Wisdom: You Know what You Don t Know Richmond s First Baptist Church, January 21, 2018 The Third Sunday after the Epiphany John 1:43-51

Transcription

1 Wisdom: You Know what You Don t Know Richmond s First Baptist Church, January 21, 2018 The Third Sunday after the Epiphany John 1:43-51 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. The Season of Epiphany always begins with the story of the Wise Men, and this year I m using that as an opportunity to preach a series on wisdom. I ve been wondering: what is wisdom? What does it look like in 2018? Who are the people you consider wise? And what would it take for us to become wise people? I started the series with an intuition that wisdom requires an open mind, the kind of curiosity that says Let s go! and the kind of humility that bows down. The Wise Men are good examples of that, but so are the shepherds in Luke s version of the Christmas story and the people in Mark s gospel, who went out to the wilderness to hear John the Baptist preach. Last week I suggested that wisdom develops in four stages: that in the beginning 1) you don t know what you don t know, and then 2) you do know what you don t know, and then 3) you don t know what you do know, and finally 4) you know what you know. I talked about those 12 believers in Ephesus, who didn t even know that there was a Holy Spirit, but who were open-minded enough to hear Paul s explanation, curious enough to wade out into the waters of baptism, and humble enough to receive the Holy Spirit. When they did they began to speak in tongues and prophesy. As I put it last week, baptism changed the way they talked and it changed the way they acted, which is just what baptism should do for us, and what it actually does when we receive the Holy Spirit: 1

2 The wisdom from on high. This week I want to focus on another story, but one that is also drenched in the waters of baptism and filled with the Holy Spirit. It s the story that Shearer read for us earlier, from John 1: It takes place on the banks of the Jordan River, but probably in that region known as the Transjordan, on the other side of the river from Jericho: the same place where God s people had camped out all those years earlier before entering the Promised Land. I think there was some camping going on in this story. Apparently the people who came out to hear John the Baptist preach stayed for several days, maybe even weeks. They must have slept in tents, or in some of the many caves in that area. Some may have slept out under the stars. It reminds me of those camp meetings on the American frontier, where people who didn t have regular preachers would hitch up their wagons and travel from miles around to a central location where they would camp out, sing hymns, pray, and listen to some good old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preaching. Sort of like those people who came to hear John the Baptist preach, and with him it was fire and brimstone every time. Repent! he shouted, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! John also seemed to believe that the King himself was at hand. Earlier in this same chapter he says, I baptize you with water, but among you stands one you do not know (John 1:26). And that s the kind of thing that could give you goosebumps. I remember being in Flamming Hall for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary celebration of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. Ron Crawford, the president, had just announced his retirement and we were all wondering who the next president would be. As I looked around that room it occurred to me that everyone who had loved and 2

3 supported the seminary through the years was there, which also made it a very likely pool for potential candidates. I leaned over and whispered to the person sitting beside me, The next president of BTSR is probably sitting in this room! And she was. It was Linda McKinnish Bridges. We didn t know it at the time but when I heard the news a few months later I thought, Of course! She s perfect! Why didn t I think of her earlier? Which may have been what some people said about Jesus, but it was not what Nathanael said, at least not at first. If you are familiar with the story you may remember that John pointed Jesus out to the crowd by saying, Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel. And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God. The next day John was standing there with two of his disciples and when Jesus walked by he said, Look, here is the Lamb of God! The disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying? He said to them, Come and see. It was about four o clock in the afternoon when all this happened, and they spent the rest of that day with him. Somehow, simply spending time with Jesus convinced them that he was the Messiah. 3

4 One of those two disciples was Andrew, and he went and found his brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah! He brought Simon to Jesus and Jesus said, You are Simon, son of John, but from now on your name will be Cephas (which is translated as Peter: The Rock ). And that brings us to today s reading, where it s the next day, and Jesus decides he wants to go to Galilee. He finds Philip and says, Follow me, and Philip does, but not before finding Nathanael and telling him, We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. And this is where Nathanael enters stage one of the wisdom process: he reveals that he doesn t know what he doesn t know by saying, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? But you have to understand: Nathanael was from Cana, a little town just down the road from Nazareth. Their high school basketball teams were probably arch rivals. They probably never had anything good to say about each other. But Philip, who was from Bethsaida, another small town altogether, simply said, Come and see. And to his credit Nathanael did. He kept an open mind. He was willing to get up and go. Let me remind you that this is how wisdom begins. When Jesus saw Nathanael coming he said, Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, which is like saying, Here comes somebody who tells it like it is, and it made Nathanael wonder: how would he know? He asked, Rabbi, where did you come to know me? And Jesus said, I saw you under the fig tree, before Philip called you. Now, I don t know what Nathanael was doing under that fig tree. Maybe he was just sitting there, enjoying the shade. But the fact that Jesus knew he was sitting there was enough for him. In that moment he entered the second stage of wisdom: he knew 4

