II Epiphany – January 16, 2011 – Year A
“”Teacher, where are you staying?”
That’s what the two disciples of John the Baptist, one of whom was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother—that’s what they asked Jesus, instead of answering his question, when he turned around and discovered that they were tailing him.
“What are you looking for?” is what Jesus had asked them, and they responded with a question of their own; and when they expressed the desire to know where he was staying Jesus told them: “Come and see.”
He issued an invitation—made them “an offer—they…[didn’t]… refuse”…wisely, of course, but also, as it turned out, courageously.
They had no idea—as far as we can tell from this account in the Gospel according to John, other than what John the Baptist had told them about this Jesus: that he was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”—they really had no idea who he was or what they were getting into and certainly no idea of where it would all lead.
We’re not told where Jesus was actually staying, but wherever it was, these two—I guess you could call them “transfer students”—joined him for the rest of the day; then Andrew went to find his brother Simon and brought him back to Jesus, who decided that from now he would be called Cephas or Peter.
Then, presumably, after they had added a few more to their number, they formed a study-group of sorts and set off for Galilee, where they had been invited to a wedding.
It was the start of quite a journey and all because of the question they had asked him: “Teacher, where are you staying?”
It would take them a lifetime—his lifetime and theirs—to find out.
After all, what they would learn was hardly limited to Jesus’ physical whereabouts; what they would learn had a lot more to do with where he was staying emotionally and spiritually; clearly, the answer to where this teacher was staying would cover a lot of territory.
“Lord Jesus Christ, ‘Lamb of God’, where are you staying?”
Several of us are finding ourselves asking this question and an even more important question: “Who is this Jesus we’re supposed to be following?”, ever since we began working with the “Living the Questions” curriculum in the Adult Forum.
It hasn’t taken us long to discover—or maybe “rediscover” is a fairer word—what Andrew and the other disciples discovered: that Jesus was a revolutionary, “a troublemaker” as one commentator puts it.
I think most all of us would agree, however reluctantly, with Raymond Brown, the late Roman Catholic biblical scholar of great repute, who stated that “Jesus is so…troubling to conventional religion and conventional life even to this day, that if he came back today, the first thing we would do is kill him”.
Somehow I find it ironic that the only way such a tragic act could be prevented would be for Jesus to come back “in power and great glory”, as the early Church fervently prayed and confidently predicted would happen.
It was their only recourse when Andrew and the other disciples discovered that although he was a revolutionary Jesus wasn’t exactly the revolutionary—the longed-for Messiah—that they thought they had found, especially when he ended up being crucified, and even when he ended up being raised from the dead.
What the disciples would eventually discover—and what we keep having to rediscover—is that Jesus was a prophet and, as he himself is known to have said of John the Baptist, not just any prophet.
Isaiah, like so many of the prophets who turn up in the Hebrew Scriptures, could often be found hanging out in the royal courts, where he was often obliged to “speak truth to power”, as the saying goes, with varying degrees of success.
In this morning’s reading from Isaiah we hear God calling the people through the prophet to widen the audience to which the message of salvation is to be proclaimed to include all peoples of the earth so that Israel might be given to the world “as a light to the nations”.
As our little group was reminded in our study last week, by the time Jesus comes on the scene the hope that kings or princes or practitioners of organized religion will bother to listen, let alone change their ways, has been pretty much abandoned.
Jesus largely ignored the powers-that-were, for the most part bypassing them and directing his message to those whom those domineering powers basically ignored: the common people—the poor, the hungry, the powerless, the oppressed—anyone who was willing to listen, and there were plenty who were more than ready.
He allowed as how those who considered themselves to be “well” had no need of the healing he had to offer; it was those who were “sick” largely because of the indifference of those who considered themselves to be “well” that would benefit from his ministrations in the end.
Still, however “under the radar” Jesus’ efforts to enlighten may have been aimed, he attracted enough of the attention of the establishment to become known as a rabble-rouser and was ultimately dealt with as such by the authorities.
And we know all too well what can happen to anyone who tries to emulate the life and ministry of Jesus too closely.
As Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, who moved out of his bishop’s palace to preach the need for social reform in the streets, lamented: “When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I began to ask why there were so many poor, they called me a communist.”
Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was similarly vilified, hounded by the minions of an overzealous F.B.I. director, subjected to vicious smear tactics, and finally martyred for striving to turn his dream of achieving racial justice for all into reality.
I’m grateful to the originators of the “Living the Questions” curriculum for quoting no less a celebrity than U2’s Bono, whose words at a recent National Prayer Breakfast could only have been inspired by the clear, persistent voice of the prophetic Jesus:
“God is in the slums,” Bono was heard to say, “in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunities and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”
Perhaps Bono puts too fine a point on it, when he seems to imply that God may not be with us if we are not in solidarity with those who are less fortunate than we are.
After all, it is our firm belief as Christians that God is with us no matter what; it is in the never failing grace of God’s presence in our lives that we put our trust.
But could it be that we are more likely to feel that God is present with us the more we are able to practice that solidarity—the solidarity with the less-fortunate that Bono pleads for, the solidarity with the less-fortunate that heroes like Dom Helder Camara, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Mother Theresa lived and died for, the solidarity with the less-fortunate that our Lord Jesus Christ lived for and died for and rose again for?
And could the promise of a heightened awareness of God’s presence that practicing such uncompromising solidarity with the less-fortunate seems to offer—could it lead us to the same unsettling conclusion that the authors of the “Living the Questions” series arrive at?
They mince no words when they write: “While uncomfortable at first, the call of the prophetic Jesus is to move people from being admirers to [being] followers…. It reminds us—no matter how hard we try to make it about personal piety alone—that the Kingdom of God has always [been]and will always be about politics.”
Isn’t that what Andrew and the other disciples discovered when they threw in their lot with Jesus and stayed on for the long haul?
Isn’t that what Dom Helder and Dr. King, and Gandhi, and, yes, even Mother Theresa discovered when they did everything they could possibly do to follow in Jesus’ footsteps—that the Kingdom of God is indeed about politics, politics in the best sense of the word: the way people live together, work together, play together, and take care of each other as grateful children of a loving and faithful God?
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