John 1:29-39
I am really awkward at parties. Maybe it's because I didn't go to a lot of them when I was younger so I'm still learning or something, but I just can't seem to find my way in to relaxing and being normal at a party.
Last night I was at a party in a neighbor’s backyard. And as we were standing there with our drinks in our hands making small talk, a mom in the neighborhood, who I’ve known since our kids were in kindergarten, began complaining about the religious teaching at the private middle school where her daughter attends. And she kept apologizing to me. Knowing that I am a pastor, so not just a Christian, but like, a super invested, professional Christian, every time she brought up any criticism about, as she called it, “churchy stuff,” she would lay her hand on my arm and say, “I’m sorry,” and then go on to finish her comment.
I am really awkward at parties. Maybe it's because I didn't go to a lot of them when I was younger so I'm still learning or something, but I just can't seem to find my way in to relaxing and being normal at a party.
Last night I was at a party in a neighbor’s backyard. And as we were standing there with our drinks in our hands making small talk, a mom in the neighborhood, who I’ve known since our kids were in kindergarten, began complaining about the religious teaching at the private middle school where her daughter attends. And she kept apologizing to me. Knowing that I am a pastor, so not just a Christian, but like, a super invested, professional Christian, every time she brought up any criticism about, as she called it, “churchy stuff,” she would lay her hand on my arm and say, “I’m sorry,” and then go on to finish her comment.
I am not sure how to take it when this happens. As though I represent all of Christianity in any given situation, a whole belief system, never mind that there are some 43,000 different Christian denominations in the world, each believing nuanced things different enough from others to designate them a distinct group. And then between and within all those different groups, there are different ways to answer, Who is God?
So what does it mean to be a Christian?
When my neighbor sees me, what does she think my life consists of?
How does she imagine I shape my world, or operate within it?
Differently enough from her that she finds it necessary to apologize to me if she says anything critical about religion, clearly. But would she be surprised to know my own Christianity looks really different from my parents’ or my siblings, or the other Christians on our street, or other Christians in my own denomination, or even that our faith looks different within a single congregation?
How do we know what to believe, how to live, what to follow?
How do we know what God is really like?
Do we just pick the version of God that sounds the best and go with that?
What about the one that connects most to whatever childhood trauma or psychological issues I’m working through at the moment? So I have a “distant God” until my guilt or shame conjures up a “critical God,” and then I soothe myself with with a “benevolent God” who suits me just fine till I mess up and then the “authoritarian God” kicks in?
It’s all very confusing, what we humans have done with the whole idea of following Christ. It seems it can mean anything people make it mean, as long as they can make a good case for it. Does it mean adding things to my life? Like prayer and good works and reading my bible? Does it mean subtracting things from my life? Like gossip and sex and drinking and lying?
How do we know when we’ve arrived? How can we measure if we are doing it correctly? The whole thing has become very complicated.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did knot know him. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it."
The book of John begins this way just a few verses before our text. It goes on to say, The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.”
How do we recognize God? How do we follow? The first disciples in John are told, “Look! There’s the lamb of God, there is the one.”
And they followed Jesus. They let their curiosity lead.
They didn’t know what they were doing yet; they were just awakened to the possibility of something. They were looking, so they kept looking, kept watching.
And Jesus turns and sees them. He sees them.
And then he asks them, “What are you looking for?”
And all these conversations are going on at many levels at once.
They scramble for a response. How to keep the conversation going…“Teacher," they say, “where are you staying?”
And Jesus answers the question beneath the question, the one they are really asking but maybe don't have words for, the reason they’re looking, their deep longing and hope and curiosity, and he says, “Come and see.” Come find out.
So they do. They spend the day with him; it says, they abide, they remain, they loiter with no agenda in particular. They sabbath with the Son of God, hanging out listening, talking, sharing food, and space alongside each other. Watching and listening, being heard and seen.
They find Jesus and they are found.
They go from looking to seeing.
And the next day they tell a couple of others, We have seen; you should come and see too!
“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; and yet the world did not know him.”
God is in the world, right here among us.
The Church is the community who sees. Disciples, Christians, followers of Christ, we seek to see God right in the midst of it all, right here. To see Jesus.
And we need each other for this. Because not all of us see all the time; in fact, most of us don’t see much of the time.
We forget to look. We forget to listen. Or we’re just learning again how to. But because we keep inviting each other, Come and see, we keep taking turns getting glimpses. By being in this together we go from looking for Jesus out there to seeing Jesus right here.
Rowan Williams says being a disciple is a state of being. It’s not a belief system or a list of behaviors or doctrines to subscribe to. It’s a willingness to live attentive, expectant, awaiting the action of God in the world, trusting it is always about to occur.
And then it’s submitting to that. Letting it lead you. Hanging out where Jesus hangs out. Which is both with the outcast, and with the Father – that is, really seeing those around us and sharing their place, being pulled out of our comfort and self protection towards each other – the other that might be most challenging for us.
