Return to Home Page
The Second Sunday after
the Epiphany, Year A, 2011
John 1: 29-42
The Rev. Ronald N.
Johnson
The
Gospel
reading
today is a continuation of last
week’s story about the baptism of Jesus. In the account this
morning, John the Baptist addressed the crowds. John spoke in
astonishment and amazement about what he has just seen. John
announced, for all to hear, that when he baptized Jesus in the Jordan
River he saw a dove descend from the sky and alight on Jesus. Being
the prophet John was, he also heard God speak, telling him that the
one upon whom the dove alighted and remained was the anointed
Messiah, the Son of God, the Lamb of God chosen to reconcile humanity
to God. John’s astonishment transformed into excitement, and his
witness to this event cost him two of his disciples, who immediately
left him to follow Jesus. We also have, in this Gospel reading for
today, the account that tells of the call of Andrew and his brother,
Peter, to be disciples of Jesus Christ. In the story we are witness
to the beginning of our Lord’s earthly ministry.
There are several things I want
to
say about the Gospel this morning. First, John the Baptist
recognized Jesus as the Messiah. John opened his eyes and saw the
Messiah before him, the very Son of God. The recognition happened in
the course of a theophany, which is a fancy way of saying a special
appearance of God to a human being. Theophanies do not happen every
day. When they do, we see them as a miraculous thing, for in the
moment of the revelation, we know that we stand in the presence of
God himself. The event may be anything, but it leaves us with the
sure and certain conviction that we have just been as face to face
with God as we will ever get, during our earthly life.
Theophanies, those special moments
in
our lives when we stand in God’s holy presence, change our lives. They
are convicting and convincing. They convict us because they
make us acutely aware of our own inadequacy and our need for God’s
healing grace. They make us aware of our need to be loved with
healing love, with transforming love. In that moment of our
experience of the presence of God, we stand naked and exposed the
truth of us known, not only by God but also by ourselves. We can not
hide.
Theophanies are
convincing because when we experience God in this way our faith is
strengthened. We believe with certainty. Our normally quibbling
souls can be still and know the peace of God, the love of God and the
grace of our God who loves us more than anyone has ever loved us or
ever will love us. The thing about God’s love is that it is
absolutely unconditional love. God’s love is never a qualified
love. Therefore, it is perfect love. I don’t care how much I
think that I love someone, or you think that you love someone; in our
humanity it is impossible to ever separate our love from our
selfishness. Some people are less selfish than others and are
therefore better lovers but we all hold something back, something of
ourselves. God holds nothing back. His love alone is perfect and
therefore his love transforms the beloved.
You and I, because we are Christians,
members, by our baptism, of the family of God, experience this love
of God day in and day out. In special moments, the theophany
moments, we become acutely aware of God’s love.
What
happens
next
to us, following the theophany,
is what happened to John the Baptist when he became aware of the
presence of God in Jesus. This is the second point that I want to
make about today’s Gospel. What happens when we experience God’s
presence in that special moment is that we cannot contain the good
news. We want to spread it. We want to tell others. We want to
rejoice and proclaim our joy from the very top of the mountain. We
want to say, simultaneously, Jesus is my Lord and not mine only, but
the Lord of all the earth. Some things are just too good to keep
hidden. Some things you just have to talk about.
So John the Baptist, the great witness of the Messiah, the prophet whose job it was to prepare people for Jesus, pointed to him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God” Let us, by the way that we live our lives, also proclaim this. Let us live in such a way that we are living testaments to God’s love for us, expressed in Jesus, the Lamb of God. Let us live so that God’s love can be made manifest, through us, to our neighbor. Let our actions proclaim that Christ is King day in and day out. Amen.
|
If
you found this
sermon resource helpful, please forward it to others by clicking on
"this page," above.
If you do not see the forward option, your browser is blocking a necessary script. You can safely allow the script to run. Thank you.
|