5 how much he didn t know, or at least, how much he didn t know only a moment before. He said, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! (Jesus was right: Nathanael was one of those people who tells it like it is). And Jesus said, Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. It s a perfect story for Epiphany, for that season when we talk about the many ways Jesus was revealed as Messiah, Lord, and Savior. But it s also a perfect story for this series on wisdom, and our continuing conversation about where it comes from and what it looks like. Today we re talking about knowing how much you don t know, and it reminds me of a time in graduate school when I made a presentation to my New Testament colloquium. I had translated an article by Jacques Derrida, written in French, and as my supervisor later admitted Derrida isn t easy in English. He isn t. But I had learned a great deal in the process and at some point in my presentation I confessed, It seems like the more I know the more I know how much I don t know. And one of my professors pounded the table and said, And what do you do with the frustration! Which surprised us all. I don t think I had ever imagined that I would know everything, but he had, apparently, and the idea that he wouldn t was frustrating to him. Not to me. Knowing that you don t know everything is a good reason to keep studying, to keep learning. If you think you know it all you might stop. In our text for today these people came to the Jordan because they knew they didn t know everything, and one thing they didn t know in particular was who the Messiah was. They came looking, hoping that he might be revealed to them even as they were gathered at the river. 5

6 I ve started going to a Greek study group on Monday afternoons. I was invited by Joel Land, who is one of our members here. He and a few other retired ministers and professors sit down in a room at St. Stephen s Episcopal Church on Monday afternoons to translate the Greek lectionary texts for the following Sunday. It doesn t get much geekier than that, does it? But I love it. We sit there and read the text in its original language. We argue about the translations. We wonder where some of those strange words came from. When we translated this passage I remember being struck by the verb eurisko, from which we get the word eureka! Do you remember what that means? I have found it! The story I heard was that the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes was trying to figure out a way to measure the volume of irregular objects, and as he settled into his too-full bathtub some water spilled out over the sides. That s when he realized that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the parts of his body he had submerged. Legend has it he was so excited by his discovery that he jumped out of the tub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked, shouting, Eureka! I have found it! So, in the first few verses of today s text, and probably only because I was reading it in Greek, I saw that word three times: Jesus found Philip, Philip found Nathanael, and Philip told him, We have found the one Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote about: Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth. All that finding suggests that there was a whole lot of searching going on down there on the riverbank, and searching is what you do when you know what you don t know: when you know there is something or someone you haven t yet found. You keep looking. I think that s why Philip and Andrew, Peter and Nathanael, went down to the river in the first place. They 6

7 were looking for something they hadn t found. At least two of those disciples attached themselves to John the Baptist, thinking he might be the one, but John pointed them to Jesus and said, Look! There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And that s when they started telling everyone else, We have found the one we ve been looking for; the one whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote about; Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. Nathanael didn t think anything good could come out of Nazareth, but he changed his tune. He said, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! It makes me wonder how many people walk or drive by this church every day who would never think to look inside. They may wonder, Can anything good come out of church? We need to tell them what Philip told Nathanael: Come and see. And if they are wise, they might. They might recognize that there are some things they don t know. They might be willing to learn. And if they are we need to point them in the right direction. We don t need to show them how big the sanctuary is, or tell them how many pipes there are in the pipe organ. We don t need them to hear how beautifully the choir sings or how skillfully the musicians play. We don t need to ask them to admire the thoughtful preaching or the carefully crafted pastoral prayers. We need to do what Philip did: we need to bring them to Jesus. We need to say what John said: Behold the Lamb of God. Too many times churches get caught up in showing off their facilities or bragging on their programs, but at the deepest level I don t think that s what people are looking for. In many churches you can find inscribed on the pulpit the words of John 12:21: We would see Jesus. It s a reminder to the preacher: these people didn t come to hear 7

8 how eloquent you are. They didn t come to be dazzled by your rhetorical skill. They didn t come to be impressed by your knowledge. They came to see Jesus. So, don t get in the way of that. It occurs to me as I stand here, in this pulpit, that I might be blocking somebody s view of that stained glass window behind me: the one of John baptizing Jesus. If I m not, take a look at it. Take a look at John getting ready to baptize the one he called The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world; the one he said was greater than he, whose sandals he was not worthy to untie; the one he said should be baptizing him, instead of the other way around. Take a good look not at John but at Jesus and consider the possibility that he is the one you ve been looking for. And just to make sure you can see him, I ll step out of the way. Jim Somerville