1 Cat Goodrich First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, AL January 15, 2017 Pointing to Jesus John 1: 29-42 The Second Sunday after Epiphany A couple of weeks ago, I accompanied a couple of UAB students who are part of the new UKirk Birmingham campus ministry to the College Conference at Montreat. It was an excellent conference focused on valuing diversity, embracing unity without seeking uniformity. We heard powerfully persuasive teaching from PCUSA Stated Clerk J Herbert Nelson and Co-Moderator of the General Assembly Jan Edmiston, and prophetic preaching from President of Johnson C Smith Seminary, Paul Roberts. It can be daunting to preach to more than 1000 college students, I imagine, but Paul won them over with his love for the Queen B- that is, Beyonce and his other on point illustrations, including one from the film Finding Nemo. Paul said his favorite characters from that movie were the seagulls, because they act just like we do whenever they see something they want or something they think might be food, they surround it and say, mine. mine. mine. Any morsel of food, anything shiny, mine- mine- mine. They re like us! We can be selfish, can t we? It seems like more and more these days, it s an American value to put yourself first to treat yo self, to take what you think you deserve, forgetting about the consequences. We re all about self reliance, self sufficiency, self protection, and self promotion we live in a selfie culture where our newsfeeds and search engines are precisely calibrated to show us exactly what we want to see. Is it not selfishness that drives our consumption, that leads to fistfights and stampedes on Black Friday? That allows us to disregard what we know to be true about exploitation of workers in the supply chains for the clothes that we wear and the smartphones we use? Mine, mine, mine. But in the midst of all of us seagulls saying, mine, mine, mine, we hear John the Baptist cry out this morning: There! Behold! The lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! To his own disciples, John the Baptist points out the one they should really be following Jesus, on whom God s Spirit rests like a dove, Jesus who
2 came to reveal the depth and power of sin so that we could be free of it once and for all: Jesus, the lamb of God. This is far from selfish behavior. John s ministry in this gospel is the opposite it s selfless. John s calling is to testify to what has been revealed to him about Jesus, to tell others that Jesus is the son of God. There is an altarpiece in a monastery hospital in Germany that depicts the crucifixion, and interestingly, anachronistically, John the Baptist is there, too. It was painted around the beginning of the 16 th century. The hospital specialized in treating plague victims and skin diseases and if you look closely, you can see that Jesus is depicted with sores on his skin a sign to those who saw the altar that Jesus identified with their suffering. 1 His afflicted, abused body hangs from the cross and to his right is John the Baptist, draped in animal skin, holding an open book, and pointing, with a preternaturally long and pronounced index finger to the crucified Christ. At John s feet is a lamb with a cross and a chalice, evoking his cry: Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! John was a prophet. Some self aggrandizement probably helped to ensure his survival we see that often enough with some preachers these days, don t we? Yet John s sole purpose in this gospel is to witness to Jesus to point us to Christ. Theologian Karl Barth kept a reproduction of this painting above his desk to remind himself that his calling was the same as John s to point others to Christ. 2 Christian Educator Rodger Nishioka writes of feeling this same calling. Rodger is a youth ministry guru who until recently served as a professor at Columbia Seminary in Atlanta. He remembers during a particularly busy period a concerned colleague invited him to lunch to share good news: The Messiah has come! You are not him! Your job is to point others to him, not to try to save everyone, not to try to be him. 3 Friends, this is our calling, too: to point others to Christ. To be a bit more like John the Baptist, without having to add locusts to our shopping list. How do we do that? 1 Hornik, Heidi and Mikeal Parsons, Crucifixion by Matthias Grunewald, On Art in Christian Century, vol 134, No 1, January 4, 2017, p. 47. 2 ibid. 3 Nishioka, Rodger. John 1:29-42, Pastoral Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, 2010, p 264.
