Göttinger Predigten im Internet
ed. by U. Nembach, J. Neukirch

Epiphany II, 16 January 2005
Sermon on John 1:29-42 by Hubert Beck
(->current sermons )


THE INAUGURAL MOMENT

Occasionally a person lives in virtual obscurity until one day something happens to thrust said person in a moment, as it were, onto the world scene. Obscurity is turned of a sudden into flaming fame.

The moment may be entirely unplanned – totally surprising even to the person who is at the heart of the moment – an altogether unexpected event. Like Rosa Parks, tired to the bone from a day’s work refusing to give up her seat on a bus when asked to do so! She didn’t mean to move the world. She was just plain tired and decided to “buck the system” for one tiny moment, only to find that she was thrust into an entirely unplanned center of a whole movement that changed the face of a nation. Her life was no longer obscure, but remains to this day as a sign that what seems to be a small and insignificant moment can shake the world.

There are those, though, who deliberately set their lives onto paths that are intentionally directed toward such moments. One thinks of an Abraham Lincoln, obscure in so many ways, but self-educated to all intents and purposes, driven with a passion to serve those around him, often set back in his hopes and dreams, but who establishes himself squarely on a path leading to national immortality. Few people expected him to achieve such heights, and even fewer thought he would amount to anything remotely like he ended up being. Yet he, himself, was clearly intent on "making his mark,” as it was put in last week’s sermon, and he thrust himself onto the scene with such a vigor that he will never be forgotten.

Jesus appears on the scene in the narrative of the Gospels in just such a way . . . from obscurity to fame in a most sudden burst of surprising intensity. While his appearance surely surprised those around him in keeping with the first suggestion of how one breaks out of obscurity into fame, he must not, himself, have been surprised by this turn of events. He had unquestionably, in one way or another, been preparing himself for this moment through thirty years of apparent obscurity even though we are not given a clue as to how or in what way he was doing so.

The Inaugural Moment of Jesus’ Public Prominence

The obscurity of Jesus’ early life leaves us conjecturing in most tantalizing ways. From the time of his circumcision, naming, and presentation in the temple to the twelve year old who remains behind in the temple we know nothing of what was happening. What was it like for a mother and father to raise a child born in such an unexpected way with such unexpected birth announcements from the heavens? How did he act among other children of his age? We know nothing and all attempts at guessing the answers are in vain.

From the twelve year old in the temple to the moment set before us in the text we know as little as we know about his childhood. Described as “the carpenter from Nazareth” we gather that he was known as a man who worked with his hands, but we hear nothing of anything extraordinary about his spiritual development, his intellectual life, his reputation among peers.

Did some see signs of a pending fame? Did anyone suspect or expect that he would ever be something other than a carpenter from Nazareth? Was Jesus widely known in Galilee in general before this moment or in Nazareth in particular? Did John know Jesus before the event of which we hear in today’s Gospel? After all, they were cousins and Mary had visited Elizabeth, John’s mother, during the days of their mutual pregnancies. But were there opportunities for them to “compare notes,” so to speak? Or was John a man of the wilderness long before such opportunities may have taken place? The obscurity of both John and Jesus until they make their public appearances is cause for much speculation, but there is no information about any of this. All we have is the statement of John, “I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” According to him, the recognition of who Jesus was is tied strictly to God’s revelation.

So, suddenly, as though out of nowhere, “Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John," as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel from St. Matthew. An exchange took place between them suggesting that John clearly recognized, as had been revealed to him, that Jesus was to have pre-eminence over John. But Jesus refused to let that deter him from being baptized, for in presenting himself for baptism he made clear that the sins of humankind were resting on him, and when he presented himself to John for baptism the sins of the world were being carried into those waters. “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness,” he said. John acquiesced – and the heavens were opened to affirm the will and person of Jesus.

“The next day,” our text today tells us, “John saw Jesus coming toward him.” Has anything happened in the overnight since Jesus’ baptism? John tells us nothing of the baptism itself. He only tells us that in the aftermath of Jesus’ baptism John is clearly persuaded that this man emerging out of the obscurity of thirty years is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

What did he mean by this identification? Where did he get this way of describing a man who had just come out of nowhere so far as we are told? Is he referring to the scapegoat of the sacrificial system – the one that was to take the sins of Israel into the wilderness? (Leviticus 16:20-22) Possibly. Or is this a reference to the Passover Lamb whose blood was to be the mark for the passing over of the angel of death just before Israel left Egypt? (Exodus 12:20-23) Possibly. Or is he the one marked by the prophet Isaiah as the servant who was “led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53: 7) Possibly.

Or, just possibly, he meant all of those things and perhaps even more. We are not privy as to his precise meaning at the time, but by looking backward we do see this Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Here is a foreshadowing of that for which Jesus came . . . to carry the iniquity of a fallen world onto a cross that became the intersection between God’s love for us and our waywardness over against him. There on that cross we see today what this “Lamb of God” had as his goal and his mission.

To what extent did John see all this at the moment? One is again left only with conjecture. To be sure, something of this was hinted at when Jesus insisted on being baptized as a sign and mark that the sins of the world were being gathered on his shoulders. Our recent celebration of his enfleshment in the Child of Bethlehem carries within it the message that God’s will toward us was being carried out in most dramatic and vivid form as his Son entered our world of sorrow and sin, our experience of fallenness and dyingness. Jesus signified all that by presenting himself for baptism at the hands of John.

