The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed 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.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

John 1:29-42

Pastor Marc's sermon on the 2nd Sunday After Epiphany (January 19, 2020) on John 1:29-42. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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So yesterday, I thought I could finish all my errands before the snow became a problem. But it take long for things to start looking iffy. When I pulled into the church parking lot, the roads were already covered by a very thin layer of snow. I knew I had to hurry so I parked my car, ran inside, and was here for at most 15 minutes. Yet that was all the time needed for the new tires on my car to start losing their grip on the road. By the time I left the church, the dusting of snow on my car had become a blanket. And as I drove down the one-way street connecting the church office parking lot with the main lot below, that’s when my car slid off the road. I eventually got back into the main lot and headed east on Church Road over the reservoir. Everyone, it seemed, was having a rude awakening that, regardless of their car or truck, they would be sliding through and around intersections. As I neared the intersection by Broadway next to Oso Buco, I saw several cars sliding backwards as they tried to drive up the steep incline. I knew then that the rest of my errands would have to wait. I managed to inch my way home but others weren’t so lucky. At every major intersection near a slight hill, there were police officers trying to get accidents off the road. Now I knew this storm was coming and that, in the end, it wouldn’t turn out to be that bad. But at its start, when the snow first fell, that’s when everything on the roads became vulnerable. 

Now I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to classify the experience of vulnerability - but being vulnerable is something we’ve all lived through it. I bet each one us could turn to the person next to us and share a dozen different vulnerable moments. But your story about vulnerability shouldn’t be like the story I just told. Nowhere in that story did I initiate vulnerability. Instead, I sort of fell into it and it’s a good story because everything, for me at least, turn out okay in the end. Yet there’s a different kind of vulnerability that we’re not always trained to admit or share. And that’s the vulnerability we experience when we take a risk and we’re not 100% sure how everyone else will respond. It’s the kind of vulnerability we live through when we walk into a new classroom in a brand new school. And it’s the kind of vulnerability that seems to move into our homes while we’re waiting for the doctor to call us with the results from our most recent medical tests. This kind of vulnerability makes us feel and act in all sorts of ways. Brene Brown, a researcher who collects and analyzes the everyday stories we tell about ourselves, defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.” And each one of those words is terrifying in its own way. If I had to guess, most of us want more certainty in our lives. And we’d also like less risk - or maybe just a little risk as long as everything turns out the way we hoped it would. Emotional exposure is even more challenging because that means we need to be honest with others about how we really feel. And we don’t get to control what others do with those emotions that we just shared. Taking the initiative to be vulnerable is scary and we spend a lot of time trying to be anything but. 

So it’s sort of interesting that in today’s reading from the gospel according to John, vulnerability shows up. We just heard John’s version of Jesus’ baptism and if you look closely, you’ll notice that Jesus, in this text, was never explicitly baptized. The act of John the Baptist pouring water over Jesus’ head is not - not mentioned but it’s also not spelled out. And that vulnerable moment of having someone else pray for you or perform a ritual with you is simply passed over. Instead, the gospel writer leans into certainty and has John the Baptist, in a very public way, identify Jesus as the Lamb of God. And that certainty is so clear that two of John the Baptist’s own disciples leave his side and follow the stranger they didn’t know before. 

Now it didn’t take long for Jesus to realize he was being followed. So he turned around and asked both of them a question. But his question wasn’t “Who are you?” or “Why are you following me?” or “Do you believe what John said about me?” Rather Jesus asked them to say out loud what it was they were looking for. And that’s a risky question because it doesn’t really an easy answer. Jesus is, at this point, a stranger to these two disciples. There’s no real relationship between them. Any “who” those two were looking for had to be colored and influenced by what they imagined “the lamb of God” or the “Messiah” would be. So what Jesus really asked them was to be honest about everything they wanted Jesus to be. And that admission would include sharing their hopes and their dreams; their thoughts and experiences; and what it felt like to leave John, the person they knew, to seek out the person they didn’t didn’t. By sharing their “what,” the two disciples would have to admit their vulnerability. 

hich might be why the two disciples, when faced with Jesus’ what, instead asked a question of their own. And that question, at least as it reads to me today, seemed to wonder if Jesus would be vulnerable too. Because they asked Jesus to reveal more than the place where he was keeping his spare pair of sandals. They wanted Jesus to tell them where he was sleeping - and where we sleep can sometimes reveal a lot about who we are. Our bedrooms can be the places where we for eight - or more likely six - hours a night sleep while the rest of the world keeps happening around us. And where we sleep, whether in our home, a hotel room, in a sleeping bag, on the couch in a friend’s apartment, or on cardboard on a city’s streets - where we stay can reveal a lot about the story we’re currently living. Revealing that story means being vulnerable. And Jesus’ response to those who asked him to be vulnerable too was simply: “come and see.” 

Being vulnerable is scary. Yet letting ourselves show vulnerability is a strength that invites us to live a different kind of life. It’s the kind of vulnerability that lets us do really hard things - like saying “I love you” first or finally admitting to our family and friends that we need help. Being vulnerable lets us shed tears of sadness and tears of joy, embracing our feelings instead of building a false wall around them. And being vulnerable is lets us admit that we are worth being fully seen. The call to be vulnerable is a call to admit that uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure is already a part of our lives. Yet that kind of vulnerability doesn’t have to limit what’s possible in our lives because we have a Savior who lived a vulnerable life too. There were times when even the Son of God wasn’t listened to, was rejected, and was abandoned by those he loved. Yet his willingness to be vulnerable with others created opportunities for all of us to be vulnerable with Jesus. And our vulnerability with Jesus is one of the ways Jesus transforms us into the people and the community God wants us to be. When we embrace vulnerability, we create a community where vulnerability is accepted, cherished, and is never taken advantage of. Instead, it recognizes that in Jesus, God’s love for us chose to be vulnerable, letting us say no by putting Jesus on a Cross. Yet God refused to let our fear of vulnerability end the story God wanted for us. Because being vulnerable lets us give up living the false story we think we should live and instead live deeper into God’s story - one where grace, love, and hope are ours - forever. 

Amen.