WHERE ARE YOU STAYING?
A Sermon Preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Text: John 1:29-42
Throughout Advent and into this season of Epiphany we have been journeying with John, the Baptizer. He leapt in his mother’s womb as she encountered Mary, carrying Jesus in her own womb. He has been heard proclaiming the nearness of the realm of God; he has been seen preparing the way for God’s anointed one. Last week, we encountered him at the River Jordan, where he stopped to baptize Jesus, in spite of his vigorous protestations of unworthiness, because, in the end, it was the “fulfillment of righteousness.”
Today we move out of the gospels of Luke and Matthew and encounter John the Baptist in the gospel of John the Evangelist. John’s gospel does not begin with any birth narrative. Instead we get the famous prologue that tells of the “Word become flesh…dwelling among us full of grace and truth.” From the gospel’s heady opening verses, we move directly to the banks of the Jordan and the work of John the Baptist. In the verses immediately preceding today’s text we get the evangelist’s version of the baptizer’s story.
Unlike Matthew’s version, the religious leaders have not gone out to be baptized by John. They have come to confront him, to challenge his identity, to check his credentials. “Who are you?” they want to know, perhaps trying to trap him into some sort of blasphemy. Catching their drift, he assures them that he makes no claim to being the Messiah. “What then? Are you Elijah?” they press him. “I am not,” is his swift and certain reply. “Are you the prophet?” “No,” again. Well, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. [The high priests? The Sanhedrin? The leaders of the Pharisees?] What do you say about yourself?”
“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah has said.” “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” (John 1:19-28.) That is, “I am not even worthy to be his slave.” This is the first day of Jesus’ ministry. The implication in this passage, as we shall see, is that John has already baptized or will baptize Jesus on this day, though we do not get the actual experience described in this text.
“The next day,” the gospel writer assures us, John sees Jesus walking by the river and identifies him as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” the one to “be revealed to Israel.” John testifies to his own initial failure to recognize the very one whom he had been predicting, but, he says, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained with him…I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” In the gospel of John, the mystery of Jesus’ identity is not in its hiddenness but in the many different titles he is given. Already we know him as the “Word, “the light,” “the Word made flesh,” “the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Now we hear he is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and “the Son of God.” There is no doubt in the mind of the writer who Jesus is, and now we are told there is no doubt in the mind of John the Baptist.
Another day passes and we find John the Baptist reiterating his testimony in the presence of his own disciples, “Look here is the Lamb of God.” We know that John the Baptist was a significant religious figure in Judea at this time. Folk were flocking to him, hungry for his message of both judgment and hope, righteousness and the promise of new life in the one to come. Whether the religious authorities came to challenge him or out of their own curiosity, there they were with the rabble, the peasants and merchants and toll collectors and folk like you and me. There they all were, gathered around the powerful prophet, hanging on his every word, wading into the water to cleanse themselves of impurity and unrighteousness. John the Baptist had a large following. Many speculate that Jesus himself was among John’s disciples and it was only in the moment of Jesus’ baptism that John recognized who he was. Perhaps, Jesus himself had such a recognition in the baptismal waters.
But John was not hesitant to point beyond himself as he recognizes who Jesus is. He is not at all reluctant to let his own disciples go off after Jesus. And so they do, Andrew and an unnamed one, whom some have speculated is the very author of this gospel, John, the fisherman, son of Zebedee, the “beloved disciple.” They follow, perhaps a few steps behind, hesitant to approach, not knowing quite what to say. Without warning, Jesus turns and confronts them with one of those probing questions that riddle John’s gospel, “What are you looking for?” Now this question could have been literally “Why are you following me?” or “What do you want of me?” but it can also be seen as a much broader enquiry into what these men were looking for from life itself. Probably some of each explanation is at play here.
