On
Christian
Our Words Series
A Sermon for the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist
community of faith
By Griff Martin
John 1:35-51 and Luke 9:23-27
On September 30, 2018
John 1:35-51
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).
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found
Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now
Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael
and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the
prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of
Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him,
“Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus
answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are
the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you
believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see
greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very
truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Luke 9:23-27
Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow
me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and
those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but
lose or forfeit themselves? Those who are
ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he
comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But
truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before
they see the kingdom of God.”
Sermon:
Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again
take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can
all together experience. Make us aware of you presence here in this space and
in these words God for if we are present to you then nothing else will matter,
but if you are not present to you then nothing else will matter. In the name of
the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter. Amen.
Currently two paintings hang above the fireplace in the
Martin household: a portrait of Jesus which Abby and I once bought in
Barcelona, the best way to describe it is Jesus in front of Van Gough’s Starry
Night. It features blues and golds and it was painted by a Spanish artist and
we stumbled upon it one afternoon walking through galleries and both fell in
love instantly. Jesus has this incredible eyes that draw you and somehow it
features just about everything I love about Jesus: his compassion, grace,
mystery, humor…. This painting is the Jesus I love.
The second is a portrait of Willie Nelson. And I think that
just about tells you everything you need to know about the Martin family
spirituality: Jesus hanging next to Willie Nelson. And I could do a whole
sermon on how they actually have a lot of similarity- their story telling, how
they see the world, how they speak to institutional religion, the community
they form- but that is another sermon for another time.
This portrait of Willie Nelson was painted by yours truly,
just a few weeks ago. There is a place on West 2nd Street, Upstairs Circus.
It’s a craft and cocktails place and knowing that, it thus has something for
everyone, a few of us gathered there a few weeks ago to craft and to cocktail.
Jared and I ended up doing the same project- a portrait of Willie Nelson. Here
they are….
Be a little impressed, but no too impressed with our
ability… we had a stencil.
However I do find it fascinating…. Jared’s use of golds and
hot colors and his Jackson Pollack methodology… my use of my favorite colors
navy, gray and white and my controlled style… and how in trying to create the
exact same thing we were both able to bring our own personality into it.
I think that is Christ following. That in fact might be the
only image we need this morning….. that our life is trying to paint a picture,
an image of Jesus and we are called to do that by using our very unique
personality. Meaning that in the end we might be able to line up a different
canvas for each of us in this room and it might be the exact same picture but
it’s going to be painted a thousand different ways because we are created in a
thousand different ways.
It’s why Jesus did not call disciples to sit in a class
room and to learn to be little clones of him in some cult like manner… but to
live life on their terms and with their unique gifts and personalities and to
live life with him and his unique gift and personality so they could learn to
be more like him and then go and live like that for the whole world to see….
It’s our calling today as well, the call to follow Jesus.
At youth camp this summer I realized that we have a major
vocabulary issue when it comes to following Jesus. If I asked you who or what
do you follow? You might tell me you follow Lebron James, the Astros, a
politician, an actor or an author. You might answer with the name of your
favorite TV show, actor, singer, sports team. You might even tell me about
somewhere you love like your favorite place to eat or a coffee shop. Today
following is about twitter, facebook and instagram.
And in this meaning following is really no big thing… not
friends with them, it’s not a commitment, it’s easy to do, just click a button.
Essentially it’s I am a fan of ___ or I want to see a bit more of ___. It
really means nothing in our world, you can be a fan of Katy Perry today, Taylor
Swift the next and Beyonce the next.
And then we walk into church and we talk about Christianity
as following Jesus, we talk about a Jesus who asked us to follow him.
And it’s not the same thing. Or it should not be the same
thing, even though as a church we have often asked little more of ourselves
than to just really like Jesus or to want to know more about Jesus and we have
tried so hard to make it as easy as just clicking a button.
Father Greg Boyle writes “To just say ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,
I’m your biggest fan,’ causes him to stare at his watch, tap his feet and order
a double scotch on the rocks with a twist. Fandom is of no interest to Jesus.
What matters to him is the authentic following of a disciple. We all settle for
saying ‘Jesus’ but Jesus wants us to be in the world who he is.”
Because following Jesus is not about being his fan, of
liking him from afar, or just wanting to know a bit more. It’s more than just
checking a box. Being a Christian is about identity. It’s the noun and not an
adjective we add on to a noun. Christian is the identity, not an
identifier.
Just look at the disciples and our text today…. These
fishermen, probably all teenagers trying to figure life out. And they are not
the best of the best, we love to make them that because if we make them
spiritual all stars then we can’t relate to them and their life becomes
unattainable to and for us. However they were a lot like us. They were just
really pretty average, doing average work with their fathers.
