2009-01-18 - "Why Would You Follow Jesus?"

"Why Would You Follow Jesus?"
Answering the question, “Who is Jesus for me?”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Canon Milton Barry
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Text: John 1:35-51

It is a question that many ask. Why would you follow this one? Why would you even look to Jesus? Jesus was curious himself. We have a record in Mark's Gospel that Jesus at one point asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” They said to him, going back really to their own Jewish heritage, “Well, some people think you are John the Baptist come back, and others think of you as Elijah and others think of you as one of the prophets come back.” There were others, of course. There were his critics. They had words for him and, because he accepted invitations to fancy dinner parties, they called him a glutton and a drunkard. Others saw him as a false prophet, while some claimed he was simply a madman.

The question, “Who is Jesus?” persists. In the last decade, Time Magazine has had that very question on the front cover. MacLean's Magazine, here in Canada, had it on the front cover as we turned into the new millennium. People like Marcus Borg wrote books in the last 10 years that ask questions like, “Meeting Jesus again for the first time?” You might be interested to know that in the last 25 years there have been more books written that deal with the question of who Jesus is or was than in all of the time before that to his birth. An extraordinary time in which the question is asked, “Who is this Jesus for us, and why would anybody want to follow him?” There have been many different answers, and many different emphases in discovering that answer.

A number of years ago, Bob Hope, the great American comedian, accepted an Emmy award for his groundwork in comedy on television (and I hope there are enough “gray hairs” here today who know who I am talking about when I say Bob Hope). Bob Hope, when he accepted the award, said, “I want to thank my four writers. They really deserve the credit for this award.” Well, following Bob Hope on that same night was another common character of early television in the '50s and '60s, Bishop Fulton Sheen, a Roman Catholic Bishop from New York who was a big figure on NBC and I think was on CBC here for a time as well. When he got up to accept his Emmy award, he said, “I'd like to take a chapter out of Bob Hope's book and thank four writers myself: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

We might very well thank Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for the pictures they give us of Jesus, and they come pretty close to answering why we might want to follow Jesus. But, they are all different.

After you read Mark, you begin to realize that this was the very first Gospel written. It is the shortest, and in it you cannot help but have a sense of servant leadership in Jesus - a servant to humanity.

You move into Luke's Gospel and you get quite a different picture. Luke, after all, is the only non-Jewish writer in the Bible - the only writer we can read who is an authentic gentile, like the rest of us. And of course, Luke has a desire to show Jesus, his friend, to the outcasts, to the gentiles. It is in Luke that we have these wonderful pictures of healing and response to people in need, and to children. Also, we have an incredible picture of a Jewish man who is prepared to be a friend to women - openly and publicly.

Then, you move on to John, quite a different picture. John doesn't make any attempt to write a narrative of the life of Jesus. There is no lovely beginning in a crèche scene in Bethlehem and the like. John gives us a number of signs. He says that these signs will tell you a lot about who Jesus is, and so he will unfold a story of the healing of a blind man, and he will say, “This is a sign: not only that, it is a sign that this one brings light where once there was darkness.” John introduces us to the power of the metaphor. The metaphor can be a powerful vehicle in really understanding something deeper and beyond the surface of the story itself. It is a wonderful, rich tapestry.

Indeed, we might thank those four writers, as did Bishop Fulton Sheen. Hence, over time, 2,000 years of the Christian story unfolding, Jesus has been healer, redeemer, messiah, shepherd, king, ethical teacher and symbol of humanity's potential. For some, he is mild and gentle; for others he shows righteous indignation and loses his temper; for still others he is simply a friend of the sinner, the one who acknowledges their brokenness from the rest of humanity and their broken relationship with God. For some, he is simply the voice of justice; for others he is actually the one who takes children seriously and doesn't push them aside from the polite adult world. For some, he is the first male feminist.

For the Christian Church, in many ways, he has been the synthesis of the nature of God in that, if you want to know what God looks like and what God sounds like, you have no better picture than Jesus. In many ways, the Church has said over time there is no better answer to that question, “What is God like?” than to look at Jesus.

Then, we need to come down not to what the Church says, not to what others say about Jesus, but about what we are saying - you and I personally - about who Jesus is. Are we able to speak of the faith, however small, that is within us? Are we able, even though we see through a glass darkly, to say something about who Jesus is for us?

It occurs to me, as I stand here in this magnificent church and look at these wonderful windows, that I know you have heard the scripture well-read here, heard the scripture well-preached here. You have heard and savoured lovely music over time in this place and, despite all of that, might not be able to say, “Who is Jesus for me?” Despite all of that, what I would like to say to you is that it is worth the effort. There is no grade to be given to you, there is no passing grade here, so to speak; it is the effort to actually say, “Who is Jesus for me and why would I follow him?”

