To be honest
with you, I do not think that was uppermost in John’s mind. Nor do I think that
was the imagery that caused such an impact on St Andrew that he left John’s
side to be with Jesus instead, convincing his brother Peter to follow Him too.
John the
Baptist was a hard, brave, bold and uncompromising man. He came from a priestly
family in Jerusalem, but he would have nothing to do with the discredited
kingdom of Herod, or the cult in the Temple Herod had built. Instead he went
into the desert as an exile, waiting for a true King to enter the Land of
Promise, to restore true worship, and to recover for the people a guaranteed
means to life in union with God. Thus might heaven’s glory once again be seen
on earth, and the Lord beheld dwelling among His people. He went into the
desert; he lived on the edge. Those who came to seek him out were other bold
men, who shared his longing for the People and the Land to change their ways.
Their very existence was a standing rebuke to all: from the foreign King
serving the supposedly divine Roman emperor and the spiritually and financially
corrupt Temple, to the sinful ways of the people, from the top down. They lived
on a knife-edge of being arrested and executed because of their call for
everything to change, because of their effrontery in accusing the whole world
of sin. In the Temple, sin could be dealt with by a donation, a sacrifice and
an action performed. If your sacrifice came from love and desire to return and
be near to God, it counted for everything: we remember the stories of the
widow’s mite and the tax-collector praying for mercy so well. But if you
thought your sacrifice was some kind of transaction with God, a deal, then to
these people John shouted, “Stop going through these motions. Stop trying to
strike a bargain. You need to change your minds, not just your money. Alter
your thinking. Repent. Turn round. Face the way that the Lord is coming to you.
He is coming in fire and glory as once before. Turn round and face His Kingdom,
because He is bringing the Holy Spirit.”
This talk
cost John his life with the authorities; but it was stirring stuff to honest
people who, whatever else was going on in the country and throughout the known
world, pored over the Scriptures, loved God, believed His promises and hoped
for a new day. So Andrew starts to follow John. He sees John take all the
people that follow him out across the hills to the Jordan river. He hears him
tell everyone that the change they are looking for will involve coming into the
Land of Promise all over again. Only then can there be a fresh start, and only
then can the change of heart and thinking be permanent. He sees as, one by one,
John’s followers step out of the Holy Land into the river through which their
forebears once entered it. He sees them immersed in its flow, and he sees them
all coming back on a new footing, new as people. He sees that one of the people
John has baptised is singled out. John declares Him to be the Lamb of God, come
to ”take away the sins of the world.”
To Andrew,
this Lamb is not looking vulnerable or sounding uncertain. He does not speak
out like John; but here, like John, is a figure of purpose and inner strength,
imperturbable on His way. Soon John calls Jesus not only the Lamb of God, but
the Son of God. Immediately, Andrew understands. He recalls the story of
Abraham, so devoted to the Lord that he is prepared to give up and offer his
own Son, to demonstrate his devotion and obedience. But the Lord desires not
the death in a sacrifice, but the life and love in its offering. He Himself provides
a lamb to stand for this complete oblation of living adoration. Andrew grasps
that the Lord, Who once sent a lamb to fulfil an earthly father’s vow to God,
now sends His Son to fulfil the heavenly Father’s promise to God’s People. In
an instant, Andrew sees that for the sacrifices for sin, the Temple worship, the
prayers of repentance, the heartfelt desires for everything to change in the
world, the pouring out of hearts in faith, to have any effect, the one to bring
them about is not a passive victim,
but someone actively in control of all around Him, and of His own destiny.
Yes, He will
be wounded. Yes, He will be brought down and weakened. Yes, He is innocent, and
the shedding of His blood will take all human life and strength from Him. Yes,
it is our sin that will destroy Him. But it is by His strength that He makes
Himself vulnerable to us. It is by His innocence that He exhausts and outlasts
our offences. It is by His courting and grasping defeat as a victim, that He
dares to proceed as victor. It may be that as a Lamb He is led to the slaughter
to bring the Kingdom of God about; but He will be none other than the Son of
God, the King coming into His reign. No wonder people who lived on the edge,
with little to lose and full of hopes that seemed never to be realised, left
everything to follow Him.
