interested in being those people who, like Jesus, have the Spirit remain with them and stay with them.

Now, Jesus has a very interesting answer. "Where are you staying, Master?" "Come and see". Everything that there is for us to learn from Jesus comes from being a part of His Body - comes from being with the rest of those upon whom God's Spirit rests as the followers of Jesus. We share with one another in our worship life together, in our sharing of Scripture, and in our sharing of Sacraments, and that is the first place in which we learn the things that Jesus has to teach us. We Episcopalians kind of phrase it in a particular way. We believe that what we pray is what we believe, and so the way we learn our beliefs is to pray them together and to experience them together in community.

Now, it might be a lot faster if each of us was given an individual course by Jesus, but the reality is that God's salvation is not just for us - it is not just for a special group; it is not just for me; it is not just for clergy; it is not just for Episcopalians - but God's salvation is for the whole world. So, a part of our learning and a part of our being mentored by Christ in the faith is about how we live together with our little snippet of the whole world right here. It is just as important how we deal with one another as how carefully we understand what God is directly asking of each of us, because, otherwise, there is no way we will ever be able to get that message across to anybody else.

So, I want you to think about this transition. Think about the transition of this group of seekers who have been preparing for something that they weren't sure exactly what it was, but they trusted their mentor, John; and, when he pointed out Jesus to them and told them that Jesus was the one who was to be the Savior of the world - that Jesus was the one who was with God from the beginning; that Jesus was the one with whom the Spirit remained - they knew immediately that Jesus was the one they wanted to stay with. That is as complex and as profound as their faith was, and I would invite you to think about those same things. If you want to deal with someone who has the power to take away all of the burdens of sin for the whole world; if you want to be with the one who was with God from the beginning; if you want to be the one with whom God's Spirit remains and through whom God's Spirit is shared, then stay with Jesus. Stay and learn at His feet. Be a disciple. Be one who remains with Him day-in and day-out and remains with His brothers and sisters, and, in learning from them, is able to invite others to come and see; to invite others to come to the place where that power of God lives; to invite others to receive the forgiveness of sins and the blessing of God's Holy Spirit.

That is the calling. You need not be a fisherman to do this. You just need to be a seeker, and you need to know who it is that you are seeking and what He invites you to come and see.

AMEN