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‘A’ // Epiphany 3 // 1-20-08 // Celebration of Worship, Northside, Ann Arbor
Scriptures Isaiah 49:1-7 Psalm 41:1-10 (canted) John 1:29-42
Where Are You Staying, Jesus?
Prayer …
Sometimes I feel my dreams don’t matter,
That I am just too small
The game is theirs, the rules are set
And I don’t want to play at all!
But then I think of one strong voice
Who dreamed nighttime into day –
Who broke the rules and changed the
game to one we all can play.
We gather because that voice
makes love possible to do –
If you can have a dream, dear Martin,
Surely we can too.
We’ll carry it on, we’ll carry it on.
We’ll carry it on, we’ll carry it on …1
Where are you staying, dear Jesus,
That we may carry it on with you?
Sometimes, when you live with someone for so long, you think that explicit communication on certain matters should be unnecessary.
Take the woman who, one day, in the presence of her partner, inspects the trash cans in their house. Seeing they are empty, she is pleased. And yet, she can’t help but ask her partner, “Did you take the trash out?” Her partner does not respond. Again, she asks, “Did you take the trash out?” Again: no response. A third time – with more than an edge in her voice: “Did you take the trash out?”
Her partner wheels around and shouts, “Yes! Yes! For the third time: Yes!”
The woman’s partner assumed that she knew she’d had taken the trash out. Assumed it …for the woman had already gone and seen for herself that the trash had been removed.
And yet: Who cared who took the trash out? As long as the trash was out?
Isn’t that what the woman originally was looking for? Not who … but what?
“When Jesus turned around and saw (two disciples of John) following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’”
When the one whom John the Baptizer has just fingered as the main man asks John’s disciples such a question, you would think he is looking for an answer from them, straight-up. And you would think they’d go right ahead and pay homage to Jesus when he asks them a question like that. “What are you looking for?” Jesus asks them. “Well … we’re told you’re this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world …”
But Jesus wasn’t all that concerned with what he was called, much less titled. Jesus was concerned with what they would see. Again: “What are you looking for?”
And Jesus wasn’t all that concerned with forming his self-identity. Jesus was concerned about being followed in his search. Again: “What are you looking for?”
And John’s two disciples pick up on his lead. Unlike their erstwhile leader – “Look, the Lamb of God …! – they make no on-the-spot confession of faith. They do not wax laudatory, to see how they might be rewarded for their fawning.
These two respond to Jesus’ question with a question of their own: “Where are you staying?”
If ever the New Revised Standard Version employed a euphemism, it’s the English translation of the Greek meno as “staying”. Try abide. Or remain. Or the King James dwelleth – as in, “Where dost thou dwelleth?”
For John’s disciples are not just inviting themselves to Jesus’ home for an aperitif. They want to know where Jesus makes his home on earth. They want to know where his soul makes its rest if he is beckon them into an abiding relationship. They want to know where they must remain with him if they are to know the truth about who each of them can be.2
“Jesus: Where are you staying?” Strange thing to ask of someone you’ve never spoken to before – much less never broke bread with before. Yet, they already knew from their master John the Baptizer that there was something special about this man from Galilee. And, as the gospel writer knew, breaking bread around a common table – not contemplation on the cross of Christ – was the dominant symbol and metaphor for the earliest Church.3 Signifying the radical overhaul of the Pharisees’ purity code. Signifying what John Dominic Crossan refers to as “open commensality”4 – unaffected table fellowship with wildly different societies and classes. Signifying a complete overhaul of power in the most profound form of intimacy of that day … if not ours.
“Where are you staying?” they ask Jesus. Where are you abiding … remaining … dwelling? Two disciples of John responding to this total stranger who asks them not “Who do you believe I am?” – but, “What are you looking for?” What kind of world are you seeking? And they respond: Well – first – where are you dwelling in this world, that we may know what kind of relationship we enter with you in seeking it?
Joan … Caroline … Brian … Tom: Today, you come forth from your baptismal calls to say – once again – “Where are you staying, Jesus?” To say, Where can we abide with you, and remain with you, and dwell with you, and follow you, that we may serve your people at Northside as they strive to do the same? How can we serve you as active elders once again – elders who, in the great tradition of the presbuteroi in the earliest Church, are commissioned to serve at the table of radically open fellowship, where none may go hungry for bread or the bread of life?
Can you serve at this table, where Jesus is served? Can you drink the cup – the cup that our Lord drinks?
Can you accept Jesus’ invitation to his disciples today, to “Come, and see”?
For over fifty years, the couple had shared married life together. As is generally the case, one of them died first – in this case, the husband. The wife was left behind – quite likely, as actuaries know, to share her husband’s fate in the next two years.
But this widower could not have been more joyful. Her church was perplexed – and concerned. Theirs had seemed such a satisfying and enriching marriage. And now, the woman seemed relieved that the husband had died.
“No, no, no!” she protested to her church friends. “I miss him greatly!”
“Then why do you seem so happy?” they asked her.
“Because, my husband has now been spared the agony of living alone.”
Joan … Caroline … Brian … Tom: What is your ministry about as elders here at Northside?
Is it about sacrificing your carefully formed self-identity so that the Jesus you encounter is spared the agony of dwelling alone?
Is it about actively following and staying close to him and his needs, instead of idly worshiping him from afar?
Joan … Caroline … Brian … Tom: Is this what you are looking for?
Yes, yes – for the third time: Yes!
Jesus beckons.
Come … and see.
1Adapted from the poem “We’ll Carry It On” by Susan Savell, as found in Kenneth T. Lawrence (ed.), Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Vol. 1 (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1994), p. 36.
2Thoughts on the meaning of meno are drawn from insights in Timothy B. Cargal, “Second Sunday after the Epiphany: Exegesis of John 2:29-42”, in Lectionary Homiletics, p. 59.
3John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (NYC: Book Sales, 1998). As cited in Cynthia M. Campbell, “Essential question,” “Living by the Word”, in Christian Century, August 22, 2006, p. 16.
4See Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 66-70.
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