Second Sunday after Epiphany
Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Isaiah 49:1-7, John 1:29-42
How do you make decisions? I suppose it depends what the decision is, but I suspect most of us have a preferred and instinctive style. There are those who gather facts, do research, weigh pros and cons, and in a perfectly rational, linear sort of way decide what’s what – which car to buy, what to eat for dinner, how much money to give the church, what career to enter and whether and when to change jobs. A + B = C, so of course C is the plan. No questions asked, no conversation required. Others of us feel our way around the choices. We may try to use logic, and on some decisions actually succeed at doing that, but overall, it’s a matter of feel and instinct and intuition and just knowing what’s right in some inarticulate deep in the gut sort of way. Or continuing to weigh the options until the course of action does eventually become clear.
One part of the question of how we make decisions is the question of how quickly or slowly. I have a friend who likes to say, I’m a Gemini and we’re the worst at making decisions, so don’t leave it to me! One of my favorite ways to talk about the timeline for decision making is the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. According to this framework, there are four categories of pairs that talk about how we function in the world, and one of those pairings is a continuum referred to as Judging or Perceiving. A “J” as we like to refer to those on the Judging side, asks straightforward, rational sorts of questions, learns when the deadline is, goes to work and comes up with a result promptly – well before the deadline. A “P” or perceiving type of person is the creative sort who wants to know what the options are and will spend an eternity of time exploring those choices. Give them a deadline or they will never feel like they’ve weighed all of their choices. Why narrow down and focus in prematurely? You never know when something better might come along, so stay open and flexible; creativity takes time.
I may well be missing something, but it seems to me that all of those variables and categories go out the window when it comes to this morning’s Gospel lesson and that roadside encounter between John’s disciples and Jesus. They may have been J’s who make decisions quickly, but there was absolutely no time allowed for data gathering and linear thought. John watched Jesus walk by, said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” And his two followers turned away from John and headed off behind Jesus. Just like that. And while P’s are apt to operate on instinct and intuition, no self-respecting P would ever jump that quickly. Who knows who else might be coming around the next bend? Maybe they would have a better approach. Were they all simultaneously feeling restless and uneasy and ready for a new adventure? Had they grown bored with John? Or disillusioned? Had a falling out the night before about the words he used when he baptized or gotten sick and tired of that dismal diet of locusts and wild honey? Had their conversations filled them with so much anticipation that words like Lamb of God and Messiah triggered a knee jerk readiness to launch themselves from their current location? Just what was so compelling about the sight and sound of Jesus, or the words that John spoke about him, that caused them to turn away from everything they’d known up to this point to head off into the sunset behind a complete stranger?
I don’t think we know. I’m sure that John had set the stage and prepared them for their openness to Jesus. But I also think there was something so uniquely compelling about Jesus that, once Andrew and his friend were in Jesus’ presence, nothing other than discipleship made any sense. Rational or not, logical and linear or wild and wacky, it really didn’t matter to them. They had gotten a whiff of something unique, and in the very depths of their being, they simply knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they had no choice but to up and follow. And so follow they did. In the end, it really wasn’t even about thinking or decision-making; it was about doing. There was something magnetic and overwhelming about being in Jesus’ presence, and what else could they do? Jesus walked up, John said, here is the Lamb of God, and two disciples turned and followed Jesus. He asked them what they were looking for, and they asked him where he was staying. He told them to come and see.
I’m well aware, as I assume we all are, that Jesus is no longer here in the flesh, walking the road in front of our houses, calling us to come and see and to follow him on the road to Boston or to Concord or wherever he may be headed. And yet here we are. For some reason, and with differing levels of commitment and confidence, we’ve decided to follow, or at least to check this Jesus thing out. Has something grabbed us by the lapel that we couldn’t resist or ignore, so we turned on our heels and set out to follow? Or are we still exploring and pondering and trying to decide how seriously we’re going to take this fellow Jesus? How do we decide? From where do we hear God calling? What is it that compels us enough that we just might pull a few things together and take off to follow in someone’s wake? Have we found him in the church? Will we? Or somewhere else altogether?
