Sunday, January 16, 2005

Shifting Alliance

Sunday, January 16th, 2005
Epiphany 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 1:29-42


29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” 31I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ 32And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33I 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.” 34And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’ 35The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ 39He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). 42He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).



Josh and Sam have been friends since college. They went through Law school together, and both became quickly disenchanted with the corporate law jobs they landed out of school. They made a promise to each other that if one of them ever came across ‘the real thing’ he would go find the other, and they would both fall in behind the one they found. There was a recklessness in the promise, a ‘damn the torpedoes’ sense of abandon. They would know. They just knew it.

Then one day, it happens. Sam is sitting in a meeting between his Law firm partners and their corporate client, a multinational shipping firm, discussing the details of how to avoid being penalized for operating unsafe tankers in order to maximize profits, when Josh shows up at the door. It’s a glass door. Sam glances over and sees Josh, and the look on Josh’s face is enough to tell Sam all he needs to know. He tries to excuse himself politely, but is pressed by his boss to stay. He looks at Josh again, and this time, he doesn’t ask permission. He stands up and takes a step towards the door, towards Josh, and simply says ‘I have to do this’, and walks out.

If you are a fan of ‘The West Wing’, I don’t need to fill in the blanks. If you are not, Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn became the Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director, respectively, in the White House of the fictitious Josiah Bartlett administration.

The story and characters may be fictitious, the dynamics and truths of the human condition they speak to are not.

What does it mean to take a step of faith?

How big does that step have to be in order to qualify AS a step of faith?

A few weeks ago in our Wednesday night study in the book of Mark, we read about the young man who ran up to Jesus and fell to his knees and asked him what he needed to do to be saved. The other Gospels have made the man better known as the rich young ruler. Mark doesn’t present him that way.

The earliest and shortest Gospel presents him simply as a young man with an earnest desire to find what it was that was missing in his life. Though the presentation of the event is slightly different in Mark, Jesus ends up giving the man the same answer we have in the other Gospels: “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (19:21b)

Even though there is a conclusion to the scene, in the man going away grieving, because he had many possessions, the story doesn’t end there. Mark doesn’t tell us what happened with the rest of that man’s life.

Did he in fact take the step of faith that Jesus told him he needed to, and sell all he had and donate the proceeds to the poor? DID he come back after that and become a follower of Jesus?

Those hanging endings are not uncommon to find in the Gospels. I believe they are intentional. They allow us an opportunity to turn the questions raised on ourselves. What would *I* have done in that situation? How would *I* have responded? That’s part of what brings the scriptures to life.

In today’s text, we are treated to a story with something of an ending … it doesn’t leave us hanging in the same way as Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man.

Here we have John the Baptist, the biggest name in wilderness –wandering prophetic voices of the day in first century Palestine, doing what HE does best – calling. This time, he is recognizing Jesus for who HE is – the Lamb of God. The baptism has already taken place. We went over that last Sunday. John has already protested that Jesus should be the one baptizing HIM, and Jesus politely refutes him and they proceed with the original plan. As we read last week, when Jesus came up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove, and he heard a voice from heaven speak, saying, “this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” I wonder what it was like for John, to one day have crowds coming to him to be baptized by the hundreds, and then to be face to face with the messiah, who turns out to be his cousin.

I’ve got several cousins … one works in the telecom industry, another is a narcotics police officer, and another is a Pastor, another runs his own business, and another works for a large agricultural supply firm. I’ve got others, but I’m not close enough to them to know what they do … I love them all, and they are all Godly men, as far as I know, but if one of them walked through that door and I realized that in that walking in they were the Messiah, it would take a dove from heaven and the voice of God to convince me that it was true.

I have to wonder what it was like for John. It is interesting that the narrative in John doesn’t include the actual baptism of Jesus, for that we had to go to Matthew’s gospel last week, but it seems to weave its way around the event, speaking more to the importance and the meaning of it rather than dwell on the particulars of it … and picks up right after … the next day, in fact, which is where the text begins for today.

