Sermon on John 1:29-41
Two weeks ago just before New Year's Eve in Seoul, Korea, a man fell through an open manhole after going on an end-of-the-year drinking binge. When he awoke, he found himself trapped in the darkness lying in sewage. It was so dark, that he couldn't even find where he fell in at and he soon lost his way in the dark labyrinth of Seoul's hundreds of miles of sewage pipes. He ended up wandering through the darkness for eight days, drinking sewage water and wrapping his body in plastic bags to stay warm, before someone heard his calls for help and rescued him! (Press&Dakotan, Jan. 7, p. 4)
When the Bible describes our sinful condition, it often uses the illustration of being lost in the dark--perhaps not as graphically as this true story, but just as terrible! For the darkness of our sin is one in which we cannot find a way out. Only Christ has the power to shine a light in our lives to help us. And so, during Epiphany, we celebrate Jesus as the Light of the world. Jesus is God's flashlight in the darkness of sin. He helps us see the way out of our dark and repulsive sin and rescues us from it.
We see this in how Jesus got his first two disciples. In our text this morning, we read, "The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah'" (John1:41). My question is, "Who found whom" in our text this morning? Does our life with God begin when we find him? Of course not. Andrew could have said it better if he said, "The Lord found us!" for God truly did find them, lost in the darkness of sin, but out of His great love, God gave them (and us) the light of his Son.
The light of Jesus also helps us see many other aspects of God's love. For example, the light of Jesus helps us see that he is the lamb of God. When John said this about Jesus, he might have been referring to God's promise to Abraham from long ago. When Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, he obediently took him to the mountain where the sacrifice would take place. On the way up the mountain, Isaac asked his father, "Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?" Abraham prophetically answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (Gen. 22:8). Well, an angel stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son, and a ram was suddenly found caught in a bush for them to offer as a sacrifice, but Abraham's words were more true than he knew, for God provided in his own son, Jesus, as the perfect sacrifice for sin. Jesus was truly the lamb of God--better than Passover lambs and the other lambs sacrificed by Israel for their sins for so many centuries--for by his perfect sacrificial death, Jesus paid for all the sin there ever was or will be, in one fell swoop. We can only realize what a great price God paid for us in sacrificing his son, when the Light of Jesus illumines this fact for us.
Next we might ask , "How do we react to Jesus' words, 'Come and see' after knowing he chose us?" When Christ invites us to follow him, what do we do? Again, we only see the right path to follow when Jesus is lighting our way. The two disciples of John who heard that Jesus was the lamb of God, immediately wanted to learn more. Jesus' light showed them a path they wanted to investigate further. As they followed Jesus, he then invites them to "Come and See" who he is, just as he invites us to learn more about him in the Bible. These two disciples got more than they bargained for, since they not only saw where Jesus was staying, but they ended up following him for the rest of their lives!
Jesus' goal in meeting these two, was to fulfill what our O.T. lesson today said: "I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." (Isa. 49:6b). These words were first describing what God would do through the prophet Isaiah, for he proclaimed God's word to all people. Unfortunately, few people, in Israel or else where, heeded God's invitation to follow Him and receive the gift of life. But Jesus was the "light for the Gentiles" because through Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection, he brought the light of salvation "to the ends of the earth." In Jesus, these words are fulfilled, because Jesus came to speak God's word, but also Jesus was God's Word made flesh. His loving action of dying for the sins of the world because the greatest light in the world--one that has the power of life, one that can shine in our sin darkened hearts and resurrect them so that we want to follow Jesus!
When He invited the disciples of John to follow him, Jesus was gathering those who would spread the Good News about him everywhere on earth. Andrew's first reaction after meeting Jesus was to tell his brother about him. This is the natural next step in a Christian's journey of faith--telling others the Good News about Jesus. These two disciples were to be part of this great mission! However, already at the time of Isaiah, God had you and me in mind. God's promise to Israel, was also to us. God used the Jewish people in Israel--like Andrew and Peter, Paul and the other Gospel writers--to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to us, who are Gentiles, or non-Jews. Jesus first disciples were so successful in delivering God's message to the other people of the world, that the Church was almost entirely made up of Gentiles by the end of the first century--just one generation after Jesus was on earth. The Holy Spirit blessed the disciples work tremendously, just as he will bless ours.
God has made us his children through baptism and has brought us into the light of his Son, Jesus Christ, just as He promised through Isaiah. This light also helps us to see miracles. For example, we were once blind to the existence of our own sin, but now can see our sinfulness. And a baptism isn't just an extra 10 minutes of sitting in church, but it is the resurrection from the death of sin, to eternal life--one of the greatest miracles we'll ever see. Jesus also lights our way to the path of continued forgiveness by inviting us to his Holy Table. It has been said that in Holy Communion we receive the only repeatable part of baptism, i.e., we receive forgiveness.
With all that God helps us to see through the Light of Christ, how come the excitement of our heavenly vision can sometimes fade. We know the answer. Sin. Sin can cloud our vision so that we become apathetic and do not want God to change our sinful and lazy ways. Sin causes us to obstruct the Holy Spirit's work to change us and rule our lives. One of the hardest things to pray for is asking God to spoil our fun of sinning. There are many sins we want to hold onto, many sins we love to do. By God's grace, we can ask Him to spoil our misdirected love so that we focus our love toward God and others instead. This is how we share the light of Christ with others--out of true concern and love for them.
Does the message that Jesus died for your sins, get you excited enough to tell others? Because we live in a sinful world, we will always be confronted with reasons not to follow Jesus or reasons not to tell others about Him. But, God has given each of us unique abilities for the purpose of reaching certain people with the Gospel. That special connection with another person may be that they are related to us, just like Andrew who told his brother Peter about Jesus. Or we might work with a person or go to school with someone who doesn't know Christ. It can be hard to share the message of Christ with such people, but the alternative is far worse--leaving them in the dark to die in their sins. God has chosen us to share the light of Christ with others. It is not so much a command as it is a statement of who we are as Christians. For we are God's witnesses in the world and God will use us as his flashlights to shine the light of Christ into others' lives. Let us pray that God gives us an ever greater desire to shine his light in the world. Amen.