I was drawn to words I read this week by a man who was busy making his way inside a religious organization. He wrote:
The writer goes on to say that he got a lot of his blessing and inspiration from places he hadn’t expected – from the world he had rejected: in airport lounges, bars, cafes, bus queues. And to his astonishment, the still small voice of God even came to him through a juke box. He listened over and over to words familiar to many of us: “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” Young girls had picked them. They had given them to their men. The men went to war and were killed. Out of their graves flowers grew, and then young girls picked them again. With those words as a backdrop, he was in a café in Germany and saw a young girl and a boy at the next table. A vase of flowers sat between them. He says, “The full tragedy of Europe came home to me, and I knew the work I must do. So many people had to be reconciled to break that terrible repetition. God had spoken. (Lionel Blue, Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, pages 52-53)
The religious organization to which he turned failed him and did not provide blessings. Through the juke box, God spoke and said, Come and see, this is work I am doing, this is work you can do, come and see. Come and work with me.
Contrast that with the story of a Japanese Zen Buddhist who spent time in a French monastery. After he had been there about a month, he only had one question. It seemed to him that the monks did not live very well. They worked hard, their food was neither good nor plentiful, and they did not get enough sleep. “Yet you are joyful,” he said, “and I want to know: from where does this joy come?” (Kathleen Norris, The Christian Century, January 15, 2008, page 22) Come and see. Come and walk with us.
If the Church is now Christ’s body, called to carry on Jesus’ witness and ministry, what do you think people see when they look at us and our life together? Do they see a community more concerned with balance sheets than blessings, or do they see a group of people overflowing with joy even in the midst of challenges and struggles? God spoke in Nazareth through Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. God speaks through Benedictine monks and juke boxes. How clearly is God speaking through us? When we invite people to come and see, what do they see? What’s the message, the song, the light that we’re sharing with the world? I pray it will be one of joy, of hope, of love and of peace.
Amen.
Download this sermon (PDF)
Isaiah 49:1-7, John 1:29-42
How do you make decisions? I suppose it depends what the decision is, but I suspect most of us have a preferred and instinctive style. There are those who gather facts, do research, weigh pros and cons, and in a perfectly rational, linear sort of way decide what’s what – which car to buy, what to eat for dinner, how much money to give the church, what career to enter and whether and when to change jobs. A + B = C, so of course C is the plan. No questions asked, no conversation required. Others of us feel our way around the choices. We may try to use logic, and on some decisions actually succeed at doing that, but overall, it’s a matter of feel and instinct and intuition and just knowing what’s right in some inarticulate deep in the gut sort of way. Or continuing to weigh the options until the course of action does eventually become clear.
One part of the question of how we make decisions is the question of how quickly or slowly. I have a friend who likes to say, I’m a Gemini and we’re the worst at making decisions, so don’t leave it to me! One of my favorite ways to talk about the timeline for decision making is the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. According to this framework, there are four categories of pairs that talk about how we function in the world, and one of those pairings is a continuum referred to as Judging or Perceiving. A “J” as we like to refer to those on the Judging side, asks straightforward, rational sorts of questions, learns when the deadline is, goes to work and comes up with a result promptly – well before the deadline. A “P” or perceiving type of person is the creative sort who wants to know what the options are and will spend an eternity of time exploring those choices. Give them a deadline or they will never feel like they’ve weighed all of their choices. Why narrow down and focus in prematurely? You never know when something better might come along, so stay open and flexible; creativity takes time.
I may well be missing something, but it seems to me that all of those variables and categories go out the window when it comes to this morning’s Gospel lesson and that roadside encounter between John’s disciples and Jesus. They may have been J’s who make decisions quickly, but there was absolutely no time allowed for data gathering and linear thought. John watched Jesus walk by, said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” And his two followers turned away from John and headed off behind Jesus. Just like that. And while P’s are apt to operate on instinct and intuition, no self-respecting P would ever jump that quickly. Who knows who else might be coming around the next bend? Maybe they would have a better approach. Were they all simultaneously feeling restless and uneasy and ready for a new adventure? Had they grown bored with John? Or disillusioned? Had a falling out the night before about the words he used when he baptized or gotten sick and tired of that dismal diet of locusts and wild honey? Had their conversations filled them with so much anticipation that words like Lamb of God and Messiah triggered a knee jerk readiness to launch themselves from their current location? Just what was so compelling about the sight and sound of Jesus, or the words that John spoke about him, that caused them to turn away from everything they’d known up to this point to head off into the sunset behind a complete stranger?
