The Rev. Alanna Sullivan, Associate Minister and Director of Administration, the Memorial Church of Harvard University. File photo by Jeffrey Blackwell/Memorial Church Communications
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By the Rev. Alanna Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio)
Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and redeemer. Amen.
So in our gospel lesson for today, it is often the testimony of John the Baptist that is understood to be the epiphany in this story. When John sees Jesus, he exclaims, "Look, here is the lamb of God." I imagine the words bubbling out of him almost as if he cannot contain himself, he cannot help himself because here right in front of him is the physical manifestation of God's grace. Of course, this news has to be shared. It is just too good, too important to keep to himself. And yet there is a second moment in this story that I also think is an epiphany, perhaps a quieter moment, but just as revelatory. After John testifies, Jesus asks John's followers, "What are you looking for?" Or another translation from the Greek is, "What are you seeking?"
Now this question are the first words of Jesus in this gospel so they are more than insignificant. "What are you looking for? What are you seeking?" There certainly is not an easy answer. So perhaps it's not entirely surprising that the followers then respond with another question. They respectfully address him as rabbi, teacher. "Where are you staying?" Almost as if to inquire, "Where does all of this lead? What's the end game here?" And Jesus replies with a simple, "Come and see." And here's what I believe to be the second epiphany in this story. They pick up and follow him. This is the moment when the first disciples are called by Jesus. Perhaps their action isn't quite so dramatic as John's testimony. We know that John has a flare for the dramatic. Yet it is one thing to behold Jesus like John and it's another to place one's trust in Christ and to set out on a new journey together. And this is a revelation we will see again and again during Jesus' ministry.
Yet they were the very first to take this brave leap of faith. A wise pastor once told me, "A leap of faith is a little bit like this. A high wire artist at the circus does amazing feats in front of the crowd. And the ringmaster asks the crowd, "Who believes that this high artist can ride a unicycle on a tightrope high above the big top?" And almost everyone in the crowd raises their hand. The ringmaster then asks, "And who believes that he can do this with someone on his shoulders?" And only a few hands go down. And then the ring master asks a third question, "And who would like to be the first to volunteer to be on his shoulders?"" And that's the difference between belief and faith. You can believe in something and remain in your seat, simply raise your hand. But to have faith, you have to get out of your seat and actively place your trust in another.
So these disciples are the ones brave enough to get out of their seats and to join Jesus in watching him perform miraculous feats. By telling the disciples to come and see, Jesus also refuses for this journey to be defined by the destination. It's more about how you get there than where or when you arrive. So exactly how does one set out on this journey of following Christ? Perhaps an answer can be found in the disciple's prayer question. When they ask, "Where are you staying?" Another translation of the Greek verb for staying is abiding. "Where are you abiding?" It's almost as if the disciples already know the answer to their question. The journey of faith necessitates an abiding with Jesus, a being with Jesus.
The path set out before us is unknown and uncertain. There is no set destination and no map in how to get there. So in this journey of following Christ and discovering what are you looking for, what are you seeking, I believe two things to be true. First, it requires wholehearted prayer. What are you seeking is a question we often fleetingly ponder around this time of year. When we turn the page to a new year, we think about what we want to say goodbye to, what we want to embrace and welcome in the year to come and off the surface, this question may just seem to be an annual checkup or a corny tradition. Yet deep down it resides at the very heart of Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Jesus sought to connect with those around him at their deepest point of longing, longing for God's love and justice to be revealed. So what calls to you from that place, deep inside where the deep meets the deep as the psalmist puts it?
Writer Debbie Thomas observes that the selves we present to the world are messy and layered. And it takes time and patience to sift through those layers. We sift through the layers of the fumbling and the fears and the doubts to arrive at the heart of how God sees us, knows us, and claims us as God's beloved. And each of us benefits from a second, third, even fourth look. And hopefully in prayer we can begin to see ourselves as Christ sees us, more graciously, more lovingly, more completely. It's here that Christ looked at Simon and saw Peter. And when we come to know the true joy of being deeply seen and deeply known, that's when we can begin to see one another in a similar light.
