THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
Isaiah 49:1-7
I Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-41
Year A
The late Anthony de Mello
told a story about two taxidermists who stopped by a window in which an owl was
on display. They immediately began to criticize the way in which it was
mounted. Its eyes were askew and its wings were not in proportion with its
head. Its feathers were not neatly arranged and its feet were set at a funny
angle. When they had finished criticizing the owl, looking at each other,
self-satisfied with their evaluations, suddenly the old bird turned his head
and almost seemed to wink at them.
In the same way I think we
often forget that scripture is about a living God who dares to intrude into the
lives of real people. The problem is we are so far removed in time and place
from the events we hear about in scripture, the power
at the heart of them is often lost upon us.
For the second Sunday in a
row we are held at the River Jordan. Today, however, John the Baptist seems to
have mellowed. The Day of the Lord had not come with the immediacy he had
announced, so John, like the rest of us who preach for a living, must have had
to face the inevitable question, does preaching really
make any difference?
I’ve been communicating a lot
recently with a friend I went to seminary with for quite awhile. He’s been
going through no small amount of melancholy in wondering if his ministry has
actually done any good; wondering if its been worthwhile in any way. While I
don’t think he has ever doubted his call to be ordained, I think its natural
after almost twenty years in ordained ministry to ponder that question;
wondering if anything you’ve ever done has actually made a difference to
anyone. As I approach the eighteenth anniversary of my ordination to the
priesthood this week, I understand exactly what that’s like.
We’re in good company. Even
Isaiah was discouraged by the apparent fruitlessness of his ministry.
Isaiah’s words today sound
very much like lament. He is struggling with the possibility that his work has
been all for naught. Caught in a bog of palace politics and national struggles,
Isaiah still believed that what defined him was the God who had called him and
formed him in the womb.
Paul too struggled with the
challenges he was given; those placed upon him by the people he sought to lead
as well as those unknown struggles he fought within himself. Yet he never
doubted the certainty that God had reached down and touched him; had invaded
his life, if you will. In fact all of today’s lessons speak of a God who sees,
speaks, acts, moves, and intrudes - until it comes to us; when we’re more
likely to think of God like the taxidermists thought of the owl; not just
harmless, but lifeless. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It has been said that John
the Baptist spoke the entire gospel when he said “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”.
Everything else, it has been said, is mere commentary. This is especially
interesting considering that the Gospel of John hardly shows any interest in
sin at all. It has nothing to say about anything like murder or theft, nothing
on rules for prayer or fasting. It lacks anything like a Golden Rule. So what
does it mean here?
In the Gospel of John, when
John the Baptist says that Jesus removes sin the gospel writer does not mean
that Jesus has come to deal with the infractions of any kind of divine law. Sin
in John’s gospel is unbelief, pure and simple. And unbelief is about distancing
ourselves from God; not allowing the reality of God’s presence, God’s call, to
affect us in the here and now.
Epiphany means “revelation”
and revelation always involves an encounter. If there is one clear message of
Christmas and Epiphany it is that God desires to be known. But God’s revealing
never happens in a vacuum. God’s revelation always happens in and through
relationship and experience. Jesus always engaged people in and through ordinary
experiences.
We forget that the disciples
were real flesh and blood people just like us. Chances are they would not have
described themselves as religious at all. But something happened to them.
Something happened in their encounter with Jesus. The kingdom came near to them
in their encounter with Jesus; as it comes near to us every time we allow God
to encounter us.
The problem is we have lost a
full sense of the power of God to invade people’s lives and fill them with
light. We have lost the sense of the power of God to sneak up on people who are
balancing their check books and astound them with a divine encounter.
Quite often people will say,
“I find it rather naďve to speak of God
as a ‘person’. I think it’s better to refer to God as ‘energy’ or ‘force’. And
truth to tell, I think there are many people who wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I
said “The force be with you” as
opposed to “The Lord be with you” in
liturgy. Sadly, that’s because God’s reality can be lost in our
institutionalization of ‘God-talk’.
Likewise humanity in general
does not move us, energize us, or evoke love in us. Only incarnate people have the
power to do that. To say that Epiphany means revelation is to say that God gets
personal with us when it comes to revelation. Only a personal God can help us;
only a personal God can be loved by us.
God meets us in the mess of
real life, in both the beauty and the brokenness of it. If you pay attention to
scripture what you will hear is how God is constantly showing up in people’s
lives at the worst possible times. Maybe that’s because it is at those key
moments of inconvenience that God is best able to break through to us.
I remember a time in my life
when the last thing I needed was to be inconvenienced by God. I had just seemed
to get many things finally settled in my life. Then one day I was thumbing
through a Glamour magazine when an
article about a young woman Episcopal priest caught my attention. I read it
with interest and curiosity. After all, as a young teenager I had wrestled with
a call; a deep yearning for the impossibility of priesthood. But that had been
long ago.
It probably didn’t take me
five minutes to read that article. What I didn’t realize, as I flipped through
the rest of the magazine, was that God had hooked me in those few moments. The
seed had been there forever, but God caught me through the ordinary, for it is
always true to say that the extraordinary things of God happen through the
ordinary things of life.
“What are you looking for?” Jesus said to the would-be disciples
today. They responded “Where are you
staying?”, but they were not really asking for an address. They were
asking, “What are you doing in the world?
We need to know before we get too involved.” Jesus said “Come and see”.
“What are you looking for?” is the question God asks of us no less. Maybe it’s
right in front of you. Maybe God’s actions are as obvious or as illusive as the
owl was to the taxidermists peering at him through the window. It’s all in what
we see and how we respond.
Jesus says “Come and see”, because you cannot see
Jesus, nor can you experience God by keeping your
distance.
The turning points in our
lives are many, and conversion is seldom a once-for-all affair. This was true
for the disciples and it is true for us as well. Just like Peter, like Andrew and the rest, our
frailties witness best to God’s strengths. Our inconsistencies and wavering are
sometimes the very turns in the road where God is able to break through to us.
It’s all about what we see and how we respond.
One thing is for sure, when
we are most conscious of God’s love and God’s power come close, we will find
ourselves traveling down a road from which we will never ever wish to turn back.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church