2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
January 19, 2020
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40; John 1:29-42
The Montgomery bus boycott started December 5, 1955 after
not just Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white
man, but also Claudette Colvin earlier that same year. Martin Luther King, Jr.
was chosen to head the boycott, for a variety of reasons. Everyone thought the
boycott would only go on for a few days, instead of the full year it actually
lasted. Not quite two months in, by late January 1956, Dr. King was ready to
give up. He had received numerous death threats, not just to him but to his
family. In fact, a couple days later, his house was bombed. After a late night
strategy session, Dr. King arrived home. His family was in bed. The phone rang
with another chilling message, “Leave Montgomery immediately if you have no
wish to die.” Dr. King hung up the phone, walked to the kitchen, put on a pot
of coffee, and sank down in a chair at his kitchen table. He was exhausted and
his courage was all but gone. He prayed out loud to God and said, in his own
words, “‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am
afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them
without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my
powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it
alone.’ At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never
experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of
an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will
be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty
disappeared. I was ready to face anything.”[1]
There are times when we’re all ready to give up. There
are times when we’re just plain tired, times when we’re not sure we have the
strength to keep going. There are times when things don’t go well, despite our
best efforts. It’s like this past week in my house. We all always get the flu
shot every year, and we haven’t had the flu since the H1N1 virus of 2009. But
this year, three of us caught the flu, anyway, although thankfully we had much
milder cases than they would have been without the flu shot. Whether life and
death or a long uphill battle against injustice or simply a matter of health,
we all have times when our best isn’t enough. There are times when we’re ready
to say with Isaiah, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for
nothing at all.” I wasted my time, energy, and money. It didn’t work out how it
was supposed to or how I really hoped it would. Why did I bother?
While dealing with disappointment is a good life skill,
look at what both Isaiah and the psalmist did with their disappointment and the
mess they found themselves in: They both turned to the Lord. Our psalm this morning
began, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He
lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.” When life isn’t
turning out how we’d planned, when we do everything right and things still go
wrong, following the example of Isaiah and the psalmist and countless others,
we are to cry out to the Lord, who hears us and responds. When things go wrong,
do you still remember God then? Or do you start cussing, or blaming yourself,
or blaming others, or giving up? How do you respond when you find yourself, for
whatever reason, down in the miry bog and desolate pit? Personally, I tend to
blame myself. What could I have done better? Is there something else I should
have said? Yet with the flu this past week, the answer is nothing. I did
everything right, and I kept my children from being sicker than they otherwise
would have been. Sickness is part of life. You have to figure out how to deal
with it because it’s going to happen, no matter how much hand sanitizer you use.
It helps to remember who you are and whose you are, as we
talked about last week. Isaiah was quite clear about it. He wrote, “Before I
was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name… He
said to me, ‘You are my servant…, in whom I will display my splendor.’ But I
said, ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Nevertheless, I’ll let God have the last word. I’ll let him pronounce his
verdict.’ This is the same as the psalmist waiting patiently for the Lord. I
feel like I have nothing to show for my work and my efforts were in vain, yet
I’ll wait and see what God says. And what does the Lord say? “It is too small a
thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back
the strays of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends
of the earth.” Things seem to be a mess and yet the Lord now makes us a light
for others, that others might see God’s light through us. We talked two weeks
ago on Epiphany about needing more light. One of the places the more light
comes from is from each other as we share God’s love and God’s light with each
other.
The psalmist says the Lord “put a new song in my mouth, a
hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust
in him.” Remember, this isn’t fear the Lord as in be afraid of the Lord, this
is fear the Lord as in be in awe and reverence of and amazed by the Lord. The
Lord gives us a new song which others will hear, and through hearing our new
song, they are drawn to the Lord themselves.
This
is what happens in our Gospel reading this morning, although without the music.
We have John the Baptist who witnesses to Jesus by simply pointing him out and
saying, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When John’s two disciples who were with him
heard John say that, they immediately left John and started following Jesus!
Now, in that case, John did everything right. He witnessed to Jesus and told
others about him. And what happened? He lost his followers. His disciples
defected and became Jesus’ disciples. While that was a good thing, because John
was faithful with the mission given to him to point the way to Jesus, it had to
also feel a bit weird at the end, when he’s left by himself.
The
other person who witnesses to Jesus in our Gospel lesson is Andrew. Andrew was
one of those two people who were John’s disciples and then became one of Jesus’
disciples. He’s one of the twelve disciples, in fact. However, the only other
thing we know about Andrew is this action he takes here, where after defecting
to follow Jesus, the first thing he does is go and find his brother and tell
his brother about Jesus. Andrew brought his brother to Jesus and the brother
became one of the twelve disciples, too. Do you know who that brother was?
Peter. As in the one involved in all those conversations with Jesus. As in the
one to whom Jesus hands the keys to the kingdom. The one who leads the early
church and becomes the first Pope. The one who is martyred by being crucified
upside down because he didn’t think he was worthy to die in the same way as
Jesus. The one who denies Jesus three times before Jesus’ death and then is
reinstated by Jesus after the resurrection. There is so much we know about
Peter. Do you think Andrew ever resented Peter and wished he hadn’t brought
Peter to Jesus? There could have been some sibling rivalry there and jealousy.
Or perhaps Andrew was happy for his brother simply for the fact that he knew
Jesus and he didn’t worry about comparing their faith journeys. I imagine
Andrew was proud of who his brother became and didn’t try to take ownership of
Peter’s faith by pointing out that if not for him, Peter wouldn’t even know
Jesus. Andrew seems like a quiet, mature, behind-the-scenes type. And yet he
knows the truth of what we’ll sing in our last hymn, “once you’ve experienced
God’s love, you want to pass it on.”[2]
Oftentimes, our experience of God’s love is part of our
invitation to others to come and meet Jesus. It’s our testimony of how when we
were bogged down in the miry pit, God heard our cry, drew us up, and set our
feet upon a rock, making our steps secure. There’s a saying that there’s no
testimony without a test. Literally, “T-E-S-T” are the first four letters of
testimony. And our witness, our testimony, is the story of how we know God’s
love, of the tests God has brought us through, safe thus far, and the assurance
that God will lead us home. Here’s the thing about the times when life doesn’t
go according to plan: it’s an opportunity for you to trust God and let God use
it for good. Let God see you through it, and then be sure to tell others what
God has done for you. That’s how you become a light to the nations. And you
know light shines brighter through broken glass than it does through one solid
pane of glass. Let God use your suffering, let God transform the mess you find
yourself in. It’s when we don’t think we have any more to give and when we
trust and rely on God that we find strength unending and we’re reminded that
our work for God is not in vain. Dr. King stayed faithful to God and to the
call God placed on his life. He didn’t give up. Be encouraged this morning to
not give up, either. Stay faithful. And let God’s light shine through you.
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