Can you imagine, can you hear Jesus asking you and me, “What are you looking for?” “What are you doing here this morning? What are you after? How can I help?” It is a curious thing the way the drama unfolds in John’s gospel. In the other gospels we find Jesus, standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, actively calling his disciples from among the fishermen and the peasants. It is dramatic and direct. But here we find these same characters, not in Galilee, but hanging out in Judea, miles from their home by the lakeside. What were they doing there? What had drawn them away from home and family and livelihood to travel cross country to the camp of the radical prophet, John the Baptist? Could it be that these simple peasants were also deeply religious folk, seekers after truth, drawn by their hope for the Messiah and the coming reign of God?
Do we ever feel like that – like we’re first and foremost religious folk, seekers after God’s truth, drawn by some hope that One would come again in human form, fulfilling the promise of God’s realm on earth? And suddenly, unexpectedly God turns to us in some guise or another and says, “What are you looking for?” What would your response be? What would mine?
It seems to me that the two disciples in our story have a kind of muddled response. Perhaps they were caught off guard as Jesus turned to them; perhaps they were thrown by his question. They respond with a question of their own, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Now the title tells us that they approach Jesus with respect, even reverence, so they may be afraid to name their concerns up front. They may not really know him; they are following John’s recommendation of him. It sounds like one of those socially awkward moments in which you really want to keep the conversation going but can’t thing of anything intelligent to say, so you ask a dumb question. Of course, it’s also possible they really did want to know where he was staying, perhaps for the information that it would give them about who he was and what he was up to. After all, where we hang out can say a lot about us, about what matters to us and what our priorities are.
“Well, boys, come and see” is Jesus’ response. Not quite, “Come, follow me,” but with the same net result. The two go along with him to the place he was staying and remain there with him the rest of the day. We took a pause in Bible study Tuesday to try to imagine ourselves into this situation. What would it be like to spend a day just hanging out with Jesus, listening to him in intimate conversation, getting to know him personally, sharing ourselves with him? As Thelma remarked, it kind of gives you goose bumps to imagine such an experience.
As I thought about this sermon, I toyed with the notion of calling it “Jesus Finds His Posse,” to use the vernacular. Clearly what happens here is the beginning of something big – a movement, a community, new life in a new world. Andrew and the other disciple of John see something in Jesus that draws them to him, much as their former leader John the Baptist himself had seen. “Rabbi,” “the Word,” “the light,” “the Word made flesh,” “the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth,” “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” “the Son of God” - how did they see him? How do we see him? How did their view shape their discipleship? How does our understanding of who Jesus is shape ours?
“Who are you?” “What are you looking for?” “Where are you staying?” Crucial questions, all. Yes, even this last question may have more significance than we thought on first reading. Not just “Where are you staying? Where u hanging out? Not just a question about stationary existence, but where are you going? What can you teach us? Shall we follow you? All are implied.
Paul Nuchterlein says that the word here translated as “staying” may better be understood as the more theologically tinted term “abide” He says that “Taking the NRSV translation and changing [it] to consistently read abide, we get the following renderings:
And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abided on him…the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and abide is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' (John 1:32-32)
When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi…where are you abiding?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was abiding, and they abided with him that day. (John 1:38-39)”
For the writer of the gospel of John the term “abide” is crucial to his understanding of the in-dwelling of the holy in the human. He actually uses a play on words when he has the new disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” or “Where are you abiding?” When Jesus responds, “Come and see,” the invitation extends far beyond the room where he is eating and sleeping at the moment. We know from his own testimony that the Son of Man has no earthly place to lay his head, nor is that what really matters in the end. What ultimately matters is what he will tell them a few chapters further along in John’s gospel. He will talk about how he abides in God and God abides in him (John 14:10) and he will encourage his disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15:4.) That is, the Word made flesh dwells among us and within us, “full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14.)
“Where are you staying?” Where are you abiding?” We can ask it of Jesus; we can ask it of ourselves. What difference does it make in our lives and what difference do our lives make in the world around us if we abide in him and he abides in us? For a couple of disciples long ago the decision to “come and see,” to go along with Jesus, to hang out with him and join his posse, made all the difference. It changed their lives, filled them to overflowing with good news, made them whole and made them new. May it be so for us as well. Amen.