January 15, 2012
Really? - John 1:43-51
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI am astonished when I read the first Chapter of John about how all these disciples left everything they were doing and followed Jesus. John is known for having these long conversations in it, but there’s none of that here. One day, John the Baptist and two of his disciples were just hanging around, and then along came Jesus, and John said, “there’s the Lamb of God,” and that was it. There’s no convincing, there’s no questioning. Andrew and Peter heard John preach about Jesus, and they left everything and followed. Again, no questions, no bargaining. They just split. And then Jesus left and found Philip, and said, “hey, Philip, come follow me.” And Philip went. That was all. And then Philip went to Nathanael, and said, “hey, we’ve found the Messiah, the one who Moses and the prophets talked about all the time. He’s from Nazareth.” And then Nathanael said, “hold on a minute.” Nathanael bucked the trend and started to question, and maybe even doubt a few things. “Can anything at all good come out of Nazareth? It never has in the past, so why would it start now?” That’s not a bad question, you know. In fact, that’s a fair question. I’ve been wearing my old boots to work recently, and got accused this week of being from Union County, SC. And I said, “hold on a minute. I’m from Spartanburg County, SC. Campobello to be exact. There’s a big difference, you know.” “You found the Messiah, and he’s from Nazareth. Really?”
Christopher Hitchens died several weeks ago. Christopher Hitchens was a card-carrying atheist and encouraged us to be atheists, too. He wrote the book God Is Not Great.” Need I say more? I was never fond of Christopher Hitchens, but I have been amazed lately at the Christians who were. They seem to have found something in him that was, well, honest. I heard an interview recently of another atheist named Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion. When the reporter asked him if he had ever read the Bible all the way through, Richard Dawkins said that he had not, that he had better things to do in his time. But he also claimed that he had most likely studied far more of the Bible that most Christians, to which we have to admit he’s right. I think in both their cases, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, they were put off that Christians were not more shocked at what was in their own Bible. I have not read either of their books, nor will I read them, but I imagine that part of their claim is that we don’t really believe this stuff, either. We just blindly say that we do.
I got in a discussion this week about Presbyterians preaching the Bible. I am sick and tired of hearing that Presbyterian preachers do not preach from the Bible. That is pure, unadulterated garbage. I had to take five semesters of Greek and Hebrew to be able to preach from this pulpit. To say that I don’t preach from the Bible is insulting. But maybe, if I’m honest, we all tend to skip over the Bible sometimes. Or at the very least, we’re not shocked by it, like I think we should be. We do not ask the question that Nathanael asked and the Bible begs, and that is “Really?” For example, are we really supposed to love our enemies? Really? Surely not! I always thought we were supposed to love who we were fighting for and hate who we were fighting against. But Jesus told us all over the place to love our enemies, even those who harm us. Jesus even prayed for his murderers as they nailed him to a tree. Do we really have to give everything we have to the poor? Does that make any sense at all? Put that on the republican platform, or democratic platform and see what happens. Do we really believe that? Or, what about when Jesus tells us to take up our own crosses? We comfort ourselves by making that a much easier metaphorical cross. But it sure wasn’t metaphorical to Jesus. It was real, and I think he intended for us to have something real to. But… really? I’ve already been to Church this morning. Why can’t I just go home and watch the NFL playoff game, and go to work tomorrow morning, and live my life and maybe try to enjoy it some? But no, Jesus tells us to give all of our lives. Jesus will not let us rest, will not let us be happy with the status quo. Really? That should make us pause at the very least, shouldn’t it? Do we really believe that? Really?
Incidentally, Jesus was not critical of Nathanael’s question. If you knock my hometown, you and I are going to have some problems. But maybe Jesus saw that as a good question, and maybe Jesus was actually flattered that Nathanael thought about Jesus long enough to ask. It certainly begs the benefit of a question, doesn’t it? Maybe even a doubt. Interestingly enough, Jesus revealed more of himself to Nathanael than either Peter, or Andrew, or Philip. Really? It sounds almost blasphemous. But maybe it’s a good question. In fact, Jesus even told us to ask it. Who would start a big construction project and not first count the cost? Actually lost of people, it turns out. When I go home on 485, I get off on Rae Road, and hang a left back over the interstate. When I look back over on the left, I see this big sky scraper, almost, over my left shoulder back towards Pineville. I have often wondered what that was. Jim Baker build that thing, or started building it, but never really counted the cost. I guess he agreed initially, and started the thing, but he never really counted the cost first, the real cost. He never asked the question, “Really?” My fear is that there are lots of churches like that old building. We started off great. We worked hard. We sang the hymns and put on the robes, we hired preachers, we may have even grown and built bigger facilities and got a multiple staff. We may have even gotten on TV. But then when we were faced with really, I mean really, being the Church, it cost more than we could pay. And so, I fear that there’s more than one congregation kind of like Jim Baker’s old hotel building that he never finished. And I hope we aren’t one of them.
I guess it comes down to a theological question, the same one, actually, that Nathanael asked. “Who is Jesus?” Jesus is without question a great teacher. In fact, even atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have to admit that. In fact, we can claim with all the objectivity in the world that never has one human being had so much influence on the world than Jesus. He’s clearly a great teacher. But the great thing about great teachers is that you can blow them off. You can listen and then choose to ignore. I’ve done that with many of my great teachers. I pick and choose what I like and dislike and what fits in my life and schedule, and I ignore what doesn’t fit.
If Jesus is a great teacher, we can admire him, we can get a lump in our throats when we sing about him, but then we can promptly ignore him. But if Jesus is God, then that’s a different story altogether. If Jesus is God, if Jesus created this world and then came to save it, and us, then we’re on the hook, aren’t we? So before we get on the hook, we might should ask “Really?” And we might should think about all that that means. And when we do, when we honestly think about it, and then have the faith of a mustard seed to act on it, God shows us things that we could never have imagined. According to Jesus, we’ll see the heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. That’s what Jesus told Nathanael. And that’s what I believe Jesus is telling us. But first, we have to muster up the guts to ask “really?” … And then act on it. And we have to do that now… really.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
