1 post tagged “a sermon for epiphany ii”
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, remain in your heart, O God, our strength, our courage, our freedom. Amen.
Perhaps it’s not the most auspicious way to begin my preaching ministry, but I must start with a confession: for me, there is no other book in the Bible more inspiring and more irritating than the Gospel of John.
Let me start with what inspires. For an English teacher like me, you can’t find a better book to teach students that stories move us not simply because of what they say what happened, but HOW they do so. Metaphor, imagery, allegory, to name a few: the Gospel of John is chock full of the devices that writers use to help readers along in ways that they might not even expect. In no other Gospel do you see so many explicit renderings of Jesus through abstraction and metaphor: Jesus is the Word; the Light of the World; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the Bread of Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And of course, in today’s lesson, we have Jesus as the Lamb of God, proclaimed by John the Baptist, someone whom we met last week, preparing us and the world for Jesus’s arrival and, during this season of Epiphany, showing us Jesus’s true calling on earth. Today’s lesson begins with John’s bold proclamation of who Jesus is, builds its drama with others—the disciples—and culminates (if you read the first part of the second chapter of the Gospel) culminates in the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first “sign” by turning water into wine. Read slowly, and you’ll notice that the writer is very careful to remind us of the time this drama all unfolds: John proclaims Jesus as the Lamb of God on one day, and by the end of the next day, Jesus has three disciples, two of them named: Andrew and Peter. The following day (the second day of this narrative) two more decide to follow: Philip and Nathaniel. And then the next day, Day Three, is the wedding at Cana.
Here’s the English professor emerging again! John’s proclamation of Jesus as the Lamb of God on Day One which culminates in the wedding feast at Cana on Day Three is what one calls “foreshadowing,” a kind of teaser that serves also to illuminate more powerfully the significance of events later in the story. And, of course, for John’s writer, this more significant event is the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s John’s Gospel, and John’s Gospel only, that has Jesus die before the Passover meal is eaten, not after it as the other Gospels put it, in order to drive the metaphorical point home. Jesus doesn’t just celebrate Passover as an observant Jew: Jesus IS the Passover, he is the Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God. And what happens to this man who is sacrificed? He experiences a resurrection, an event as joyful and astounding as experiencing a wedding, when two people miraculously cling themselves to one another. The Gospel of John is astounding in both its complexity and unity, and for these reasons, I love it. Here endeth the literature lesson.
On the other hand, there are moments when I can’t stand the Gospel of John. It’s a book whose rhetoric is so sure of itself, so confident in its conviction of Jesus’s true nature, that it leaves so little for us to wiggle, for those of us still wiggling about our faith, our journey with God. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me, Jesus says later. How many times has this claim to be the way and, by implication, the only Way, actually gotten in the way for those who are curious about what Christianity is all about? For John’s readers of the 1st and 2nd centuries, these words were meant to assure believers that, as persecuted as they are by imperial Romans and oppositional Jews, they were doing the right thing, following the right course.
But for readers of the 21st century, and for those of us who know something of the centuries previous, these words have not only been exclusive and intolerant, they’ve been down right deadly. To this day, I remember vividly my conversation with Adam, my sophomore year college roommate, on one otherwise mundane school night. You might guess by his name that Adam was a Jew, a tremendously energetic and ambitious business student who nonetheless displayed moments of tenderness, especially toward those whom he regarded as friends. In the late 90s, about a half decade after we all graduated, Adam quit his high-paying corporate job to care for Stephanie, our mutual friend, who was dying of breast cancer. Stephanie wanted to write a novel before she died, so Adam said to her, “I want to write one too. Let’s write together.” So the two of them, Adam and Stephanie, set to work each day and it was this mutual support that allowed Adam and more importantly Stephanie to complete and ultimately publish their respective novels. Shortly thereafter, Stephanie died with Adam at her side.
One night in college, Adam, in a rather jocular mood, asked me, “So, Jim, you really think that because I’m not a Christian, I’m going to hell?” To which I quoted the Gospel of John: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. “Yes, Adam. I believe you are going to hell.” Adam’s smile disappeared, his eyes looked at the floor, and I heard a barely audible “OK” as he shuffled down the hallway. As soon as I said it, I knew that I couldn’t believe it, so for years I didn’t open the Gospel of John because deep in my heart, I knew that this wasn’t the truth that Jesus wanted to bring to the world. Deep down, I could feel Adam thinking to himself that my saying he’d go to hell was somehow connected to the fact that his people were sent to death camps in central and eastern Europe two generations before.
In John’s Gospel, we don’t even see John the Baptist baptizing, we don’t hear a voice from heaven. We get the supremely confident statement of Jesus as the Lamb of God. While I know that this current translation is probably more accurate to the Greek, I’ve always been partial to the diction of the King James version. John says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which takest away the sin of the world.” To behold something is to regard it as well as to take hold of it, to see as if to be bound by it. To behold is, in this sense, to be held captive by what one observes, for the imagination to be captured. Our imagination, our way of viewing the world, is captured, captivated by the arrival of Jesus, John tells us, who takes away the sin of the world. And notice that it’s not “sins,” but “sin.” We often interchange the two, in part because our fractal hymn during the Eucharist has us sing, “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” But, here, it’s sin.
