Sermon Title: How Would You Spend a Day With Jesus?
Sermon Text: John 1:29-42
Sermon
Date:
Scripture
(from “The Message”)
29-31The very next day John saw Jesus coming
toward him and yelled out, "Here he is, God's Passover Lamb! He forgives
the sins of the world! This is the man I've been talking about, 'the One who
comes after me but is really ahead of me.' I knew nothing about who he was—only
this: that my task has been to get
32-34John clinched his witness
with this: "I watched the Spirit, like a dove flying down out of the sky,
making himself at home in him. I repeat, I know nothing about him except this:
The One who authorized me to baptize with water told me, 'The One on whom you
see the Spirit come down and stay, this One will baptize with the Holy Spirit.'
That's exactly what I saw happen, and I'm telling you, there's no question
about it: This is the Son of God."
35-36The
next day John was back at his post with two disciples, who were watching. He
looked up, saw Jesus walking nearby, and said, "Here he is, God's Passover
Lamb."
37-38The two disciples heard
him and went after Jesus. Jesus looked over his shoulder and said to them,
"What are you after?"
They said,
"Rabbi" (which means "Teacher"), "where are you
staying?"
39He replied, "Come along
and see for yourself."
They
came, saw where he was living, and ended up staying with him for the day. It
was late afternoon when this happened.
40-42Andrew, Simon Peter's
brother, was one of the two who heard John's witness and followed Jesus. The
first thing he did after finding where Jesus lived was find his own brother,
Simon, telling him, "We've found the Messiah" (that is,
"Christ"). He immediately led him to Jesus.
Jesus took one look up and
said, "You're John's son, Simon? From now on your name is Cephas" (or
Peter, which means "Rock").
Message
You
have heard three scriptures this morning and may be wondering what the
connection is between them.
The
first one tells the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 with the lunch brought by
a young boy. The second scripture was
about the terrified disciples as Jesus walked toward them….on the water. Now I’ve read about Jesus meeting John the
Baptizer, Andrew and Peter for the first time.
These
are all scriptures about how people have spent time with Jesus. How the disciples and a little boy learned
how far five loaves and two fishes could go.
How the disciples learned that Jesus wasn’t just one of them by walking
on the water. How our usual perception
of Jesus’ relationships with John and Andrew and Peter can be changed by reading
a different version.
John’s
gospel is the only place we learn about the young boy offering his lunch. And it is John who told us that Andrew and
Peter weren’t just fisherman but disciples of John the Baptizer before they
became disciples of Jesus. We don’t get
that information anyplace else. What we
learn in John is how they spent their first day with Jesus.
Granted
this is not earth-shattering information.
None of this is. Most of us have
read these stories numerous times. Of
course if you don’t read the Gospel of John very often you might not remember
that about Andrew and Peter. Where they disciples? Fishermen?
Disciples who were fishermen?
What
matters here in these stories is the simple information that they were with
Jesus. And there is no doubt that they
were all changed by the experience.
While
serving in the
·
Scripture - the Holy Bible (Old and New Testaments)
·
Tradition - the two millennia history of the Christian
Church
·
Reason - rational thinking and sensible interpretation
·
Experience - a Christian's personal and communal
journey in Christ
I know we have Methodists and former
Methodists in our midst so if you have more questions, you can ask them.
But basically
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a methodology for theological
reflection that is credited to John Wesley, leader of the Methodist movement in the late 18th
Century. The term itself was coined by 20th century American
Methodist Albert C. Outler
in his introduction to the 1964 collection John
Wesley (Wikipedia.com)
I
believe this makes perfect sense. Few,
if any, of us understand God through just one of these avenues. I’d argue that it would actually be
impossible to do so. You don’t
understand alone. You don’t understand
tradition alone or even reason. I’d also
argue that you can’t grasp any of these outside of your own experience.
Folks,
you don’t read a menu in your favorite restaurant outside your own
experience. If your mother made a
terrible meatloaf, you probably won’t drool over thinking about someone else’s
meatloaf. Even menus bring out our
experiences.
So these
experiences we read about in scripture force, urge, push us to draw on our own
experiences with Jesus. So here is my
question for today and I really want you to think about it: How would you spend the day with Jesus? Take a moment and think about that. How would you want to spend a day with Jesus? What experiences would you want to have with
Jesus?
PAUSE – REALLY THINK ABOUT IT
Leah
told me that she would like to just lie in Jesus’ arms. Ryan Bailey, pastor at Monticello, wants
Jesus to take him fishing because he assumes that Jesus fishes (even though
scripture does not tell us that nor does it tell us that Jesus is a carpenter,
but….) Amanda wants Jesus to take her
back to his time so she can see things from his perspective. She wants to see
How
would you want to spend the day with Jesus?
I have a
suspicion we can move back to the word “experience” and discover why any of us
have said what we said. And I suspect
that how we would want to spend the day has a lot to do with how we are feeling
about life in general at the moment.
I know a
family dealing with a lot right now. One
of the little ones in the family was in Intensive Care on Friday. She couldn’t breathe on her own and Friday
night was a long one. Another family
member has been recently diagnosed with MS and the rest of the family is
dealing with her living arrangements and preparing for her to move into a better
place. Then another family member’s
husband threw her out of the house on Friday morning. How would they want spend the day with
Jesus? Probably asking him to pick up
the pieces and make things better.
I also
know a family basking in celebration. A
college graduation, a wedding, a big trip…those are all on the horizon. They’d asked Jesus to attend and plan to run
out of wine.
Why am I asking this question? Why is it an important question to ask? Look again at v. 37-39.
37-38The two disciples heard
him and went after Jesus. Jesus looked over his shoulder and said to them,
"What are you after?"
They said,
"Rabbi" (which means "Teacher"), "where are you
staying?"
39He replied, "Come along and see
for yourself."
It isn’t so important
that you plan your day with Jesus as it is that you make time for him in your
life. Whole days are good but some of us
struggle to make room for him at all.
Here is my day and I’ll let you
share it if you’d like:
You
wake up one morning and there is a knock on the door. You answer and invite Jesus in for
breakfast. You have coffee and oatmeal
with blueberries. Then instead of
rushing off for a busy day, you sit and talk.
Not superficial questions, “How are you?” not really caring what the
answer is, but really “How are you?” Or
you ask “Did you really walk on water or were there stepping stones hidden in
the water?” “What is heaven going to be
like? Am I going to recognize my family
or will we all be intimate strangers?”
The list goes on.
Then
as the morning passes your questions seem less important. Just being with him is what you most
desire. And you both sit quietly,
looking out at the water (at least in my day with Jesus, yours might have a
mountain or a bird sanctuary). You are
sitting quietly and Jesus quietly says, “I don’t think you know just how much I
love you.”
You
are startled by his words. You had been
lulled into the quiet, simply enjoying his presence and he says this. “I don’t think you know just how much I love
you.”
And
of course he is right. Your head knows
he loves you. You know all the words to “Jesus
loves me,” but you don’t feel loved or even loveable. Not by a human being or even Jesus. Or you “know” Jesus loves you but the feeling
isn’t there. In fact you aren’t even
sure if you love him back.
You
love this church and the most of the people.
You love your family and friends.
You love Purdue basketball, but
Jesus?
Fall
in love with Jesus all over again by spending part of every day with him. Invest in the relationship. Bask in the absolute truth that Jesus loves
you.
Close with:
Sing with me “Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus
loves me. The Bible tells me so.”