3 The rest of the story gives us a good way to start. First, John trusts his experience of God in Christ and isn t afraid to tell others. He describes what he has seen: a man who is graced by the presence of God. John does this fearlessly, with little thought to what it will mean for his own ministry and following. And I think we are reluctant to do this. Reluctant to speak about how God is at work in our lives reluctant to share our faith with others. Faith is personal. We don t want to offend our actions will speak for us. And yet, what if our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends are longing for an experience of God like you have found here, in this community? What then? The next clue is in the interaction between Jesus and the disciples of John. It s a strange exchange. Jesus opens with a question and it s not with the question you d expect to hear from someone who s evangelizing. He doesn t ask are you saved? or have you accepted me into your heart? He doesn t even offer a normal greeting! Rather, he asks, what are you looking for? It s rudely translated in some versions as what do you want? or, in others, what are you seeking? It s clear these guys are hungry for something, there is something lacking in their lives, and Jesus wants to know what it is. Instead of rattling of the list of the top ten things they need in a prophet, they dodge the question, and counter with one of their own: Where are you staying? they ask. This could mean different things. They could mean it literally where s your home for the night, or figuratively - like, where does your Spirit remain but either way, Christ s response works because he simply says, Come and see. And they do, they spend the Sabbath with this man they just met, and it changes everything. Strange exchange, right? A question answered with a question followed by an invitation that leads to transformation. We live in contentious times, perilously divided and alienated from those who think differently than we do. There are faultlines between so-called coastal elites and blue collar America, between whites and people of color, between liberals and conservatives. We insulate ourselves from the pain of this alienation by surrounding ourselves with an echo chamber of news that reinforces what we already believe about the world, and with friends who see the world the same way we do it s like we re encased in bubble wrap that gets popped or infiltrated only occasionally. Some of us are more apt to
4 believe that which appeals to us emotionally than that which is objectively true, so much so that the word post-truth is Oxford English Dictionary s word of the year for 2016. Not meaning that we ve surpassed truth but that it is irrelevant these days. Maybe that s why the interactions we do have with those with whom we disagree so seldom lead to greater connection. But what if we fostered more exchanges like this one between Jesus and John s disciples? What if we asked more questions, and listened more? Open questions, asked with genuine concern, and a willingness to listen, no matter the time it takes to really hear and understand each other. What if we engaged in real dialogue instead of firing off angry tweets? I think we d find that questions open us up to connection and transformation. These questions could begin right here, with our asking each other what are you seeking here? What do you need? Maybe some of us are looking for a place of rest and restoration in lives that are way too busy. Maybe we need this place to help us serve and think of others instead of only ourselves. Maybe some of us find meaningful relationships here, an experience of community in an isolated world. Maybe we re looking for a way to nurture the values of compassion and inclusion in our children. Maybe, maybe some of us are seeking to encounter the mystery and wonder of God and some of us just come because we need some silence and prayer to counteract all the noise. What is it for you? If you aren t sure, think about it this week, and see what comes to you. And if you do find what you re seeking here, maybe a challenge this week could be to invite someone else to experience that, too. If we are called to point to Christ, how, where can we find him? Remember altarpiece from the hospital in Germany, where Jesus is afflicted with the same skin disease as the patients who were treated there? Christ aligns himself with those who suffer. And so if we want to encounter him, we must look to the margins to those who are least, lost, and last. If we want to point to him, we must go to the places that are broken and the people who are in pain, to love and serve them. For surely the activists who risk life and limb to work for liberation are pointing to him. Surely the teachers who work long hours for little pay to help students learn to think for themselves
and understand the beauty and complexity of the world in which we live are pointing to him. Surely the lawyers who fight for human rights and seek to reform a broken system are pointing to him. Surely you and I, insofar as we seek to be compassionate and serve others and seek justice are pointing to him. This MLK Weekend, I can t help but think of people like Georgia Representative John Lewis, who stood with King and risked his life on the Edmund Pettus bridge to fight for voting rights and who, when I met him, was standing with fast food workers to fight for fair wages in that industry. People like our former pastor Ed Ramage, who was convicted by King s letter from a Birmingham Jail and was willing to risk not only his life and his job but also this church by standing against segregation and declaring from this pulpit that we would welcome all whom God welcomes in 1963. It is that kind of selflessness that points to Christ. May we all be so brave. Amen. 5