John suggests that this recognition came in the form of some kind of revelation in a very personal way. “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.” To “remain on him” is a way of speaking about an intimate relationship. It is not simply a way of talking about a chronological continuation, but it is a way of speaking about a relationship of a most intense sort. We do not hear in this account of anybody other than John seeing all this. “I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”

So the shadow of the cross falls over this moment of Jesus’ inauguration into public prominence. And this is emphasized when the author of this narrative specifically uses the terms “Son of God” and “Messiah” in the account we have before us as the Gospel for the day. Some translations use an alternate reading of “Chosen One of God” for “Son of God,” linking Jesus to the chosen Servant of Isaiah 42:1. The very fact that such an alternate text is available from old times only emphasizes the more how strongly John is marking this moment with the shadow of the cross.

The Inaugural Moment of Jesus’ Ministry

When this happens a second time . . . “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples” . . . the two who were with John at the time are so impressed that they make clear they want to know more about this one whom John so emphatically addresses as “the Lamb of God.” Jesus seems at first to put them off, but they insist and he agrees to permit them an audience. To ask “where are you staying” suggests again that they wish to “remain with him,” a phrase that earlier suggested an intimate arrangement between Jesus and the Spirit, but this time the relationship is to be between “rabbi” (“teacher”) and learner or follower.

Andrew is so impressed that he immediately seeks out his brother Simon, excitedly telling him, “We have found the Messiah (that is, the Christ)!” Once more we are left with the question of how Andrew (and probably the other unnamed follower of John) was so unquestioningly certain of who Jesus was after such a brief encounter. What lies behind and within this narrative? We are not privileged to know.

But this much we know: When one seriously encounters Jesus there is something of a movement of the Holy Spirit that creates a change; one is moved beyond and outside one’s own self to a new realization of what life can and does hold for those who follow this man.

Nor will Jesus disappoint. When Simon comes with Andrew to Jesus he is immediately taken up into the power of the man. Jesus sees in Simon a man who will be a disciple, for he calls him “Cephas (which when translated, is Peter)” -- a “rock.” Upon reading further, we find that Jesus calls yet others. Thus is begun his public ministry of teaching, healing, forgiving, and even raising from the dead as a sign that in him death is not anything final. He will confirm that most powerfully the third day after his crucifixion. But already before that moment the ministry that is now begun will point to his ultimate act in behalf of all humanity.

So this inaugural moment not only brings Jesus out of obscurity and into the front and center of Israel’s history (not to speak of the history of the world or of the unfolding of the church within which his powerful presence will be continued) but it also brings Andrew and Peter and another disciple out of obscurity and into the front and center of that which is now begun. Andrew tells Peter and Peter will, in future times, be pushed on yet further as he goes to a Gentile and suddenly is brought to a realization that what was begun in this Jesus of Nazareth is to be taken into a world that no Jew had fully contemplated before this. Oh, yes, there are those allusions – often quite powerful – in and through the prophets such as we read about in today’s First Lesson. But what is begun in this moment will become a message of hope and salvation for the whole world. Paul, a primary bearer of such good news, speaks of this to the Corinthians in the Second Lesson for today. Over and over again in these earliest moments of the church’s beginning in Jesus this word is emphasized . . . “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

What was revealed to John is carried through John’s disciples to yet others who tell still others and who literally change the face of the world little by little as they pass this word of Good News on through space and time. As John says in the Prologue to his Gospel, the word that was read to us on Christmas day about the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us: “He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:11-13)

This is the Word given to us through the waters of our baptism. It is the Word who nourishes us in the bread and wine set before us. It is the Word who is at the heart of all our words and actions today and every day. For these words about the Word is passed on from generation to generation, from culture to culture, from family to family, from person to person.

Do you ever sense your life to be shadowed by obscurity? Surely we all do at one time or another . . . and perhaps nearly all the time. In one sense of the term we are shadows passing in the night. But in another sense, out of our obscurity we speak of him whose life was given to death in order that the powers of life might become stronger than the powers of death . . that light is stronger than the darkness that envelops our sin-filled world. And that is a world-changing word . . . a word that is put on our tongue and into our lives to give hope and salvation to those around us who long for a sense of meaning, a sense of assurance that their lives are more than floating objects in a pointlessly absurd world.

The word that Jesus gave to Andrew and Simon and the unnamed disciple is the word that anchors all who believe in him in this otherwise senseless world where ambiguity and obscurity seem to surround us at every turn. When God takes us up into his arms, we know that our lives are sheltered in eternity, in the gracious and glorious hope that takes the shape and form of an enfleshed Savior who calls us to be his own. “Come and you will see,” he tells the disciples in the Gospel.

And he tells us, “Come and you will see” the glory of the Lord. To see that glory is to be inaugurated into a life that is nothing short of phenomenally meaningful. And you surely cannot keep that to yourself any more than Andrew could keep it to himself. Out of the obscurity of your life comes an inauguration into the life of the One who has changed and continues to change the whole world. We can hardly ask for more than that!

Hubert Beck
hbeck@austin.rr.com


(top)