Today we hear from John’s Gospel. You probably already know that there is not a year fully dedicated to John’s Gospel in our lectionary. Over a cycle of three years, we read from Matthew’s (Year A, where we are since Advent), Mark’s Gospel on year B and then Luke’s Gospel on year C. And then, from time to time, over the three years, we have a passage from John’s Gospel. This “John” person is not the character mentioned in our passage today. Our passage refers to John the Baptist. The author of John’s Gospel has been believed to be one of Jesus’s disciples, James’s brother, the youngest of the disciples who lived long enough to write the Book of Revelation, although there have been countless debates among scholars about the author’s identity. But this is not really our point for today. What’s more important for us to notice, I think, is that John’s Gospel is the most spiritual of the Gospels, some even call it “mystical”.
Let me explain: When the authors of the three Gospels describe what Jesus does, where and when and how all the story unfolds, John is more interested in describing why Jesus does what he does and especially how he reveals his divinity and invite the disciples (and ourselves) to partake in his divinity. And so, I really like how our lectionary is built because, as we learn about Jesus and, in this year A, as we see in Matthew’s what Jesus taught about the law and how he started to build a community (these are the big themes in Matthew’s), we are also invited from time to time to pause with John, and to contemplate with him the mystery of Jesus, and let ourselves be drawn deeper in his love and in an intimate relationship with him. And all this have to do with a notion we often don’t really like, especially, maybe, in our denomination, and I think it’s about passivity.
Actually, it seems to me that we have we have a very striking example of that in the passage we are offered today, so I would like for us to spend a little time on that, hoping we can be reconciled with what I believe is a fundamental and foundational notion John’s: Holy passivity.
1. The first thing we can notice is that John the Baptist introduces Jesus as “The Lamb of God”. He repeats this expression twice, two days in a row. We may not notice it right away, but it’s a very uncommon way to refer to the who who was awaited to be the Messiah (and we see that Andrew will refer to Jesus as the Messiah). The Messiah was supposed to show up to rebuild the kingdom of Israel, a man sent from God yes and a man of action, a man who was on a clear mission. Here John the Baptist refers right away to who Jesus is, rather than what he is supposed to do. In Jewish culture, the image of the lamb referred right away to the sacrifices made every day in the Temple to atone for the people’s sins. It also referred to the prophecies of Isaiah about the suffering servant led to slaughter like a lamb. Working our way backwards in the Bible, it would also refer to the Paschal Lamb, the one whose blood spread on the Hebrews’ doors has spared them from death. And then, it would also refer to Isaac who asked his Father Abraham “Where is the Lamb for the sacrifice?”and Abraham replied that God would provide the sacrifice. So that’s a lot of references, but you get the idea: The lamb was this perfect, unblemished, pure but also defenseless offering the people could offer to be reconciled with God.
And so, according to John (The Baptist) and John (The author), this is what Jesus is really about:
Jesus didn’t come into the world so much to do something, rather to be offered to us (He is the “Lamb of God”, the lamb provided by God) so through him we can be acceptable to God, saved from our sins.
2. So now we may also understand that what really matters is not so much what we can do to save ourselves (nothing), but how we can let ourselves be saved by Christ from our sins. Now, we may not think of sin as our most important problem. If we were to be asked what’s the most important problem in our lives, we may have many different answers. We may mention our health, or our finances or maybe a broken relationship and so on. And if we were asked what’s the main problem in our world, we may also come up with many answers: social injustice, climate change, corruption of our leadership etc. And yet, according to our passage (and many others in the Bible), sin is at the root of all the other problems we have (which does not mean our personal problems are linked to a personal sin, we may suffer because of the sins of others). What we are invited to do, though, is not so much to take action on the outside, rather, or before we do that, we are invited to look at ourselves, our pattern of thoughts, our deep beliefs, the reason we do the things we do. Discovering Christ as the unblemished lamb reveal our own sin.
Now it’s not about starting to obsess over our own unworthiness. Rather, to approach Christ we need to be repentant and that’s exactly what John did when he baptized the people. They had to acknowledge their sins, and that was all The Baptist could do for them and all what the people could do for themselves. But Jesus was the one to offer the Holy Spirit, so by being united to Christ, he would enable them to be united to God.
3. So now again we see how John’s Gospel invites us to holy passivity. To be a Christian, and contrarily to what many think, is not so much about what we do, rather it is first and mainly an act of renunciation (to our sins) and an offering of self. I think Simon Peter embodies that when Jesus changes his name. He moves from his natural, sinful self to a God given, disciple identity. Ministry will follow of course, and Jesus will certainly send his followers on different missions, but this is the start, the foundation on which all the rest can be built. And so we see that in presenting Jesus as a lamb, this is also what John invites us to be. Christian life is mainly about sacrifice, as Jesus came as a sacrifice for all. Now there are many confusions about that. Sometimes we understand sacrifice as denying our own selves, denying who we are and making violence to ourselves, when it’s of course about renouncing our sin, our self as in “selfishness”. It’s not about offering ourselves to become an enabler to others’ people sins, to let them abuse us for example, its about offering ourselves so others can flourish. We can clearly see that in John the Baptist’s life: He does not draw disciples to himself for his own benefit, because he wants to have his admirers, on the other way around he draws disciples for their own benefits, so they can be reconciled with God and follow Jesus.
4. John the Baptist reminds us also that we are not Jesus, although we have been schooled to believe that we are to act in the world on Jesus’s behalf. Several times (in other parts of the Gospel) John denies he is the Messiah, and here again, as I have just said, he points to Jesus. I think this is the same for us. The way we evangelize, or the way we provide care to others, is not about trying to do it all and to save people from whatever they are going through. It’s not that we cannot save everybody, it’s actually that we cannot save anyone, but Jesus can and Jesus will. Our work is to be with one another and to support each other, our work is to show Jesus to others by witnessing what we believe about him, how Jesus is present in our lives. So again, it’s much more about being than it is about doing. The first disciples understand that well when Jesus asks them to “come and see”, Andrew invites his brother Simon to tag along, to stay for a while with Jesus to discover who Jesus is and what Jesus will do for him before Jesus asks him to do something.
5. So we see in this passage that when the disciples are called to follow Jesus, there are first of all invited to be with Jesus, to stay with him. They have to learn from him, but also, and mainly, be in a relationship with him, learn to receive him and to love him. And we can see that in this passage because this is actually what we will find again at the end of the Gospel (John Ch 15). Before Jesus dies, he invites again his disciples to remain in him, as the branches remain on the vine so they can bear fruit. And it tells us so much about the kind of passivity John invites us to. It’s not about laziness, fleeing from our responsibilities or a refusal to face the world, it’s about being grounded so we can be fruitful, so we can do, and even more be, something beautiful for God and for the benefit and the enjoyment of all. To me, it’s something that’s very important to remember, especially maybe as we age and cannot be as active as we used to be, when our world value so much productivity. I read recently that the most beautiful thing we can do in our lives is to be God’s friend and I believe this to be true. The call Jesus makes to his disciples is to be with him, literally he calls out seeking friends. So we don’t have to spend a lot of time wondering what it is to be a disciple, or what it is that Jesus is calling us to do: Our first job is to let ourselves be loved by him and to love him in return, and to share this love with all.