John 1:35-51 Follow Me

The Apostle John’s story of Jesus’ time here on earth has a slightly different focus than the other gospels. Mathew, Mark and Luke all want us to know who Jesus is and how he went to the cross to cover the punishment for our sins so that we can have a renewed relationship with God our Father and to help us live out the new life we receive from Jesus through God’s forgiveness and grace. But John has a different feel to his story. The reason John tells us Jesus’ story is so that “you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” But he tells Jesus story from a very personal angle, focusing a lot on Jesus’ focus on people. In verse 14 we already get a hint of this, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word translated “made his dwelling” can also be translated “he tabernacled” among us, bringing to mind God’s presence with his people during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness as a sign of his commitment to his chosen people.

Jesus is now wandering through Israel, teaching and preaching; calling God’s people to “repent and believe because the kingdom of heaven is near.” Now Jesus begins to gather a group of people around him, to invest in them so that later they will be able to carry out his message to others. Jesus is gathering together a group of disciples. In Jesus’ day, rabbis and teachers gathered together disciples who followed them with the goal of becoming just like their rabbi, imitating every aspect of their rabbi’s life from his clothes, to the way he did things, and learning to share their rabbi’s teaching exactly. This is why, when we read the 4 gospels, they’re remarkably similar even though the writers were quite different from each other. Jesus is gathering together a group of disciples in order to train them, shape them, and then release them into the world to continue the work he has come to do; to draw the people back to God.

Now Jesus finds himself in the same area as his cousin John. Two of John’s disciples are with John and suddenly John points to Jesus and says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” Just the day before, John pointed Jesus out to his disciples and identified Jesus as, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” John was always pointing people towards Jesus, including his own disciples.

Looking back from where we are today, we hear John’s words and we right away go to the cross and how Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away our sin through his sacrifice. We connect Jesus to the Passover lamb whose blood was spread on the door-frames to protect the people from death, or we hear Isaiah 53 and how the lamb was silent as it was led to the slaughter. Jesus is someone special, he has come to take away the son of the world, not just our individual sins, but the sin of the entire world. His coming sacrifice will be more than good enough for the need of all people. John points us to the cross and its importance.

But is this what the two disciples of John heard? No matter how they understood what John meant, the two disciples are attracted to Jesus and follow Jesus. Jesus sees them and asks, “What do you want?” What a great question. What do you want from Jesus? We all want something from him. I was looking for someplace to belong, for someone to simply accept me for who I was since I was lonely growing up, never having fit into the church or school. I was different from the others and my family was always on the fringes of the church. My choices as a teen were not always the best, and some people can never let those things go. As someone said to me this week, “Church can be a lot like high school.” That was my experience too. So, what do you want? Forgiveness for things you feel guilty about, maybe you’re looking for influence or for a purpose or direction in life, or maybe change in the church, or certain gifts or talents, or maybe acceptance, to feel like you are valuable to somebody, or whatever you’re looking for. We all tend to come to Jesus for something.

John’s disciples aren’t quite sure what to say, perhaps not even certain what they want, so they answer with a question, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Probably they’re looking for the opportunity to have a long talk with Jesus to see why John speaks so highly of Jesus, to get to know him and ask him questions about what Jesus is teaching. Jesus graciously responds, “Come and you will see.” This is the invitation the 2 disciples are looking for and they follow Jesus and spent the day with Jesus. Now Andrew is so impressed with what he sees and hears, he rushes off and finds his brother Peter and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.” Andrew brings Peter to Jesus and Jesus names Peter, which shows Peter and those who are watching that Jesus is the one who gives us our identity, shows us who we are.

The next day, as Jesus is getting ready to head to Galilee in the north, he finds Philip and says to him, “Follow me.” Philip goes and finds Nathanael and tells him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Now Nathanael is skeptical because of Jesus’ background, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” There’s a snobbery going on here, Nathanael’s looking down his nose on a small-town bumpkin teacher. But Philip convinces Nathanael to come and see who Jesus is and Jesus acknowledges that Nathanael is a good moral man, a good Israelite and follower of God, letting Nathanael know that Jesus knows him and his heart, even before Philip called him. Nathanael’s convinced Jesus is someone special and becomes a follower of Jesus, calling Jesus, “Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

It strikes me that following Jesus quickly leads to calling your friends and family to come and see Jesus, to follow him too. There’s a social part to following Jesus, we don’t do it alone, we do it together, inviting others to come follow Jesus too. We are called to become a community together, a family together; a family that laughs together and that weeps together, a family that hurts together and leaves no one on the outside looking in. Too often we judge each other, overlook each other when they need us the most, look past each other because we get put into a box and set aside.

Following Jesus is also really personal because Jesus knows our hearts, our deepest longings, our fears and hurts, our confusions and discouragements and he calls out to these places of our hearts when he calls us to follow him. In Jesus’ time, when a rabbi called you to follow him as his disciple, you would dedicate yourself to watching and listening as closely to the rabbi as you possibly could. One expression was to be “covered in the rabbi’s dust.” In The Moral Maxims of the Sages of Israel: Pirkei Avot, Martin Sicker writes, “What is the sage attempting to convey by his urging that one “become covered with the dust of their feet”? Some consider this to reflect the imagery of a group of disciples sitting on the earth at the feet of their master, who is seated on a stool before them. … Others, however, see it as urging the disciple to follow in the footsteps of his master wherever he goes, figuratively as well as literally. In either case, the teaching may be understood to convey the idea that the disciple should always remain within the ambit of his master’s “dust” or influence.”

The goal is to look like, sound like and be like Jesus. Following always leads to ongoing transformation. This is why we have asked you to pray over your personal faith plan, to remember and be open to the transforming power and movement of the Holy Spirit as you follow Jesus. We are transformed as individuals, but the Spirit also transforms the entire church to truly become the family of God, the body of Jesus. The highest compliment you can receive is when someone says of you or of Bethel, “When I see you, I see Jesus.” This is the goal of following Jesus.