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It's Always
The Next Day
by the Rev. Robert Maddox
January 20, 2008
John 1:29-42
Here we are today in our own way celebrating the work
of Martin Luther King and the great host of Americans who labored with
him in the 1950's and 60's. Dr. King, not alone but certainly on the
point, led the nation out of one of our darkest eras. Some of you here
today remember the gross inequities that marked those days. We
Southerners particularly have our memories that fortunately do not
fully go away despite the incredible progress we have made as a nation.
Progress has emerged not only with the issue of race but significant
efforts are underway to take people for who they are and not
mythologized and stereotyped. As we speak a woman, an African-American
man, a Southern Baptist preacher, a Mormon and a few with no clearly
identified religious connections have attracted serious attention from
the American public in their drives to become our next president.
That's progress.
Though we always have to use common sense and good interpretative tools
with the Bible, nonetheless I find strong roots for our progress in the
stories and teachings that have come to us from the Bible.
From the scripture and our cumulative Christian tradition and
experience Jesus stands out as the catalyst of faith for many of us,
and, if we can believe their rhetoric, likewise for some of the
presidential candidates and leaders up and down the line. As you and I
determine to continue Jesus' and Dr. King's struggle for justice and
equity, we turn again to the scripture. Our Christian calendar for
today points us to a series of snapshots from the gospel of John. Let's
take a few moments and reacquaint ourselves with these quick but
classic pictures.
We'll talk about John from John-John the Baptizer and John the man
named by most ancient tradition as the author of this important book.
We have two Johns before us today. Christian history knows a good deal
about John the baptizer and actually nothing of the John whose name is
given to the gospel. Just keep that in mind the next time you are on
Jeopardy or Want To Be a Millionaire. That piece of trivia might come
in handy.
The clever literary device the gospel writer uses to fast forward the
opening days of Jesus' ministry is a series of "next days."
John's Jesus story opens with the author John's account of John the
Baptist's preaching and baptizing up and down the Jordan River. His
sermons and actions created quite a stir. Celebrity-starved people
journeyed out to hear him with many submitting to his water-all-over
rite of baptism. A question and answer scene takes place.
The "next day"-here we are with our first next day, John sees Jesus
coming and declares, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of
the world." Ah, I pine to stop here and attempt to parse that statement
but we must move on.
Here John recalls a moment with Jesus but does not say he actually
baptized Jesus. Interesting tidbit. The other three gospels however do
clearly say that John baptized Jesus. Rather, John definitely
identifies Jesus as the messiah of God.
The next "next day" Jesus shows up at John's preaching station again.
John again declares Jesus to be the lamb of God who takes away the sins
of the world. On this next day, two of John's disciples, upon seeing
Jesus and hearing John's declaration, begin following Jesus. One of the
men is Peter's brother.
They ask Jesus, "Where are you going?" "Come and see" is Jesus'
enigmatic but compelling answer. We cannot linger here either but it is
an important word.
The next "next day" Jesus decides to go to Galilee, his home territory.
And immediately Jesus is in Galilee. An example of fast forward from
the first century.
This "next day" literary device becomes the gospel's way of getting us,
in our day, into the Jesus story.
Now, what's here for us as we remember Martin Luther King and make a
commitment to remain at the calling Jesus triggered in him? I think the
next day, what lay ahead, their vision of the future always beckoned
Jesus and King and others like them motivated by a profound sense of
call to make better life on the planet.
Four words pop out at me from this text: identification, invitation,
affiliation, celebration.
Identification: John the Baptist using a biblically collated metaphor
identified Jesus to the folks standing around him--and identifies Jesus
to us as one who will uniquely become involved in mitigating the sins
of the world.
Dr. King and the rest of us in our own time share Jesus' mandate to
deal with the sins of the world. We have the mandate to deal
creatively, redemptively with our own individual sins. All have sinned
and come short of God's best for us. Anyone here want to deny that fact
of the human condition?
And we are called on to deal with the sins of the world. John says
Jesus came to take away the sins of the world. If that were taken
literally, Jesus has not done a very good job. The sins of religious
and military empire cost him his life. The very sin he came to remove
did him in. But Jesus unleashed a power that flows to us today to deal
with systemic evil. When we put John's identification in the larger
historical context, Jesus comes much nearer to John's ideal.
What I mean is in his own day Jesus lived and served at the edge of his
society, in the thick of his world's hurts. The edge in his day had a
different cast, flavor, import than ours. He made headway but left it
to us to pick up where he left off. What's your "life at the edge"
issue? I have mine. As indeed, we must ever identify the task that lies
before us. For King, it was the systemic evil of racial segregation.
For us, it will be to continue his work of racial reconciliation or it
may be something else. But to follow Jesus is to identify our life at
the edge issues and involve ourselves in them.
Invitation. To the early followers, "Come see. Come follow me." Jesus
still invites. Jesus does not coerce. Jesus does not make us follow.
But the strong invitation persists. Jesus respects our dignity and
humanity as he beckons us to come with him to the edge of our worlds
but there's no denying the strong invitation. For half a century Billy
Graham has closed his revival meetings with an invitation to come
follow Jesus. In our UCC tradition aimed to avoid coercion, we must not
lose sight of that compelling invitation to follow Jesus. The
invitation implies a conscious decision to take up the Jesus way. The
gospels have a way of saying "Take up your cross and follow after
Jesus." The decision can take a myriad of forms. But to miss the call,
the invitation is to miss a big part of the way of Jesus and to miss
much of life's adventure.
Affiliation. Jesus invites you and me to affiliate with the Jesus
crowd. March with the Jesus crowd. On the day of Martin Luther King's
funeral, my friend Tony and I marched from the Georgia capitol in
Atlanta to Moorehouse College along with hundreds of thousands of
others singing as we went, "We Shall Overcome."
You might say, Jesus' is not the only march in town. There are more
parades I could join. True. But the Jesus march is one you can depend
on. It's been around for a long time with every promise of extending
into the distant future. The Jesus crowd is my crowd. You, here today,
are my crowd. I am honored to march with you into the thicket of the
problems of our day. Oh, sure, we get lost sometime along the way. We
take the wrong turn at the crossroads. But sooner or later we get back
on the right road and discover, to our amazement and delight that the
Jesus march goes on and on, with us or without us. So hear again the
invitation of Jesus to affiliate with this march. You'll be glad you
did.
And celebration. The gospel says that "three days" later, another day,
another moment, Jesus celebrated by going to a wedding. At the wedding
he turned the water into wine. This becomes for me and I hope for you
an invitation to affiliate with God's grand celebration of life, of
meaning, of living in the extravagant love of God. It is a celebration
of God's desire and ability to take the plain water of our lives and
covert it into hundred dollar a bottle of wine. It is an invitation to
experience the taste of new wine.
"If I do what you say, preacher, where will my life go?" I do not know
but I do say with Jesus as he said to those first followers, "Come and
see." They went to places and had experiences they never dreamed of.
Some of the places they went felt strange, even frightening. According
to tradition, the come and see led a few of them to martyr's deaths.
Were any of them ever sorry they took up the Jesus way? I doubt it.
As I have come to know some of you, I stand in amazement at where you
have gone in pursuit of your own call, in your willingness to live and
serve at the edge of your own world. As I listen to some of your
stories, I sense the price some of you have paid to live at the edge,
to affiliate, in your own way with the Jesus way. I am in good company.
Up my sisters and brothers, it's always the next day.
I hope this becomes the word of the Lord for you. Amen.
Last updated Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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