Stay, Show, Tell - Discipleship in John 1:35-42
BECOMING A DISCIPLE (1:35-39) Being with Jesus
“What are you looking for?”
These are the first words of Jesus in John’s Gospel.
This simple question is addressed to two disciples who follow Jesus down the road. He turns and asks them this question – “What are you looking for?” sometimes translated as “What do you want?”
It is no accident that John has included this question at the beginning of his Gospel.
I am sure that this question that Jesus asks is intended not only as a question of the first disciples but also as a question for every reader of this Gospel.
And what a question.
In fact, isn’t this the question.
Every philosophy, every religion, every person asks this question of their life – what is it that I want? What am I looking for? What is life really all about?
This is a big open-ended question.
I don’t know about you, but for me certainly, the problem is that a lot of the time I don’t even really know what I want.
Perhaps the disciples aren’t even really sure either, because they don’t answer Jesus directly, instead they inquire about where he is staying. They want to spend time with Jesus and get to know him, after all, John has been making big claims about this man.
And so, Jesus replies: “Come and see” or as the Message translation of the Bible puts it: “Come and see for yourself.”
What an invitation that is.
That is the invitation of Jesus to the first disciples, and it is the invitation to every reader of John’s Gospel ever since – “Come and see for yourself.”
At the start of a new year, perhaps there is no better invitation?
At the beginning of every new year we are more prone to ask the question “what is it that I am looking for?” We are more inclined to examine our lives and ask the question “Am I happy with where I am at?” “Is this what it is all about?”
The invitation from the Gospel reading this morning is to hear this question on the lips of Jesus – “What are you looking for?”
And then the follow up invitation…
“Come and See.”
It’s very important for us to hear this invitation for what it really is.
Jesus doesn’t offer a three point sermon to the disciples.
Jesus doesn’t give them a sales pitch or try and convince them then and there that he really is just as amazing as John the Baptist has made him out to be.
Jesus simply invites these new disciples to be with Him.
This is what being a disciple of Jesus is about. It is about being in the company of Jesus and learning from Him, getting to know Him, growing in relationship with Him.
The disciples perhaps don’t know quite what they are looking for, even if they did it doesn’t seem that Jesus is going to give it to them all at once.
What we discover quickly here in John’s Gospel is that the answer to the deepest longings of humanity isn’t an intellectual solution or philosophy, it is a person. It’s a relationship. The word became flesh.
The disciples are invited to come and stay with Jesus.
Rowan Williams commenting on this section in John says: “The Gospel teaches us that the bottom line in thinking about discipleship has something to do with this staying. Later on in the same Gospel the same language of staying or abiding as it is often translated is used again to describe the ideal relation of the disciple to Jesus: ‘Abide in me’ he says, ‘abide in my love’…in other words what makes you a disciple is not turning up from time to time…it’s not an intermittent state; it’s a relationship that continues.”[1]
The invitation is to stay and to remain with Jesus, to abide with Him. What an invitation for us at the beginning of a new year.
This invitation is for us all.
It isn’t conditional.
It’s not as if the disciples had done anything to qualify as special.
Jesus openly invites them to be with him, and He invites us too.
Before Christmas I met with a reporter from a local newspaper who wanted to ask a few questions regarding Christmas. He commented on the increasingly large amount of people who profess no religious commitment and asked me if in light of this I still felt the message of Christmas was relevant anymore.
The implication in this question was that if someone wasn’t religious then the story of Christmas would have no appeal or would make no sense.
But the story isn’t just for religious people. That’s the point we see here in John too. Jesus is open for inquiry; intellectually, emotionally, we are invited to look at Him, to hear Him, to pray to Him, to ask of Him.
The opening chapters of John tell us that Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the Lamb who will take away the sins of the World.
This lamb reference, though strange to many modern readers refers to the biblical stories of God rescuing his people from slavery, and would be seen as an image of sacrifice and rescue.
