Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ 2^nd Sunday after Epiphany

461 Orange Ave., CA 94022 January 20, 2008

MEETING JESUS

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?”

They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

He said to them, “Come and see.” -John 1: 38-39

Epiphany is an encounter with revelation, where the intuitive insight meets the material world. God desires to be known, and not just in a sunset, or with the moon hanging over Half-dome, beautiful as that may be; or in the terrible aftermath of earthquake, fire and storm; or under a microscope, or in an obscure text, or fantastical stories. Not even through that special lens of the artist who fashions an image or metaphor that catches our attention by its strangeness. God desires to be known in the heart, in a relationship. The most intimate personalness of God seeks to be known in human form. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14)............ No one has ever seen God... It is God, the only Son, who is close to the father’s heart, who has made him known (18). God’s deepest self seeks disclosure in a wholly new and unprecedented way.

This Divine revelation does not happen in a vacuum. It is never isolated and unrelated. It always happens in relationship. This is the truth of the Gospels and one of the secrets of the universe that Einstein highlighted for us - everything is in relationship physically, emotionally, spiritually. And the only way to reveal with whom you are in relationship is to have an encounter with the other. It is hard to have a relationship if you are not there. This is the starting point of all our Gospels and epistles - the encounter with the “Jesus revelation.” Encountering God, experiencing the holy, is the point of Epiphany.

For most of us Divine revelation is something that someone else has experienced. It’s the “clergy’s thing,” or the “Church’s thing,” or a “stained glass saints kind of thing,” or the “Bible’s thing,” rather than having to do with our personal experience, or even our experience in community.

But, sometimes we do “get it.” We feel the hunger for true worship and the thirst for the renewal of our spirit. We feel the need because we have become so dry and empty, that we long for a living relationship with God, and sometimes the longing is enough.

So, what do we do? We gather together in worship to praise God, and learn from Jesus, and live a committed life in the Spirit of love. But, too often, instead of concentrating on the relationship (and we all know relationships can be difficult and chaotic at times) we build a sanctuary, instead, and line pews up in straight rows, and write rules of behavior for church and create an orderly worship service. We feel uncomfortable if the hymns aren’t familiar, or if someone changes the words to the Lord’s Prayer, or if the minister doesn’t preach a “real” sermon – which, traditionally, has meant 15-20 minutes, three points and a poem. Amen.

Huston Smith, tells a fable that makes this point, in his book, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (HarperSanFrancisco, 1958, 1991). Once there was a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to tail him; but when the demon reported the man’s success - that he had actually seized hold of the Truth - Satan was unperturbed. “Don’t worry,” he yawned, “I’ll tempt him to institutionalize it.”

Do you remember what happened when Peter, James and John went with Jesus up onto the mountain to pray? While they were there Jesus was transfigured before them, (Holy Moses!) and they said: “We need to put up a building, or we’ll forget exactly what happened here.”

What we, really, forget is that God desires to be known in our living experience, not relegated to the scrap book, or a monument. It is the heart of God that desires to be known.

According to John, the first Jesus-disciple encounter happens in the most ordinary sort of way, thus reinforcing the notion that - spiritually speaking - the extraordinary always happens through the ordinary. Andrew has put up his fishing nets for the season. He needs to get away. He wants to go on retreat, and John the Baptist, the only one doing much in the way of spiritual renewal those days, is his teacher. Andrew accompanies John to Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John is carrying on his baptism ministry (John 1:28).

Meanwhile Jesus has put an end to his private life in Nazareth, and he comes to John to be baptized as an initiation into his public ministry. His message is a more positive variation of John’s “repent or be damned.” The time is fulfilled, he says, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News (Mark 1:15).

The Baptist, who is walking with Andrew and the others, does something very simple. His disciples are asking him, Are you the messiah?” John says, “I am not the Christ.” But the next day they saw Jesus walking toward them, and John nudges Andrew and points toward Jesus - Behold! The Lamb of God (John 1:29)! There are no lights or fanfare. All John does is point to Jesus.