I don’t think we know. I’m sure that John had set the stage and prepared them for their openness to Jesus. But I also think there was something so uniquely compelling about Jesus that, once Andrew and his friend were in Jesus’ presence, nothing other than discipleship made any sense. Rational or not, logical and linear or wild and wacky, it really didn’t matter to them. They had gotten a whiff of something unique, and in the very depths of their being, they simply knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they had no choice but to up and follow. And so follow they did. In the end, it really wasn’t even about thinking or decision-making; it was about doing. There was something magnetic and overwhelming about being in Jesus’ presence, and what else could they do? Jesus walked up, John said, here is the Lamb of God, and two disciples turned and followed Jesus. He asked them what they were looking for, and they asked him where he was staying. He told them to come and see.
I’m well aware, as I assume we all are, that Jesus is no longer here in the flesh, walking the road in front of our houses, calling us to come and see and to follow him on the road to Boston or to Concord or wherever he may be headed. And yet here we are. For some reason, and with differing levels of commitment and confidence, we’ve decided to follow, or at least to check this Jesus thing out. Has something grabbed us by the lapel that we couldn’t resist or ignore, so we turned on our heels and set out to follow? Or are we still exploring and pondering and trying to decide how seriously we’re going to take this fellow Jesus? How do we decide? From where do we hear God calling? What is it that compels us enough that we just might pull a few things together and take off to follow in someone’s wake? Have we found him in the church? Will we? Or somewhere else altogether?
I was drawn to words I read this week by a man who was busy making his way inside a religious organization. He wrote:
I went into religion partly because I was not very good at dealing with the world… In my innocence I confused spirituality with droopiness, and I imagined myself with equally droopy colleagues, sighing blessings to each other.
I got a rude shock. Synagogue (and church) …meetings are not the Communion of the Saints, and an awful lot of religious business is concerned with balance sheets, not blessings. At international meetings where the pace is hotter, I got used to seeing clerics fingering calculators as expertly as their beads.…
This led to a crisis in my religious life. My religious organization was a place where I gave blessings; this was after all what I was paid to do. But it was not a place where I seemed to receive any – at least not obviously. As my teacher tartly remarked when I complained to him, the congregation employed me to solve their problems. I didn’t pay them to solve mine.
The writer goes on to say that he got a lot of his blessing and inspiration from places he hadn’t expected – from the world he had rejected: in airport lounges, bars, cafes, bus queues. And to his astonishment, the still small voice of God even came to him through a juke box. He listened over and over to words familiar to many of us: “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” Young girls had picked them. They had given them to their men. The men went to war and were killed. Out of their graves flowers grew, and then young girls picked them again. With those words as a backdrop, he was in a café in Germany and saw a young girl and a boy at the next table. A vase of flowers sat between them. He says, “The full tragedy of Europe came home to me, and I knew the work I must do. So many people had to be reconciled to break that terrible repetition. God had spoken. (Lionel Blue, Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, pages 52-53)
The religious organization to which he turned failed him and did not provide blessings. Through the juke box, God spoke and said, Come and see, this is work I am doing, this is work you can do, come and see. Come and work with me.
Contrast that with the story of a Japanese Zen Buddhist who spent time in a French monastery. After he had been there about a month, he only had one question. It seemed to him that the monks did not live very well. They worked hard, their food was neither good nor plentiful, and they did not get enough sleep. “Yet you are joyful,” he said, “and I want to know: from where does this joy come?” (Kathleen Norris, The Christian Century, January 15, 2008, page 22) Come and see. Come and walk with us.
If the Church is now Christ’s body, called to carry on Jesus’ witness and ministry, what do you think people see when they look at us and our life together? Do they see a community more concerned with balance sheets than blessings, or do they see a group of people overflowing with joy even in the midst of challenges and struggles? God spoke in Nazareth through Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. God speaks through Benedictine monks and juke boxes. How clearly is God speaking through us? When we invite people to come and see, what do they see? What’s the message, the song, the light that we’re sharing with the world? I pray it will be one of joy, of hope, of love and of peace.
Amen.
Download this sermon (PDF)
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