I used to think of sin usually in its plural form too, a list of do’s and don’ts that I’d tally up for a while before I thought to myself, hmm, better ask God to get rid of them, get me clean again, kind of like the dirty laundry that piles up until it gets so stinky you can’t bear but to spend the day washing everything. But what is the “sin of the world?” On your free time, turn to p. 848 of the Prayer Book, and here’s what you’ll find: “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” Sin is not really about what one consumes or sleeps with or does or doesn’t say. It’s not a checklist of do’s and don’ts. Sin is about deciding that you and your agenda precede and supercede everyone and everything else, no matter what the cost. And the damage that this autonomy brings can be devastating, even deadly. And all too often we in the Church invoke the name of Jesus and of God to assert our own will, our own agenda, which hurts our relationship with other people, with the world, and ultimately with God. That’s what I did with Adam: I used words originally meant to comfort people as a weapon against him, and in doing so hurt him in ways that I can barely imagine the pain I caused.
John’s disciples must have known something about the destructiveness, the pain of this sin that puts us out of sync with God and God’s people, because they immediately follow Jesus after John pronounces Jesus as the Lamb of God. What drew them so to Jesus? What calls them to Jesus? We don’t know for sure, but I suspect that what calls them is what calls us here this morning: in the dark stillness of the night, as we lie awake with the demons of the day finally dissipating from the chaos of our memories, in that stillness we begin to ask those questions that rarely come to us because if they came more often we’d be paralyzed from the terror of the profundity of the question. What am I called to do? What am I willing to die for? What gives meaning and value to my life? The disciples are searching, searching. They look to John, who points to Jesus. They approach Jesus, and Jesus turns and their hearts beat even faster when he asks them what they’ve been asking all their lives: What are you looking for? What do you want in your life? What are you called to do? These are the first words that we hear Jesus speak in John’s Gospel. And how do the disciples respond? How might we respond? Silence, then maybe a sputter, a stammer, because in those nighttime meditations when we’ve asked ourselves that question, we’ve gotten no response. So, the disciples do what we would do. They ask a question in response: Rabbi, where are you staying?
Now, I’m not yet an expert in Greek, but reliable sources tell me that the Greek word for “stay” can also be translated as “dwell” or “remain” or “abide.” So the disciples are asking Jesus: where does your heart abide? In what place do you dwell? Do you know what we’re seeking too? And do you have an answer for us?
And how does Jesus respond? He doesn’t give them a list of things to do or don’t do. He doesn’t offer rules of engagement, nor does he demand a contract or even a covenant to get right with God and God’s people. He simply offers an invitation: Come and see. Come and see.
Jesus knows what the prophet Isaiah also knew, that God already knows the question you are asking, always: what are you looking for? What am I called to do? And when we turn to God’s will, to the will of God to serve God and God’s people, we are given nothing more and nothing less than an invitation: Come and See. Stay with me, and find out. Find out what adventures and challenges are in store for you. Jesus offers no guarantees, nothing measurable to prove to us once and for all that everything’s going to be OK. He simply invites us to dwell with him, to remain with him, and see what God can do when we stay there.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday and ministry we celebrate tomorrow, knew something about dwelling, remaining, with Jesus. At the age of 26, just one year into his first pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the bookish King reluctantly accepted his role to lead what would become at the time the greatest nonviolent Black boycott and usher in the great age of the Civil Rights movement. What was King looking for, what did he seek when he moved from pulpit to the street, when the streets became the foundation of his ministry? And where did he dwell? We get a glimpse of where King abided a half decade later, in his famous letter – I might even called it an epistle – which he wrote while staying, while dwelling, in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Like St. Paul, King writes to fellow churchmen, eight in fact who had written a statement that called for, among other things, an “appeal for Law and Order and common sense,” and against what they viewed as unnecessary racial friction caused by nonviolent civil disobedience against the laws of segregation and exclusion. (One of these clergymen was an Episcopal bishop, by the way.) In his letter of admonishing love, King shows them, and us, where he dwells, where he believes God dwells, and where he thinks the church has sinned: by placing Its will against the will of God that distorts our relationship with God, God’s people, and God’s creation. Toward the end of the letter, King addresses the church directly:
“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
“Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
“I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.”
In a lonely jail cell, King knew what it meant to dwell with the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. King knew that abiding in the heart of God offered no immediate promises of liberation, but that Jesus’ simple invitation to Come and See was enough. That was what King was asking of his fellow clergymen, to Come and See what God can do, if only we answer honestly to the question that Jesus knows we’re asking, What are you looking for?
Jesus, where are you staying?
In a moment, Fr. Jerry will invite us to re-enact again this exchange, by inviting us around this Table. It is the table that invites everyone—whoever your are, wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith—to cast away the sin of the world, to realign our lives with God and God’s people. It is an invitation to everyone—without a list of do’s and don’ts. It is an invitation even to me, who committed the terrible sin of telling my friend Adam that he wasn’t a child of God, an invitation that is also the hope that someday Adam and I will meet again in the heart of God. Fr. Jerry will say “Lift up your hearts,” and we respond “We lift them to the Lord.” What are you seeking? Rabbi, where are you saying? It is this Table on which Jesus answers our question with nothing more and nothing less than an invitation to remain with him: Come and See. No guarantees. Nothing but the simple act of staying with Jesus and dwelling in the heart of God and God’s people. Come and see. Who knows what might happen? I don’t know, but if you come and see, you might find that it’s in this simple act of staying with God through Jesus that might save your life and change the world. Amen.
A sermon for St. Paul's, Ventura
Professor Jim Lee, Asian American Studies
