John 1:29-41
January 17, 1999
Rev. James R. Gorman
I have this crazy picture of John the Baptist. Standing in the desert in his hair shirt, that strange-looking ascetic gaze in his eyes with a sign around his neck that says,
"This way to salvation,
This way to the One you seek whether you know it or not."
Sort of like a traffic cop in Bahama pointing the traffic in the right direction with his white gloved hands.
"Messiah this way. This way to the Lamb of God.
All those who repent and forgive this way to their salvation.
Those who refuse to repent and refuse to forgive, take a left at the next light. Head towards the intense heat. You think it's bad here in the desert, baby, wait'll you get to where you're going!
"Messiah this way ..."
Then John sees Jesus coming toward him.
What directions does he give Jesus?
So he turns to the crowd and says, "Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."
Behold the lamb of God.
Agnus Dei.
A sacrificial lamb. One who must die so that we may the more fully understand the mysterious ways of our God.
Behold the lamb of God, who in his death, takes away the sins of the world. Lives transformed by an encounter with all that is holy in the cross of Jesus Christ. Behold the lamb of God.
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I'm not altogether sure of the entire pilgrimage that I have undergone in order to become who I am today. I have had many influences on my life and my life has had so many twists and turns that I'm not even sure who had the greatest influence. I dread that sort of question when someone asks it: "Who are the major influences in your life? Who are your heroes?"
We live in an age in which hero worship is not encouraged, to say the least. We delight in discovering the many and varied ways in which our recognized heros have clay feet.
Dorothea Bolliger just turned 90 this past month. Her father was a professor of theology and psychology at the Mission House School of Theology in Sheboygan. I came across a marvelous lecture that Dr. Hessert gave on this subject of heroes and clay feet. It seems that in the time in which he was teaching, writers were delighting in discovering all kinds of salacious details about the founding fathers of this country. Seems that Thomas Jefferson had fathered several children by one of his slaves and all that was coming out in around 1935 or so. And Dr. Hessert was not pleased about it at all. He didn't like what we were doing to our heros. He didn't like the fact that historians and reporters were digging up all this salacious material about our 3rd President.
He should see what we do to our heroes now.
And yet a culture cannot exist without heroes.
Who are my heroes? Well, when I was a teenager there was John Kennedy, then later there was his brother, Bobby, then there was Martin Luther King, Jr. and then there was ....
And not only are they all dead, but each of them had clay feet. In fact, all our heroes have clay feet, as young journalists hungry for Pulitzer prizes will be quick to point out to us. And, according to the modern scientific either-or view of things, they can't be heroes anymore. They are forced to take a left at the next intersection and move toward the intense heat.
And yet, in spite of their clay feet, they remain my heroes. They remain links in the long chain that has brought me to where I am. They remain the informers of the vision that I possess of a social order that most fully reflects the reign of God. That stubborn vision of a world without war, where the common enemies of man are defeated; poverty, disease, tyranny and war itself.
How could I have such a faith, such a hope, without heroes? How can any of us live our lives without brave and gracious men and women who show how it is possible to live well and nobly in a confusing and murky world?
And all of them have been sacrificed.
Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Dr. King had a number of premonitions about his death. When Kennedy died, King turned to his wife Coretta and said, "That's the way I am going to go." And there was every reason to believe that it would be so. He had been bombed, beaten, spat upon. There was no reason for anyone to assume that he would not be killed.
No riverboat casino gambler would have given you great odds that that lamb would not be slain.
Martin gave much thought to his death and how he would be remembered after he had died. Just a few weeks before he died, he spoke at Ebeneezer Baptist Church and sort of outlined his own funeral oration:
"I would like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life to serve others.... And that is all I want to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a song, if I can show somebody they're traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the Master taught, then my living will not be in vain."
Then there are the haunting words just the night before he died.
"I may not get there with you, but I have been to the mountain top and I have looked over and I have seen to the other side, and mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
We know now that he may have been more fully aware than anyone close to him knew, that his own end was near. And he was articulating in his last hours a hopeful message to precede the dark days that his own death would bring. I wonder if he knew just how dark those days would become after his death.
I have a friend that I have made through the racism work that I have been engaged in for the last 3 years. Her name is Carmen. She is about my age, Carmen is. When I first met her 3 years ago she had a daughter in college. And her daughter in college called her from her dorm as she did every week. And in one of her many conversations with her mother she asked, "Momma, when I have a baby, when do you tell that baby about the racism that it will have to face?"
An innocent question, really. Like when do you tell a child that he or she is adopted.
When do you tell any child anything about the painful realities of life?
And Carmen said she just wept. For her daughter had been born just before Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. She had been born into such a hopeful world. Carmen, like so many African American folks, was convinced that hers would be the last generation to ever have to explain to their children about the racism that they would inherit.
And here was her daughter, asking the question that Carmen thought her own generation could have put to rest. We really had the temerity to believe that King would usher in an age in which each of us would be judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.
A few months after Carmen's daughter was born, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Behold a hero denied the full breadth of a good life. Behold a man who would not live to see his grandchildren. Behold a lamb of God who knew that he would not live to see his biblically promised three score and ten.
Did Martin Luther King, Jr. have a dark side? Of course he did. So did Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln. And Dottie Bolliger's father was right in condemning those who make too much of that. They distort history in the interests of promoting their own careers and reputations. And in the end, history is robbed of purpose,
robbed of direction,
robbed of hope.
But hope is a stubborn thing. Things are very different now than they were those 25 years ago when King was killed. His death has made a difference. We are a different people.
We cannot undo the history that has flowed on in the intervening years. We can only reckon with it.
And hope against hope that it makes of us a new and more obedient people who take our heroes where we can find them, the efforts of some historians and some journalists to the contrary notwithstanding.