John’s Gospel claims that in and through Jesus God has come to rescue the world from sin and darkness and to set it to rights. This is the big claim of the Gospel, that God has come to bring peace and healing for our hurts, to make us whole so that we may experience fullness of life, to give us hope for the future.
The only way to know if Jesus is the real deal, if the claims that are made about Him are true is to respond to this invitation, to come and see, to spend some time with Him.
What we see in today’s reading from John’s Gospel is that that to be a disciple of Jesus is to stay with him, to come and see. We don’t need any religious credentials to do this, we are simply invited to respond.
So, the first invitation of being a disciple according to John 1 is to be with Jesus. Even for those of us who have been a part of the church for a long time can forget this. We can get caught up in all kinds of activities for Jesus and not see the beautiful and simple invitation to be with Jesus.
The second invitation of being a disciple according to John 1 is the impulse to share Jesus with others – to make disciples. We see this movement in verses 40-42.
MAKING DISCIPLES (1:40-42) Show and Tell
I remember when I was at school, we often had this ritual after school holidays of “show and tell.” Kids would bring in pictures or items that represented what they had been up to over the summer break.
Our daughter Phoebe has been putting together a scrapbook of photos and stories of what she has been up to over the holidays and so reminded me of the days of show and tell.
It seems when we grow up, we still continue to do this. A question we ask each other a lot over January is “how was your Christmas?” or “How was your holidays?”
The contemporary equivalent of a scrapbook is Facebook. We can post photos of our holiday BBQ’s or camping adventures for all to see. What else is Facebook if not one giant scrapbook with which we can share our stories with one another?
As humans we just love to share this stuff.
We want to share what matters to us, we want to share stories of the fun we have had, the people we care about, what is going on in our lives.
We are creatures that love to show and tell and in today’s Gospel reading from John we see this element of show and tell at play.
One of the disciples who had been with Jesus all day was Andrew.
He was so excited about his encounter with Jesus that he just had to share it and so he goes and finds his brother Simon.
When he finds him he does two things – he tells him about Jesus and he offers to show him Jesus.
TELL
First of all Andrew tells Simon about Jesus. He says: “We have found the Messiah.” Messiah means “the anointed one.” In the Old Testament kings were anointed for their role, so were priests and prophets. The term was often used in anticipation of the one who would come to rescue the people of Israel. Here is Andrew saying to Simon – he is here, we have round him!
So firstly, Andrew tells Simon. Short and simple he gets to the point. Making disciples will involve sharing the news of Jesus with others.
SHOW
Secondly, Andrew shows Simon. “He brought Simon to Jesus.”
Words are good, but as the first disciples discovered, it is meeting Jesus that really counts, it is meeting Jesus and encountering Him that will bring transformation.
For Simon it all begins here. In anticipation of who he will one day become, Jesus gives him a new name. He will be called Peter.
Simon experiences Jesus who gives him a new name, a new identity, based on who he will become as a follower of Jesus. In doing this Jesus also calls Peter into a role and makes a claim on Him. Peter will be no passive admirer of Jesus, but the one on whom Jesus will build the church.
As Tom Wright puts it: “When through the window of God’s revelation, you recognize the unique Servant, you will also glimpse your own reflection in the glass.”
And so now Peter is a disciple and the process continues, he will go on to make more disciples.
This is the logic of discipleship that we find at the beginning of John’s Gospel.
Being a disciple is accepting the invitation to come and be with Jesus, to follow him and to stay with him. Secondly being a disciple is sharing Jesus with others, that they may become disciples.
It really is simple.
Yet as we read on in the Gospels, we will see that it isn’t easy.
The disciples will need every little bit of help they can get to stay with Jesus, to follow Him, to love Him, to work with Him, to trust Him, and to share His message with others.
We, like these first disciples will need all the help we can get, and so let us call on the help of the Holy Spirit as we pray…
[1] Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life.