Sermon: Second Sunday after Epiphany, John 1:29-42, January 15, 2023

We’ve been hearing quite a lot about John the Baptist for weeks now, beginning way back in Advent and continuing even today in the story from John’s Gospel. What’s striking is that the gospel writer John only indirectly refers to John the Baptist’s baptizing. Matthew, Mark, and Luke focus on John doing the deed in the River Jordan along with vivid descriptions of his teaching the crowds, and haranguing those needing to be harangued. In short, the other gospels portray John the Baptist as a busy man.

But here in the Gospel of John, we see John the Baptist pretty much just hanging out on the street corners. John is on the lookout. He’s scanning the horizons. But he’s staying put, not doing much of anything but looking. He’s being, not doing. Or at least it’s a more restful kind of doing. Gazing. As in star gazing, but in this case looking for the star who is the chosen one of God.

I love occasions to just hang out and look at my surroundings. It’s a kind of contemplative, prayerful presence that’s very much in contrast to the busy, active lives we otherwise lead these days when we’re always on the go. When I visit my brother’s mountain home in North Carolina on vacation, I don’t want to go anywhere special or do much of anything. I’m content to sit on the porch in the porch swing and just look at the mountains and the ever-changing cloud formations, morning, noon, and evening.

Maybe you also are drawn to occasions of such down time. But maybe it’s difficult for you to slow down and find the time to just hang out…. A common complaint of our day.

But a lot can happen when you’re just hanging out, looking at your surroundings. In fact, when we take the time to look closely, we may arrive at the kind of seeing that is really seeing, in the sense of perceiving, understanding. Hanging out, what I sometimes call holy daydreaming, leads to epiphanies, revelations, aha moments. Lo! Behold! Now I get it. Now it’s all clear to me.

That’s what happened to John the Baptist when he was standing there on the lookout. Twice in John’s story for today this hanging around led John the Baptist to exclaim, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Again, the gospel writer reports, “The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, [behold] here is the Lamb of God!’”

It's one thing to see in a literal sense. It’s quite another to look, or perceive in way that brings understanding. One can help lead to the other in certain circumstances

Sometimes we can look at something or someone and not really see them. And if we are rushing around town and our minds are focused on what we need to do next, we are more likely to miss important things, hidden in plain sight. It’s a common experience, but one that can have profound spiritual and theological implications.

It was one thing for John the Baptist to gaze upon Jesus walking by. It was quite another for him to have his epiphany, his aha moment to see him, recognize him as the Lamb of God, and not just his cousin.

What makes the difference between just seeing and then really perceiving? I submit to you, it’s how God uses and is present in the holy hanging out. It’s in the willingness to be there, and to wait, that we may discover that the Spirit of the living God is active and revealing truth to us.

That seems to be what happened to John when he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God,” the “Chosen One of God.” It’s in the holy waiting and watching that God gave John the word about watching for the Spirit descending and remaining. And it was in the waiting and watching that John saw the Spirit descend on Jesus and remain. In short, God was active in the waiting and watching, and opened up the horizon for the epiphany as a gift from God.

Such God-given epiphanies can change everything, interrupting our old ways of seeing things and doing things, introducing a new way – in our case, the way of Christ and the gospel.

God uses our waiting and watching, being there, to open us up to the truth of God’s ways which stand in sharp contrast to the human ways of sin, brokenness and finitude.

And holy waiting and watching also become the fertile soil that God uses to give the gift of belief, trust in God – along with our confession of faith in Christ.

This is what happened to Andrew and the other disciple who followed Jesus after John announced that Jesus was the Lamb of God. When they followed, Jesus asked, “What are you looking for?” Andrew and the other asked another question, “Teacher, where are you staying?” Or where are you hanging out? Abiding? Dwelling? Remaining?

Jesus invited them to “come and see.” Then “they came and saw where Jesus was staying [dwelling, abiding, hanging out], and they remained with him that day.” They took the time to abide with him, dwell with him, to bask in Jesus’ sacred presence for the better part of a whole day.

God used that abiding, remaining, dwelling, hanging out, to bring Andrew and the other to believe and to confess their faith, as Andrew reported to his brother Simon, “We have found the Messiah,” the anointed one. Their graced, God-given epiphany came when they were hanging out with Jesus all day.

And this abiding with Jesus that led to their faith in Jesus as their Messiah, also begins a new calling for them. Rather than curious onlookers they became at that moment intentional disciples of Jesus and pledged to follow Jesus 24/7, wherever that would lead.

When God shows up in the waiting and watching, good stuff happens and we become changed and are given new jobs to do. God calls us. We see that in today’s first reading, which features God’s call to Isaiah to become a prophet: “The Lord called me before I was born; while I was in my mother’s womb God named me.” (Isaiah 49:1b)

We see the theme of call in today’s second reading where Paul greets the church at Corinth in the opening lines of his first letter to them as one “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Paul addresses “the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.”

We see the theme of call in today’s gospel reading – God’s call to John the Baptist to testify about the one on whom the Spirit descended and remained, the Lamb of God, God’s chosen one. We see elements of Jesus’ own calling from God to be the Lamb of God. And we certainly see Jesus’ call to Andrew, and Simon, renamed Peter, and the other disciple.

God’s calling of God’s people to do holy work is central to both the Jewish and Christian traditions. And all of these calls one way or another are born of God and the graced epiphanies that open up new realities and truth to us when we dwell or abide in the presence of God, when we hang out with God.

And once called, then we are moved by the Spirit to get up on our feet and become busy again, doing the work that God has entrusted to us.

Note that in today’s gospel reading, Jesus is the one being active, walking about, going from here to there proclaiming the dominion of heaven in word and deed.

But Jesus also had his own occasions to hang out with the one whom he called Father. He had forty days to dwell with God and God’s word in the wilderness, and in public ministry, Jesus would often spend the night with God in prayer.

Then there was a culminating of hanging out when he hung upon the tree of the cross for three hours and then lay silently in the tomb for three days only to spring forth to life again by the power of God in the resurrection from the dead.

So, we see here the dynamic between contemplation and action, of being and of doing, of hanging out and then getting busy.

We see this dynamic in our own journeys of faith here at Faith-La Fe. The time for hanging out, for being with God, for our holy abiding and dwelling, principally is here on Sunday as we stay put for a little over an hour to attend to God’s word and celebrate the sacraments. It’s here in this place and during this hour that God reveals still more about Christ as we have new epiphanies about how it is that Christ is graciously active in our midst even in these latter days.

But before long, we are told to get busy again as we go in peace to love and serve the Lord, our graced contemplation here leading to the en-Spirited busyness of the week when we serve our neighbors in loving word and deed.

So, by God’s mercy, let’s not give our worshipful, prayerful hanging out with God in our Sunday assemblies short shrift. Rather, let’s give such holy contemplation its due, for therein is the abiding presence of God in Christ in the Spirit that gives us the gift of the epiphanies that lead us in faith to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, the anointed one, God’s chosen – a confession of faith that we seek to proclaim as John the Baptist did in both word and deed.

God give us the grace, then, to hang out, gazing at our surroundings for the appearance of Jesus, that we may yet again be given the gift to proclaim Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Amen.