In the last
week, a self-appointed Commission on Religion and Belief has issued a report
recommending that Church schools in the United Kingdom be stopped from
admitting children on the basis of their families’ religious faith, and that at
our civic ceremonies and in all areas of public life, Christianity should give
way to other faiths. One of the Commissioners is a retired Anglican bishop who
has called for the Koran to be read in Church at the traditional services each
year when the judges pray for Divine Wisdom in their momentous task. The other
Commissioners have called for religious education in our country to include
teaching about secularism and atheism.
Secularist
atheists are trying to have it both ways. First, they claim that there is a
basic, neutral moral consensus that does not need God; therefore no religion
making an exclusive claim to the Truth should claim any privilege in education,
or public affairs. Then they say their beliefs should be recognised in
education as a religion, since they are free to promote them and gain converts
to them like other viewpoints. Yet to Christians it seems that secularism is
already everywhere, judging from how we have allowed and encouraged our
commercial and business worlds to become mercenary and exploitative, seeing how
the materialism of the market replaces the value placed on God and our love of
others, especially the poor. Propagating the working assumptions of secularism
is also prevalent on TV and Radio, from documentaries to quiz shows. Yet our
religious education consensus in this country has been wisely crafted over the
last 150 years to ensure young minds receive two things. First is an
understanding of the beliefs and values of Christianity as the force that has
shaped and defined our entire civilisation; secondly is not the imposition of
religion but education about it, borne out of a hard-won history of learning
tolerance and reconciliation, so that we can know how to live together with
respect and humanity. Yet the countries which have no such tradition of
religious education, the places where only one faith, or secularism, or
atheism, is imposed, appear now to be incapable of making sense of the world of
faith and how important it is to people’s identities, their sense of where and
how they belong in the world, and their aspirations. To impose secularism in
the hope that it will bring about harmony is a dangerous fantasy, just as much
as imposing Islam is in the Middle East, and just as imposing one form of
Christianity was in Spain, or Russia, or England in the past.
So, what is
needed? St Andrew followed St John the Baptist because he saw all that was
wrong in the world and wanted it to change. He turned to follow Christ because
he understood that the Kingdom of the Lord would return not by force of arms,
or the impositions of authority, but strength of goodness (something we used to
call virtue) and out of love, a love so strong and inexhaustible that it could win
through and withstand anything, even death itself. As St Paul puts it, “When
the day of evil comes, put on the full armour of God, so you can stand your
ground, and having done all, still stand.” (Ephesians
6.13)
The way St
Andrew saw this was that it was not just matter for him to respond to
personally, but a concern that faced the whole of his nation. He observes Jesus
as the one to take away the sins of a whole world, and this conviction spread
to his brother Peter, then to Philip and then to Nathanael, as we have heard (John 1.35-51). Nathanael recognises
Jesus not just as Lamb of God, and Son of God, but also as King of Israel.
Jesus replies that this insight gives a vision of how heaven itself comes down
to earth all the time, as earth rises up
to go into heaven. This is what we celebrate as the true reality to things in
our Liturgy.
So it has to
be that we see both the world and our faith in the Lord not as two separate
things, keeping faith in God out of one box, and keeping our dealings in the
world in a separate one from our religious observances. The Lord is the Lord of
all, or he is no Lord at all and all of this is irrelevant. And so, it is for
us to say that we do not wish the world merely to tolerate us, or to allow us
space. We say, “You must change. You must face the coming of the Kingdom. What
you see as a weakling Lamb, a disposable commodity, a sentimental story of
adversity overcome, and just the cycle of life, is none other than the Son of
God in all His power.
“As, of old, Saint Andrew heard it
by the Galilean lake,turned from home and toil and kindred,
leaving all for His dear sake;
Jesus calls us from the worship
Of the vain world’s golden store:From each idol that would keep us,
saying, Christian, love me more.” C F Alexander
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