This is all I do as a preacher. I point out what I see. I see the hand of God blessing over here. And I see healing over there. I see the need for forgiveness on this side of the congregation. And a wake up call over here.

This is not as simple as it looks. With great anxiety I prepare this sermon. In fear and trembling I walk into the pulpit. I am speaking of God’s intentions. Talk of pressure! As one preacher, Fred Craddock, said, “when you stand in the pulpit it is as if every word in your pathetic little sermon raises its hand and says, ‘May I please be excused.’ The answer, of course is ‘No!’ just point out Jesus for us. How difficult can that be?”

And so the next day the two disciples follow after Jesus at a distance, and, noticing them, Jesus turns to them and says: “What are you looking for?” And they say, “Where are you staying?” And he says, “Come and See” (1:38-39). The walk of faith is as simple as “come and see.”

God needs to become real for us. It’s true for Andrew and it is true for us too. Discipleship therefore begins with an active engagement with Jesus. As Christians this is our source experience. The way God becomes real for us lies in following Jesus, not by praising, or adoring, or even believing in Jesus, but simply following him, paying attention. In this way we walk into that sacred intersection of our deepest need for meaning and God’s desire to bless us. It is there that we are anointed into the New Creation.

It is not by accident that the first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John were come and see. An evangelism campaign could be built around these three small words: Invitation – come; Connection – and; Experience – see.

Spiritual writer Jim Taylor tells of the time his son was going through confirmation classes at their church and he relates a story that many of us might be able to tell, or wish we could. His son came home toward the end of the sessions and announced “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can stand up there and say I believe all this stuff.”

“What stuff?” The parents wondered. Was the minister feeding their son arcane doctrines and dogmas that even they as parents had a hard time understanding and accepting?

“Well! Like, you know, we’re supposed to affirm that we believe the Bible and all that,” their son explained. “And I don’t see how I can say I believe God made the world in six days when in school I’m being taught that it took hundreds of millions – billions - of years.”

The parents talked about this and tried to help their son understand that Science tries to explain how things happen and the Bible tries to tell why things happen. But it didn’t satisfy all his doubts. The son was told “doubt is OK, and why don’t you go through confirmation anyway, and just keep your reservations to yourself.” The next week the Son came home and said, “I can’t do it.” That week, it turned out, the confirmation class had looked at the vows they would be making. The first question began this way, “Now I ask you before God and this congregation...?

“I can keep my reservations to myself before the congregation,” said the son, “But I can’t hide them from God.”

The parents sat there in stunned silence. They had just listened to what was a more profound statement of faith than anything their son might affirm before the congregation. “As far as we were concerned,” Jim Taylor writes, “he had made all the confession of faith he needed to, in our kitchen.”

It is in the ordinary moments that we experience the extraordinary event if we had the eyes to see, and the ears to hear, and the insight to grasp what is right before us at the kitchen table.

God may create, but we evolve. Terry Samuel wrote:

“A widening thing is the river beyond my window,

widening out there beyond the trestle into a salty bay...

...which is ever moving under, moving in and out,

ebb and flow, filling and emptying...

but always with a purpose to nourish,

enrich, fill and enliven.

A widening thing, too, is God’s spirit in me,

dynamically moving, in and out...ebb and flow...

And I wonder at my slow birth...”

The faith we live is as much discovered as it is disclosed. It is not so much a divine truth to be guarded jealously behind the mighty fortress walls of the church, as an eternal relationship to be nurtured lovingly in the world we live. And, as is true with all love relationships, it is mostly a matter of just being there.

God desires to be known. However you describe God: as an old “guy-in-the-sky,” or a great “Earth-Mother”, or as an “Abstract Construct” - call it Being or Mystery, or as I claimed at my ordination: God is the center that has no dimension but to which everything is related - that which we call God seeks to be revealed. We don’t have to know perfectly, but we do have to be present to experience the love.

For whatever reason, you have come here this morning. Were you planning to meet Jesus? Come and See.