It says something about the nature of John the Baptist to have him still carrying out his duties, as it were, even after the Messiah has been revealed to him. He still has followers, disciples, as it were, who were following him around. The first paragraph covers two days’ time, and have in them two encounters between Jesus and John the Baptist.

Jesus says nothing in either of them.

John does all the talking. Rather, all the declaring, the proclaiming. Testifying is the term used in the text. John testifies “I saw the Spirit descending” … there is a willingness to … direct those who are listening to him towards him whom HE has been looking for and proclaiming all HIS life, even to his seeming detriment.

He (John) has a couple of his own disciples with him on the second day. When he sees Jesus that time, he doesn’t seem to hesitate, but tells them “you know who I’ve been talking about all this time? THAT’S THE GUY! THAT’S HIM!!!” I can almost see him pushing the two disciples away from himself toward Jesus after he’s gone past, and can you picture the looks on the faces of the two men as they hesitantly take those first steps towards Jesus? Their body language that says ‘but, John, we’ve gotten used to following YOU around … you really want us to go follow … him???”

Isn’t it the case that one’s importance is determined by the size of one’s following, by one’s popularity? You certainly wouldn’t want to lose followers, much less encourage them to leave, would you?

Again, that was John. He knew what he was here for.

HIS alliance didn’t shift, but because it didn’t, his disciples’ alliance HAD to. All along, he was the one preparing the way – the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord’.

His disciples, though hesitant, did take that step of faith … from following John, to following Jesus. When Jesus noticed they were following him, his question was ‘What are you looking for?’ It’s a question with several layers of meaning, and one that he continues to ask US here today. Their answer is a foreshadowing of the next three years. They think in concrete terms: do you have a place to stay? The question behind the question is, of course, less interested in where Jesus is resting his head and more interested in where THEY may rest theirs … ‘if we follow you, will WE have a place to stay?’

It seems we can never entirely loose ourselves of the routine concerns of daily life. Will we have a roof over our heads? Will we have food on our table? Will we have clothes on our backs?

They are all valid concerns, but ones that we must, nonetheless, place in their proper place.

Any time I begin in on this subject, I feel entirely inadequate. I live in a beautiful house, have more than enough clothes, food, and other provisions to make me one of the richest people on earth – I don’t mean in strictly financial terms – but in comparison to the rest of the world population, I am wealthy beyond measure.

What we are speaking of this morning is alliance – allegiance, if you will – submission - to whom or to what are we giving our lives? Do we fill our days in pursuit of wealth? Jesus has a word for us in the story of the rich young ruler. Do we fill our time seeking position? Jesus has a word for us in his response to the request his disciples made to sit at his right and left hand in Glory. Do we seek wisdom? The Psalmist tells us the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Do we seek our fulfillment in work? The parable of the rich farmer who dies with full granaries gives us an idea of where God is calling us.

God calls us to action, but not if in the acting we lose sight of who we are acting for. God calls us to be rich, but rich in spirit, in love, and in grace. God calls us to seek our position – but God also tells us that the greatest of these will be the least – to be servant of all. God calls us to be wise – to be in love with him – and all else will follow. God calls us to be about his work, and that work can and is radically different from what the world would consider work.

For us here this morning at Jerusalem Baptist Church: where is our allegiance? Whom are we submitted to? Are we trying to steer our own path? Are we here simply as a formality, because we’ve always been here at this hour on Sunday mornings, and it would be unseemly to not show up? Are we here because at some point in our past we felt God stir in our hearts, but that stirring has long since quieted, and we continue to come, hoping that something will happen, that someone will say something that will stir us again?

We can hold an alliance to tradition, to formality, to continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done, and lose sight of the one who needs to hold our ultimate loyalty.

So the question this morning is a hanging one; an open ended question, and we each must answer it for ourselves, and go from there. The rest of our lives have yet to be written.

Who or what holds your ultimate allegiance, and does it need to shift?

Let’s pray.

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