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Sunday
spoken eucharist - 8 am
bible study - 9 am
sung eucharist - 10 am

Wednesday

services begin at 7 pm

healing service (1st, 3rd)

evening prayer (2nd,4th)

eucharist (5th)

Today is the Second Sunday after Epiphany.  It is also the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter – which is transferred to tomorrow, Monday, January 19 … which itself is a national day of remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a National Day of Service called for by our President Elect, a day when we are asked in howsoever it may happen to be intentional and spend some time seeking the care and compassionate concern of our neighbors.

It is also the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an effort begun in 1908 at Graymoor in Garrison, New York by the Franciscan Friars and the Sisters of the Atonement who have been praying for “Christian Unity” ever since.

And it is the second week in a three-week series of sermons I am offering entitled The Welcoming Church which began last Sunday and will conclude next Sunday when we will celebrate Reconciling in Christ Sunday along with so many other welcoming congregations in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

These sermons are based upon the three Gospel readings for these Sundays: last Sunday from the Gospel According to Mark, the earliest Gospel in our Christian Scriptures: the story of Jesus’ Baptism by John in the River Jordan somewhere south of the Sea of Galilee from which it flows, and somewhere north of the Dead Sea into which it flows; next Sunday, again from Mark’s account: we will have the story of Jesus’ invitation to Simon (known as Peter) and Andrew and James and John to become his followers, and this Sunday, from the Gospel According to John, the latest Gospel in our Christian Scriptures: the story of Philip’s invitation to Nathaniel (also known as Bartholomew) to follow Jesus.

Last Sunday’s Sermon on The Welcoming Church was entitled: How It Begins, and we spoke how Mark the Gospel Writer tells the story of Jesus’ life and ministry with immediacy and forthrightness, not with the embellishments of the later Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and not with the poetic hymns and expanded stories of the last Gospel John, but this way:  Do you want to know the story about Jesus Christ, the Son of God?  … it begins this way: with his ritual washing in the Jordan River by John the Baptizer who was announcing to everyone that hope and change was coming into the world and now here it was in this person, Jesus of Nazareth, and it is in this person where heaven and earth meet each other, and where God and God’s creatures are joined together for the love of neighbor and the compassionate healing of the world.

And if you want to read that sermon in full, you can go online to our congregational website and click on Sermons and it will take you to the appropriate page … or you can call me and I will give you a copy, or you can wait until next Sunday and you can have a copy of all three sermons.

So … this morning, in front of us is the end of the century (that is, the 1^st Century) telling of the story of how the story of Jesus continues.  In other words, we have the story of how it was that the person of Jesus and all that Jesus was and promised to be came to be something more than just a ritual washing of one person by another in the Jordan River.  Just how was it, we want to know, that this idea of God and God’s creatures meeting each other in the person of Jesus, how did this story continue so that we know about it?

And, the version of the beginning of that continuation we have this morning in this little story from John.

It begins “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.”  But if you haven’t read the Gospel of John lately, and because in the Liturgy we have only a little window inside each Gospel each Sunday and not the whole writing laid open before us, you may ask … well what happened the day before?

And in John’s account what happens in the 1^st chapter is this:  there is that lovely Hymn to the Divine Word (the last time we read that was on Christmas morning), In the beginning was the word … and that is followed by the announcement that the word became flesh and lived among us … the statement of faith about the Divine Word, that this Word is born into humankind and grows up and matures and lives among humankind … Then there is the insertion of a sentence or two as if John the Baptizer himself is speaking: John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”  And then the opening part concludes with a statement that while no one has ever seen God, this Word become Flesh (notice that the name of Jesus is not mentioned at all in John’s Gospel until the 29^th verse) is baptized by John and that causes the religious authorities to ask John what he is up to … asking him if he is the Messiah himself, or perhaps Elijah, or some Prophet … to which he says (quoting the Prophet Isaiah), I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness … and that causes his questioners to ask why he is baptizing, and John announces that he is doing this because one is coming who is much mightier than he is, and the next day John sees him and says Ecce Agnus Dei (Behold the Lamb of God) … well, actually he didn’t say it in Latin, nor did he say it in Greek, but it was written down in Greek and then translated into Latin (the Vulgate) and we repeat it every Sunday when we sing, “Lamb of God, You take away the Sin of the World, have mercy on us.”

And the day after that, John is standing with two of his own followers and seeing Jesus walk by says it again, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”  And those two turn around and follow Jesus and then he asks them what are they looking for, and he invites them into the house where he is staying and they become his first disciples, Simon (who is Peter) and his brother Andrew.

And now the next day after that, we have our story.  Jesus decides to walk up to the Galilee and he invites Philip who was from the same village as Peter and Andrew to come along.  Philip runs first to get his friend Nathaniel and tells him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  Nathaniel almost spits on the ground as he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And Philip invites him to come and see.

But he doesn’t.

Nathaniel is like a lot of people.  The invitation is there, but why bother, it’s too much effort.  It’s too whatever.  I’d rather sit under my tree and vegetate.

Ah, but … the next day Jesus sees Nathaniel up and walking about and coincidentally coming toward him and pronounces aloud, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

And Nathaniel stops and says to Jesus, “Oh really, how did you get to know me so well?”

And Jesus responds, “I saw you sitting under the tree before Philip invited you.”

And that is enough to bring Nathaniel (who is also known as Barthomew, Bar Tolmai, son of Tolmai) into the group.

It’s the Welcoming, don’t you see?  It’s how the story continues.  The Story does not continue without a welcoming invitation.

I have to say also that this little end of the 1^st Century story in John’s telling of the Life and Ministry of Jesus is a bit abnormal.  You would think, and this is the image that we get from our Sunday School Days, that Jesus would go around, pick out some followers, line them up, and then off we go to preach and heal and teach and love.  But that is not the way it goes.  It’s not a fine-tuned slick-advertisement with wonderful sound-bites.  And there is no interview.

Can you imagine what that would be like?

Jesus: You want to be a disciple?

Future Follower: Sure.

Jesus: OK.  You’re going to have to walk around a lot, meet a lot of sick people, rub shoulders with prostitutes and such, try to help them, be under constant scrutiny by the Roman Government, probably never have a retirement or pension, and watch me die and then try to make sense out of my living in your hearts and souls and stories, and then you’ll have to tell this story and convince other people to join it, and … by the way, you’re going to die too.

Who would want to follow? 

But that’s not the way it went, and its not the way it goes.  There is the invitation, and the invitation is made not only by the Inviter, but by his followers.

 

NOTE: As this is another ¾ Sermon (a sermon that is unfinished until it is preached), it ended differently at both services.  What follows is one such ending as best I can recall.

 

Sometimes in the Church we think that God and the Angels will come down and make our church grow, bring us new members, invite others into our fellowship, and so on.

But that is not the way it happens.  The way it happens, the way it continues is that one person invites another person invites another person invites another person …

Who does the inviting?  You do the inviting.  The story of how to do this is the story we read as our Gospel portion this morning.  You invite others into the community of faith, into the life of this congregation, into the Story itself!

Next Sunday in the concluding Sermon of this Series, we will talk about what kind of followers are the followers of Jesus, just who is welcome.

continued next week ...

+ Deo Gratia