Isaiah
49: 1–7 / Psalm 40: 1–12 / I Corinthians 1: 1–9 / John 1: 29–42
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, January 19, 2020.
“CALL, RESPONSE, CHANGE,
REPUTATION”
(Homily text: John 1: 29–42)
Let’s
consider the process by which people come to faith, how they respond to the
Lord’s call, what differences that response makes to their lives, and what
reputation they leave behind as a testimony to God’s working in their lives. We
can see the differences their work and ministries made often only in
retrospect, as we take stock of the things we know about them, often many years
into their ministries, or many years after they have passed from the scene. To
be clear, the process involves four steps:
Call, response, change and reputation.
This
morning’s Gospel text recounts Jesus’ call to Andrew and his brother, Simon
(who is better known by his nickname, Peter). Both were engaged in a family
fishing business on the Sea of Galilee. They were also disciples of John the
Baptist. (The Gospel writer John is the only one to relate that information to
us.)
In this
morning’s text, Jesus calls these two men into His service. It’s safe to say
that the process we’ve outlined above unfolds in the case of Andrew and of his
brother, Peter: The Lord calls, their
lives change (drastically and dramatically), they respond, and they become
known for some aspect (or aspects) of their work in God’s service.
In our text
this morning, we hear Jesus offer a phrase we will read often in the Fourth
Gospel, “Come and see”. “Come and see,” Jesus says, in response to the two
brothers’ question, “Where are you staying?”
What do we
know about these two brothers? (In actuality, we know a lot more about these
two than we know about many of the other original twelve who would become
Disciples and then Apostles.)
Let’s begin
with Andrew. He is known for making connections between the Lord and others. In
other words, Andrew is a “bringer”. In this morning’s text, John tells us that
Andrew finds his brother, Simon, and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.”
Later on, as Jesus is about to feed the crowd of five thousand, it is Andrew
who brings the young boy to the Lord with the loaves and the fishes. (See John
6: 8 – 9.) And still later, as some Greeks ask to see the Lord, it is Andrew
who brought them to the Lord. (See John 12: 22.)
As we turn
to Andrew’s brother, Peter, there is a lot more information known to us. For
one thing, he, Simon (Peter) seems to be impetuous, hard-headed, and often
blundering into situations. But he becomes an effective and powerful leader -
in time - of the very early followers of Jesus. Recall how it is Peter who
jumps over the side of the boat to walk over the water to Jesus. It is Peter
who is the first to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One
(that’s what Messiah and Christ, terms coming from the Hebrew (Messiah) and the
Greek (Christ) mean). It is Peter to who denies the Lord three times. It is
Peter who – along with John – is one of the first witnesses of the risen Christ
on Easter Sunday morning. It is Peter who becomes a powerful and eloquent
leader of the early Christian Church (but only after the coming of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost).
These two
Disciples-become-Apostles answered the Lord’s call. Their answer, “Yes”, meant
change for them as they left their occupations as fishermen to become
proclaimers of God’s truth to the wider world. As a direct outcome of their
work, they have left for us a reputation, things we know about them.
You and I
follow the same pattern that Andrew and Peter followed. Their course – and ours
– involves: Call, response, change and reputation.
You and I
answer God’s call, God’s invitation, by entering the waters of baptism. We say
“No” to our old way of life, and we rise to a new way of life in Christ. (I am
depending on St. Paul’s explanation of the meaning of baptism as we read it in
Romans 6: 3 – 9.)
Answering
God’s call often involves a lot more than simply being the recipient of the
Sacrament of Baptism. It involves growing into that call. It involves coming to
understand just what it means, just what it means to die to ourselves and to
become fully alive in Christ, just what are the
implications, of saying “Yes” to Jesus Christ. Oftentimes, saying “Yes”
involves coming to what can be called a “second birth” experience, whereby we
come to some sort of an “Aha” moment of understanding. It is at that point,
whether we can identify a specific time, place, circumstance or prayer or not,
that our relationship with Christ becomes a true, living, dynamic relationship
with God through Christ.
But then
there will be changes. Saying “Yes” to God means changes, changes in how we
think, changes in how we behave, changes in how we love, changes in what we
hold to be holy, or otherwise. If there are no changes, then our experience of
a new relationship with Christ is suspect. God never leaves us where He finds
us, as the life experience of Andrew and his brother, Peter, testify.
As the
changes are underway, we’ll begin to build some sort of a reputation. OK, it’s
fair to say that perhaps we won’t be fully aware of the reputation we’re
crafting, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Andrew and Peter, for example,
weren’t the ones to assess their own work on God’s behalf, it fell to the early
Christians and the Gospel writers to make those assessments. But rest assured,
we – and they – are/were building a reputation.
The
question then naturally arises, and it is one we should ask ourselves, each of
us: “What sort of a reputation am I crafting as I seek to do God’s work?”
AMEN.