And that brings us to the second necessity for following Christ. As I said, this journey comes with no directions, no map, no set destination. So how easy it is to get lost and lose our way. And we are all bound to do that, we are only human. And even prayer can feel murky at times. And this is when we must turn to one another to ask for directions. Where we are going, we are only going to get there together. Professor Caroline Lewis observes that the calling of the disciples is not complete until their witness brings others to Jesus. To experience the grace, the redeeming love, the peace that surpasses all understanding that comes from abiding in Christ is tied to how we share that grace and love and peace with one another.
During this season of epiphany, the focus remains on the revelation that Christ is Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of God. And it's easy for the spotlight to remain there. Jesus' prophetic sermons, compelling stories, miracles, life-changing healings and yet Jesus reminds us again and again that his life, his ministry, his death, and even his resurrection is not the whole picture. For God's kingdom to be built here on earth, it includes all of us taking up our role in the story of God's redeeming love. In liberation theology, this eschatology is called collective liberation. One theologian writes, "Collective liberation claims that all life is entangled, inseparable, permeable, eternally woven together. It rejects individualism and celebrates collaboration, and it acknowledges the difficulty of the fact that we need one another."
In other words, our struggles and our salvation are bound up with one another. This weekend we celebrate and honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr as a transformational leader and guiding light of the Civil rights movement. He was remarkable in his own right. The impact of his prophetic sermons and speeches, organization of protests and direct actions and his writings, demanding justice and the equal treatment of Black Americans cannot be underestimated. However, our veneration of King should not come at the expense of forgetting that so many participated in the fight for racial justice. King was a part of an intergenerational movement with a long history. Activist Sharon Fennema remembers learning from James Lawson, a colleague and contemporary of King.
What we now call the Civil Rights Movement was more of a loose collection of ideas and actions shared between a variety of organizations, from the students of the student non-violent coordinating committee, to the non-violent practitioners of the Congress of Racial Equality, to chapters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Lawson observed there was no civil rights movement, just a whole lot of civil rights movers. Like Jesus, King recognized that the building of the beloved community of which he dreamed did not begin with him, nor could it end with him. And it did not begin nor end with the fight for civil rights for Black Americans. Preacher Joy Moore reminds us that King's own ministry and activism embraced this reality. King offered more than the recognition of the humanity and fullness of Black Americans. Near the end of his life, he also spoke up against the conditions of all workers with the poor people's campaign and protested the Vietnam War.
In 1965, King delivered the commencement address at Oberlin College. He shared, "All humankind is tied together. All life is interrelated. We are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Or put more succinctly by Fannie Lou Hamer, "Nobody's free until everybody's free." This weekend, a new sculpture was unveiled in Boston Common, in honor of Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, a powerful author, activist, and civil rights leader in her own right. Boston is actually where they first met. The sculpture entitled the Embrace is based on a 1964 photograph of Martin and Coretta hugging one another after he had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's a celebration of black love. Standing at 20 feet high and 40 feet wide, this bronze sculpture feels both tender and unbreakable.
And from a certain angle, the hug looks like a heart. And from below, you can walk through and look up into their arms up the heavens. Hank Willis Thomas, the artist who created the Embrace, said he was inspired by the phrase Love 360, the nickname that Yolanda Renee King gave to her grandfather's work. Thomas shared, "The work is really about the capacity for each of us to be enveloped in love." So often what we are looking for can be found in the embrace of another. In our broken and bruised world, it is so easy to stumble and fall astray in our journey of following Christ. And we learn along the way that the real question is not, "What are you seeking?" But, "What are we seeking?" Our struggle and our salvation are tethered to one another, and we are only as free as the most vulnerable among us. So perhaps we don't just witness epiphanies, but our lives can become epiphanies, revelations of God's love and justice in our midst. Amen.