Year A

John 1:29-42

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Witness of Faith

In today’s passage from John’s Gospel, we hear the retelling of several key moments in Jesus’ life: his baptism, the call of the first disciples and the beginning of his ministry. Last week, we heard Matthew’s account of the baptism and as with Matthew’s account, John the Baptist is a witness to the voice from heaven and sees the Spirit descending on Jesus to testify to his true identity as the anointed one, the Messiah. Next Sunday, we will be back into Matthew’s gospel but for today, on this Second Sunday after the Epiphany, we hear John’s account of the baptism because his account, provides us with an Epiphany moment by giving us a more divine portrait of Jesus so his readers do not miss or forget the fact that this earthly Jesus is God’s Son, in the beginning of John’s gospel we hear “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”

All through the Epiphany season we will be reminded of what Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem means. Christmas was the event but Epiphany helps us understand it. We all experience those epiphany or Aha moments in our lives. For instance, when we figure out the plot of a mystery novel, make sense out of something that has puzzled us, or when we remember the name of a face we recognize in the crowd. Jesus’ baptism was an Epiphany moment not just for John the Baptist, but for Andrew, Peter, James and John, the gospel writer, who saw and heard and followed. The text today contains several scenes of witness to the true nature of Jesus as the Son of God and it is also a text of calling.

One such moment of witness occurs as Jesus walks by John the Baptist, who proclaims “Look, here is the Lamb of God”! When we think of the image of a “lamb” we often think of a weak, vulnerable animal possibly ready for sacrifice or slaughter. In John’s gospel, Jesus is the Lamb that suffers and dies on a cross. However, as it is used here, John the Baptist sees a powerful God in this Lamb and testifies that Jesus is the Son of God even before Jesus demonstrates it in his earthly ministry. Then, two of John the Baptist’s disciples, John and Andrew, hear what he says and leave him to find out who this Jesus is which gives us a witness to the beginnings of the community of faith, the church. A couple of people start following Jesus because John the Baptist shared what he knew and pointed them that way.

This reading is a whole sequence of people telling each other they have seen Jesus and who they think Jesus is. Andrew is so overwhelmed by his experience with Jesus, in response to John’s pointing, that he personally invites his brother Simon to come and meet Jesus. Simon comes to meet Jesus because of Andrew’s invitation and his personal determination to bring someone else into a relationship with Christ. It seems that Andrew is a very good example for us for he was good at bringing others to Jesus. At the feeding of the five thousand, it is Andrew who finds the little boy with the loaves and fishes and brings him to Jesus; later when the Greeks want to see Jesus, Philip brings them to Andrew so he can introduce them to Jesus.

Yet, I wonder just how much of this happens in our world today because it does seem that more and more of us see our faith as a private and personal thing, and there is great pressure to not impose our faith on anyone else. Yet, when we read stories like this in the scriptures and look at the history of our faith, we can’t miss the fact that we are to be in the business of inviting others to meet Jesus? Today’s gospel sets before us the truth that when we have encountered Jesus we should have a desire to want others to meet Jesus as well. The early church would not have grown without this approach to sharing faith. If we are to take the witness of this text seriously, we all need to ask ourselves: who, in our lives, do we need to invite to meet Jesus? It may sometimes be uncomfortable to tell others about our faith but the church is the church because of Jesus, his witness and the witness of his followers.

Notice that when Andrew and the other disciple first come to Jesus, there is this exchange of questions. Jesus asks the two disciples: “What are you looking for?” It seems to me that this question is a fairly strange question to ask. The logical question would be, “What do you want?”  Yet, in John’s gospel, everything seems to have a double meaning.  So looking at the Greek translation of this question we find it could also be translated: What are you really looking for in life? And they respond: “Where are you staying? Yet, another strange question, leading us to seek out the double meaning again in the Greek where we find that their question reflects that these two disciples are seeking. They are searching…looking.

This desire inspires them to leave John the Baptist and follow Jesus who says to them ‘come and see.” When it gets right down to it, haven’t we all at one time or another searched, questioned, looked for something to give meaning and purpose to our lives? For Christians, we believe that meaning and purpose comes when we know Jesus. If the church is to give evidence of God’s kingdom here on earth there has to be a genuine desire to know Jesus more. There has to be a genuine hunger and thirst for the in-breaking of God’s kingdom and the witness of this chapter in John is that this searching, this desire is critical to knowing, following and inviting.  When someone pointed us to Jesus and we responded and saw for ourselves, didn’t we want to go and tell others and being them to ‘come and see?’ The good news is too good to be kept to ourselves.

Now this doesn’t mean that we have to take a course on how to explain the Christian faith in ten minutes or less. Nor does it mean we have to memorize the scriptures, thank goodness, it simply means sharing our story, our story of encountering God’s love in our life. Our words are discipleship and discipleship is about learning and then sharing what we learn. Andrew and the other disciple stay with Jesus for the rest of the afternoon and evening, learning and then Andrew goes to find his brother, Simon, to tell him the good news, ‘we have found the Messiah.’ The consequences of this simple act of bringing someone to Jesus was significant: new cultures and races heard the gospel and Simon becomes a disciple. Andrew could not have known at that time the significance of what he had done in bringing his brother to Jesus who looked at Simon, and said you will be called Petros, Peter, and on this rock, this foundation so much will be built.

We may not all be famous evangelists yet, but the church certainly needs more John the Baptist’s and Andrew’s because surely there are people who are still searching, looking, and who knows what the result may be. Our witness, and the story we have been called to tell is one of “come and see.” And Jesus tells us we can invite in his name all those who are seeking, to a family with God where there is hope, strength and love, and the best way to tell his story is with our pointing others to him. We point by sharing with others what a gracious, merciful God has done in our life. To share, to witness, and to pass on the story is to be faithful to God and to the call of Christ.  So let us give ourselves today to this commitment to invite others to ‘come and see’ for; “Look, here is the Lamb of God. Like John the Baptist and the disciples, may this be our epiphany today also.