Does he keep you from sin? Does he help you restore the broken relationships that you acknowledge to be broken, including your relationship with God? Then call him Saviour. Does he free you from the slavery you might have to passions in your life, your appetites? If he frees you from some of that, call him Redeemer. If he teaches you like nobody else teaches you and has introduced to you the concept of wisdom, not just of knowledge, but of wisdom itself, call him Rabbi; call him Teacher. Does he mould you? Does he direct your life? Be not ashamed to call him Master and Lord. Does he shine as the light for you in very dark places, giving you hope where things seem hopeless? Then call him Shepherd; call him Guide. Does he reveal God to you in ways in which God is in no other way revealed? Then I think you can easily call him Son of God. Does he reveal something of the potential of your humanity? Does he make you feel like a treasured child of God, and allow you to walk through life and to acknowledge your own personal dignity? Then call him Son of Man.

All these are titles that have come to Jesus over time and that people claimed for their own. I want to tell you if words assail you, that it is okay too. I think sometimes we need to enter the lovely space of silence. There is awe and majesty and wonder to be found in silence. Sometimes, we need to learn to wait, and I often find that people are too quick to answer the question and to think that talking loudly with many words answers all the questions. Sometimes, saying a little is as important as saying a lot.

I also feel that I cannot stand here in this pulpit today without saying it is certainly a question I, as a human being, have had to face. Why would I follow Jesus? Who is Jesus for me? I have struggled with that many times in my life, and the answer has been different at different times, but today I have very much a different picture in my head. I know a lot of it emerges from what is happening in the United States, the nation to the south of us. On Tuesday, they are going to inaugurate a new president, their first black, African-American President, and it is a remarkable story.

It takes me back to a time in my own life that I have not forgotten, but about which I have not spoken publicly much at all. When I was in my early years, as an undergraduate at the University of Saskatchewan, I became good friends with the university chaplain, a black man from Detroit, Michigan. In our friendship, he said to me one day, “Milton, you know, you live a very sheltered, white life. I think you need to come and join my family in Detroit for part of the summer and live with us.”

So, I went and lived with them in a ghetto in the heart of Detroit, him and his five brothers and sisters, his mother and father. I still have incredible pictures of that, but I mostly recall the smell, because black women in those days had to straighten their hair, and in the straightening of their hair, the most amazing chemicals were used. I can still remember living above the beauty shop that Carlton's mother ran, and the smell of those chemicals as black women straightened their hair in order to get a job or to step out into polite, white company.

It was quite a summer! Then one hot, August day, one of Carlton's sisters came running into the house saying, “I've got bus tickets for all of us to take the Greyhound to Washington, D.C. We've got to go and hear this man.” I'd never heard of him. I didn't know what they were talking about, but the next thing I knew I was standing below Lincoln's Memorial in Washington and a man called Martin Luther King got up to speak. He spoke about a dream: “I have a dream...”

I looked around, this young Prairie boy, I looked around and wondered about everyone who was there. I was quite struck that in that crowd were nuns and priests and monks of the Roman Catholic Church, there were United Church and Methodist ministers, there was a Baptist preacher speaking to us, and he was surrounded by a bunch of Baptists. I met a number of Episcopal or Anglican clergy there, and I realized that these people really believed that they could actually change their country, and it was simply, deeply, embedded in their faith, in their Christian faith.

That day changed me. When I eventually found myself back home at the dining room table in Regina, Saskatchewan, I said to my brothers and sisters, their boyfriends and girlfriends, mum and dad and all, that I had decided to make a change in my courses - I had been busy studying sciences and the like hoping to be a doctor - and said, “I think I want to become an Anglican priest.” One of my sisters gasped and said, “Oh, my goodness, I am so embarrassed! I'll never know what to tell my friends!” You know, she got over it. She asked me to marry her many years later!

One of the things that happened for me at that time, and very much emerged as the years went on, was that I began to realize that I was calling Jesus more and more my companion, my friend, an incomparable companion in my life's journey. Years later, when I served in a church in Peterborough, I was near Rice Lake and discovered the gravestone of the man who wrote What a Friend We Have in Jesus, a hymn I have always loved. I have been in some very grand churches, including the one I am in now, and I have been exposed to the kind of musical snobbery that is out there about that hymn. But it encapsulates for me one of the journeys people make with Jesus: He is, indeed, for them a friend and a companion through highs and lows, the ups and downs of life and so much more.

But it isn't just about my answer or the answers of the disciples that you have listened to over time. It is about the answer that is beginning to emerge in your own life about why you would follow Jesus and go out on a snowy Sunday morning and clear your car off and come to this place. Why would I get up out of bed and turn on the radio to listen once again to the preaching at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church?

I have to answer for me, “Who is Jesus for me?” Jesus cannot be just one more face in the crowded life that we live: So many faces and so many names to remember. This has to be a unique face. This has to be a unique voice and often, the elephant in the room in the church that is never named is that simple question: “Who is Jesus for me? Why would I follow him?” I leave you with it. It is a wonderful journey. God bless you in your journey in answering that question. Amen.