My sermon this week was based on John 1:29-42.
To download an audio of my sermon, click here.
The middleman in our society gets a bad rap. Any business model will attempt to "cut out the middleman" as he is largely superfluous to the process, ends up driving up costs and complicating the system, but I would like to argue that in many cases, the middleman is actually an honourable and humble thing to be.
Today's Gospel is deceptively busy, and tells us the story of a couple of people who were quite happy to be middlemen. They did not want the spotlight, they were able to recognize that they were not the main event, and they went about the very important task of bringing people to the main event, as it were.
I am speaking of course of John the Baptist and Andrew.
John the Baptist had gathered a fairly large crowd of people, and we are even told that he had disciples of his own. One might suspect that John would give in to the very human tendency to revel in the attention he was getting, but he was always adamant that he was not the Messiah. When he met Jesus and recognized him as the Messiah, he directed the people and his disciples (of whom Andrew was one) towards Jesus and encouraged them to follow him.
Later in the Gospel, we are told that Andrew was content to bring his brother Simon to Jesus. Jesus renames him Peter, and most of us can name a few things Peter did to secure his place in history: he failed to walk on water, he lopped off the slave's ear, he denied Jesus three times, and he later became the first Bishop of the Christian Church.
Andrew, on the other hand, is somewhat more obsequious, and consequently history remembers very little about him. What history does remember is that he brought his brother to Christ, and set something of a precedent in so doing.
I think we would all like to be lights to other people, but within a religious framework at least, we must remember that we are not lights in and of ourselves. Like John, what light we have within us merely points to something greater: it points to God. We must always remember that in order to remain humble and to not take on responsibilities that we realistically have no right or business taking on.
There is another aspect of this Gospel passage that hearkens to the role of middleman, and it is somewhat darker. It has to do with the phrase, "Lamb of God", which John utters several times in the Gospel. I used to think that this phrase meant that Jesus was like a lamb: gentle, meek and mild.
However, it must be remembered that within the system of animal sacrifice which ancient Judaism practiced, the lamb was the preferred sacrificial animal, and so another way of rendering this phrase would be to call Jesus the "sacrifice of God".
Now, soteriology (salvation theology) is not my strong suit, but as an anthropologist I know that sacrifices were seen as mediating the relationship between man and God. Sacrifices were seen not only as a way of appeasing God, but of expressing gratitude to God for health, wealth, prosperity and so on.
In reality, when we put money in the collection plate, we are doing exactly the same thing, except with little or no bloodshed. Money has become our modern sacrifice.
So what would that mean for Jesus? Why call him the Lamb of God? Perhaps it was to foreshadow his own death, in which he became a sacrifice to mediate all of humanity back to God. Perhaps the phrase means that Jesus was God's sacrifice to us and to the world. Perhaps the phrase refers to the sacrifice that Jesus made of his own welfare, desires, dreams, goals and ultimately of his very life in the service of God.
As I said, I leave soteriology to wiser people.
But there is a compelling question that Jesus asks in today's Gospel. It is the first phrase he utters in this Gospel, and it is perhaps one of the most poignant questions anybody has every asked. When Andrew and another of John's disciples start following Jesus down the road, he becomes aware of them, turns to them and asks, "What are you looking for"?
What other question is there, really? I feel pretty confident saying that every human being has or will at some point ask, "What am I looking for?" What is going to give us meaning and fulfill us? What is going to fill the vacancy that just about every human being has felt?
Perhaps what we are looking for is be the middleman like Andrew was, to be that person that points other people towards the light, towards what they are looking for, towards wellness and wholeness. Perhaps it is not always about accolades and being in the spotlight. Sometimes it is about being behind the scenes, playing a support role. These roles come perhaps with fewer accolades, but they are no less critical.
Today I invite you to reflect on the humility and glory of the middleman.
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