And suddenly there is this Jesus fellow who calls them to
follow him. Now I don’t think this is out of the blue, my read on the story is
that the disciples and Jesus have all been hanging out in the same places for a
bit of time now. Jesus is spending his days near the water, which would have
been one of the centers of life in the villages. And he talks to the folks, he
might tell a story or two, as time goes on they begin to trust each other more
and the conversations get a little bit deeper and they begin to see there is
something different to this Jesus character. He has some new ideas about how
things should be or could be, his stories seem to open up a whole new world…
it’s hard to put into words but there is just something about him, as if he
might be the very future of all things good.
So when Jesus comes to them and says “Follow me.” It’s not
some magic moment when their eyes lock across the room and they instantly fall
in love because that only happens on music videos. This is an invitation from
someone whom they have gotten to know, who they have learned to trust and who
has invited them into a future that they desperately want to see become a
reality.
In fact they want it so much that they are willing to give
up a lot…. They are willing to give up everything they have always known, the
way things have always been. They are willing to give up their future, the one
they have been working so hard to prepare for. They are willing to give up
their families, their friends, their community.
This is how I described it to our youth this summer… you
are finally a graduating seniors… you are at this wonderful space… you have
chosen what is next for you and you are starting to think you might know what
you want as a career, and you have a supportive family and friends- you know
who are your people, you have enough cash that you can make it for a few
months… and then the invitation comes to something new, something exciting but
it’s going to take all that away.
This is the disciple’s choice.
This is what follow means…. Maybe think about it like this:
would you be so quick on facebook to follow ___ if it meant leaving everything
you knew, taking a leap into the unknown, losing financial security, leaving
your family and friends. If following meant that, then God I would hope Katy
Perry would not have 108 million followers.
While we are talking about words maybe it’s time we learn
to reclaim following as a verb that is scary, that is hard work but is also
full of promise and hope because it might create a new world and it just might
save you.
There was an expression about disciples, it comes from Yose
ben Yoever (an early sage of the Mishnah) and it goes like this: “Cover
yourself with the dust of your Rabbi’s feet.”
It made a lot more sense in it’s original culture because
people immediately knew what the image…. “The idea of being covered in the dust
of your rabbi came from something everybody had seen. A rabbi would come to
town and right behind him would be his group of students, doing their best to
keep up with the rabbi as he went about teaching from one place to another. By
the end of the day of walking in the dirt directly behind the rabbi, the
students would have the dust form his feet all over him.”
Follow me is get so close that you get lost in all this
mess, that you get so involved in it all it becomes yours as well, that this
dust might also save you.
And the disciples were willing to do it…. Because in the
time they had spent with Jesus they had seen his vision for how things could
be, they had seen his vision for who they could be, because they believed in
what he was proposing and because he believed in them.
So they wanted to be covered in the dust of his feet.
And I don’t think that is all that different today, it’s
still what Jesus wants from us… And Jesus is still offering the same: a vision
for all our world could be, a vision for all each of us could be and the good
we can do in this world and the deep love Jesus has for each of us. The
question is do we desire the same, will we follow, will we be Christian?
And I have to say for me yes because Jesus still make
sense, in fact in my life Jesus might be the only thing that really makes
sense. Even though it did not at first, I had to sit with the story for a long
time until it changed me because I really saw it… because I realized the
incarnation, the story of God becoming flesh and blood like us, matters to me
because that Jesus came to this world to invite me to be part of a story.
So what does it mean to identify as Christian? It means to
choose to let Christ following be the most important work you do, the thing you
will be identified by.
To me it comes down to an event that happened a few years
ago in my ministry. There was a woman who was a bit upset by something I had
said or written, it bothered her… this happens from time to time. However she
gave me this grace, she came to my office and brought me a up of coffee and
said she wanted to talk because she was pretty sure we had very different
theologies and it turned out that we did. In fact in the conversation we
realized that we saw almost everything differently. At the end she asked me who
Jesus was to me.
And without overthinking it, and in a departure from my
normal ways of thinking I went with my feelings first and suddenly found myself
saying: Jesus is hope in my life. Jesus is the ultimate example of humanity and
Jesus is the clearest picture I have of God. Jesus is my lens, the lens through
which I view Scripture, but also the lens through which I view all of life.
Jesus is the height of creativity and imagination lived to it’s fullest.
Jesus is my deepest comfort. Jesus lived the truest story this world has ever
encountered. Jesus is my deepest calling, to follow the Way he so clearly lived
out. Jesus is my Savior, his way of living and his way of dying and resurrection
offer salvation to our world. And ultimately for me it comes down to this:
Jesus is the deepest love of my life.
She got real quite and then she said, “I wish you preached
that more.” And again without thinking it through I said, “I do to and I wished
we all lived it more.”
You see that is what it’s about…. Being Christian is about
living like Christ in our own unique ways… following with our own lives….
painting our pictures of Jesus with the colors that speak most to us… letting Christian
be the primary noun and not just an adjective… because that is our calling.
Come and see.
Follow me.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and
those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but
lose or forfeit themselves? Those who are ashamed
of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in
his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But truly I tell
you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the
kingdom of God.”
Amen and Amen.
artwork: Fishers of Men, Painting by J. Kirk Richards, 2015, http://art.jkirkrichards.com
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