And resting in the love of the Father to the Son, the unconditional and without end love that flows inside the Trinity. That’s the basis of prayer – to simply be as present as possible, and accept that God is already present right here with you, and then being in that love and listening with your being, open to what might come next.
A disciple is a learner. Williams says, and what we are learning is “how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.”
This is what we are learning. This is what God is doing to us. Making our lives into a place in the world where the act of God can come alive. Making us alive, and making us into participants in the resurrection power of Christ as it brings life to others, to the world.
Being a disciple is living with attentiveness, ready and willing to act in love, expectant that God will act, and show will us what to say or do to join in God’s act.
This is not a religion. It’s allowing Jesus to come into our own death experiences and bring us alongside others in theirs, trusting new life will emerge, and then watching for it to happen. It’s being seen by God, being asked by God, what are you looking for?And responding.
And when God speaks, when God acts, it transforms our images of who God is. It’s not a type of god or a type of belief; it’s a living conversation with our Maker that remakes us. The Holy Spirit reconnects us, to God and each other.
I upped the awkward last night by excusing myself early from the conversation because I needed to go home and finish my sermon. This neighbor asked, “What are you going to preach about?”
And after she pressed me I told her about our question for the year – Who is God and what is God up to? And she said, “I think God must be disappointed in us for how we’ve been treating each other lately.”
And I answered, “I believe God is always here, in every moment doing something, even right here.” I even gestured around the party, where groups of people chatted and ate, a band played music while a few people danced, and children ran around laughing and yelling.
I continued, “And we can try to learn to pay attention under the surface, to notice how we already belong to God and one another and join in.”
Her response was, “I’m with you. It’s all about community, right? It’s all about community.”
And almost back to my house, in the middle of the sidewalk, I blurted outloud to myself, “No! That’s not it! It’s not just all about community!” And I felt frustrated that I hadn’t gotten to the heart of it. Because the heart of it is deeper, and unknowable, and something I couldn’t really explain.
GOD IS HERE, already doing something. There is something bigger and wilder, not in our control, not ours to manipulate, or grasp even, or get right or screw up. It’s beyond what our minds can comprehend or our bodies could contain. Our hearts’ deepest longing cannot begin to sink to the depths of this, our most euphoric joy and most soul-rending sorrow are a finger dipped in the punch bowl of God.
And when I had looked around the party, and suggested that God was right there, for just a moment my discipleship flared up, a little “what if?” sparked inside me. What if God does something right here? Right now? In one of these conversations? What if there is a moment that changes the trajectory of a life? That sets someone free? A word that brings unexpected healing? A door that opens to new hope or possibility?An inexplicable flash of love and belonging that sets off a journey? It could happen at any moment. It doeshappen at any moment; somewhere it is happening, even in this very moment right now.
What makes us followers of Christ is that we expect that Jesus might do something at any moment, and that he might involve us.
So do we let things go? Of course!
Whatever clogs our view of what Christ might be doing, whatever blocks our path of participating in love when we are summoned to do so, we let those things go. They are keeping us from the full and joyful life we are called to. The harder we hang onto them, the more likely they are blocking our view of God, and the more clearly we will see and freer we will be to participate if we let them go.
Do we add things? Of course! Whatever helps us to both look and see, to both listen and hear where God is and what God is doing. We are given witnesses of who God is and what God does in scripture and in each other’s lives, so let’s spend some time in those places. Purposely adding things that take away barriers, deceptions and distractions– practices that clear us out and focus us and keep us present, like prayer and silence and stillness, these help us to be disciples, they help us to see Jesus.
What version of God do we go with? It doesn’t matter. They’re all two dimensional projections of god made in our image. They will all be crucified when the real God encounters us. Start somewhere. God promises, when you seek me you will find me. So seek. Look.
Which denomination is right? None of them! They’re all just structures, built around ideas which are built around a shared desire to know and serve God. They get some stuff right and lots of stuff wrong. So pick one and begin.
Join a church. Find the disciples. Be a disciple. Let go the things that keep you from Christ, add in the things that lead you to Christ. And watch and listen for the living God, who might intervene presently, and who may summon you to act in love at any moment.
How do we know when we have arrived?
There is no arriving, there is only abiding.
And if we are worried about measuring if we’re doing it correctly, we are focusing our watching and listening in the wrong direction.
Being a disciple is “being where you are in order to be changed.” This is thrilling and terrifying. Over and over it puts us to death and raises us to new life. This being changed is never finished, but it’s also not ours to finish. God does this in us.
What is ours to do is to be where we are. To expect God to act. To assume the Holy Spirit will change us. To practice paying attention. Something is about to break at any moment. (Maybe even be in the middle of a party!) And when it does, maybe we will see it, and perhaps we will let Jesus involve us in whatever that might be.
Amen.
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