John 1:35-42
What do you want?
What are you looking for?
What are you doing?
John, who has just baptized
Jesus… recognizes that God’s Spirit is with him and sends his own followers now
to follow Jesus. Jesus turns around and there they are… and this is what he
asks would-be followers—What do you want?
They don’t really know. We
don’t really know. What are we looking for as we come together on a Sunday
morning? Healing? Wisdom? A word of hope in a bitter cold and challenging
month? Something that satisfies? We can’t exactly put it into words, so like
those first followers, we ask our own questions…
Where are you staying, Jesus?
Where are you going? Can you take us with you?
Today, it sounds a little
like… could we go to Canada together?
And Jesus invites them, in
response to their question about where he’s at… Come and see.
Come… and you will see.
It’s not an invitation to
escape. It’s an invitation to deeper engagement.
This is a moment in our
national life where many, many people are anxious, worried, concerned about the
future…probably for good reason. It’s the month (January) when people who
suffer from depression tend to be most depressed. It’s cold. It’s dark. A few of
you love winter… others are just
trying to endure. Through our news we know, it’s a time when people are so
divided about what to do and how to move forward that we belittle our
opponents, then struggle with our allies about who has the most right path forward.
And I wonder if it’s
comforting to know that we are not alone?
Five hundred years ago, in another
moment of re-formation, there were terrible abuses of the whole population
going on. Fear-mongering, telling people they would be punished or rewarded,
telling people they could buy their way out of their fearful situations… and
into that time of great upheaval came the voices of reformers. Sometimes,
reformers said to pick up a sword and fight. Other reformers martyred
themselves. Here’s what our namesake, Martin Luther did… mostly, he wrote and
wrote and wrote. It’s not as flashy a picture of Luther as the 95 theses nailed
to a door, not as dramatic as appearing before the religious authorities and
refusing to recant his writings. After the high drama, Luther hid (for years)
and translated the Bible to get it in ordinary people’s hands because he was
convinced that making God’s word accessible to people was the most
transformative and powerful thing he could do. And then when the Bible still
wasn’t accessible to ordinary people, he devoted most of the rest of his life
to teaching and table talks… deliberating together about what it means that
Jesus looks at us and asks us, “What are you seeking?” and stays with us, and
invites us to follow, saying… “Come, and you will see.”
This week, a book on the
Holocaust came home from the school library. It’s not a new story for me, but I
opened the cover and got sucked in. Here’s what I read, “At the start of the
twentieth century, Europeans had new opportunities that their ancestors could
only have dreamed of. However, such dreams faded as war and economic hardship
created fear and suffering. The destruction and instability enabled extreme
parties… to take control. A new wave of racism evolved that challenged our
deepest beliefs in human nature. The book describes in detail embittered people
eager to blame others for their defeat, destabilization of the government,
leaders who stirred up public anger and chaos. Increased powers at the top
level of government, political opponents rounded up and arrested, and
persecution and death of 6 million Jews and 5 million others, including
Christians who spoke out against the atrocities. And at the same time, in a
whole variety of ways, a whole variety of people sheltered and hid and helped
people escape. Most did their work in utter secrecy because discovery meant the
end of their lives, the end of their work. In 2005, the United Nations made
January 27th an International Holocaust Remembrance Day (the
anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp in 1945).
Fifty years ago, in the
United States, at another incredibly turbulent time, Martin Luther’s namesake… the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
prayed and preached, studied and wrote, sat in jail and marched in the streets
because the deep grounding of his faith compelled him to engage in the best
ways he knew how to do… and he, too, gave his life. Today is the 88th
anniversary of his birth, and we are all invited to commemorate his life and
faithful witness at Luther Seminary tomorrow.
When I look back at this
history—500 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago—and see the diverse ways
that people managed to remain human and care for others in terrifying times… I
can only think of Jesus’ invitation. “Come, and you will see.” And see, here’s
the thing I believe most deeply, when I can access God’s gift of faith, through
my own array of doubts and fears… Jesus doesn’t simply invite us to go into the
future on our own. Jesus, who stays with us, goes with us. Jesus didn’t come
into the world to show that he was better than us. Jesus came to be with us, to
be one of us.
Some of you have been to the
exhibit at the MIA, Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation, and if you have
been, you cannot have missed the outfit that doctors wore when they visited
patients throughout the Plague. The doctors were covered with a scary looking
suit with a big mask with a long beaklike nose… in the display, it said
something like this. People were almost as afraid of the doctor coming as they
were of the plague. People lost half their family. There was no one untouched
by this horrific disease. And here’s what Luther said in response. “I cannot
tel if the plague will allow me to finish [translating] the Epistle to the
Galatians. Rapid and sudeen, it is making great ravages, especially among the
young. You advise me to fly. Whither shall I fly? My place is here. Obedience
will not permit my flight, till God who has called me recalls me. Not that I do
not fear death (for I am not the apostle Paul, I am only his commentator), but
I hope that the Lord will deliver me from fear.”[1]
In this suffering community,
Jesus is painted this way… not as the perfect Lamb but as the one who came to
get the plague.
One of the lies we are told
these days is that this is power: the one with control of the microphones at
the press conference, the loudest bully, the one who says all who challenge him
are liars, the one who can make the stock market rise and fall at his whim, the
one who can give the biggest and best party, the one with the tallest, finest
towers. However, as we look back through history, we can see that the way that
Jesus has stayed with us, the way Jesus has loved, and how Jesus has been
powerful has always been very different from that.
Jesus shows up as the DA in
the courtroom, on the streets, with the dying, among the poor, with the
grieving, and yes, in little gatherings like this one… around a bowl of water
and a taste of bread and sip of a cup… Jesus shows up as we try to figure out
what we are seeking by reading the Bible and listening intently for God’s words
for today. Jesus stays with us as we pray, “Oh God, where are you? Who are you
really? Can we walk with you?” Jesus continues with us, inviting us to move
forward with unusual, counter-cultural hope and confidence… not based in naïve
trust or blindness to what’s happening around us… but in deep trust in God’s
Holy Spirit who has been all of these places and will never leave us, and will
never stop giving people the ability to do good in the face of evil.
That’s why King could preach
about the promised land on the eve of his death… that’s why so many people
sheltered and helped people escape during the Holocaust… that’s why Luther put
the Bible into our hands and prayed for courage and love to replace fear. Who
knows what we will be called to do this year, and in the coming years, but
Jesus invites us, “Come, and you will see.”
In times like this, a prayer
that comes to mind is one that I said daily for a year …
“Lord God, you call your servants to ventures of which
we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet not traveled, through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that
your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.”
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