One thing that each Gospel makes clear is that Jesus came into the world to call people to follow him. The call to ‘follow me’ is there in all four gospels. John’s Gospel that we shall be looking at in the coming weeks, is different from the other Gospels, in that it tells us the story of Jesus in a different way from Matthew, Mark and Luke.

For example John alone tells us that it was John the Baptist who pointed Jesus out to Andrew and probably John, by the river Jordan. (John doesn’t refer to himself by name in his gospel, but sometimes refers to ‘an other disciple’, most likely himself.)

These men, John, Andrew, Simon or Peter as Jesus called him, Philip, Nathaniel; they are drawn to Jesus. It is a point that John makes in his gospel, the way people are drawn to Jesus.

He tells how Jesus speaks of God the father drawing people to himself. ‘No one can come to me unless the father draw him.’ It is in Johns gospel that the profound words of Jesus are recorded where he says ‘When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself’.

It is God’s purpose for us his church, that we, because we are the body of Christ, should not only be a people who are drawn to Jesus, but that we should also be concerned to be involved in drawing people to Jesus too.

John ch1 has much to help us understand how people are drawn to Jesus in different ways, because people are different. Lets look at the difference in the 5 people mentioned here.

Some people are seekers; they are looking for God. Andrew and John were like that. John the Baptist was a man sent from God, and Andrew and John in their quest had become his disciples. But John knew he had to point people beyond himself, to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives, their quest draws them on to follow Jesus, to seek out his company.

There are seekers in the world today, people who are looking for the reality of the true God. The story here reminds us, that like John the Baptist we should point such seekers beyond us, to Jesus himself.

Then there are the ordinary practical people; people who are just getting on with life. I suspect Peter was one of these. He was probably aware that work had to done, a living had to be earned. He didn’t sign up as a disciple of John like his brother Andrew. Maybe he had a wife and family to support, we know he had a mother-in-law.

There are plenty of people like Peter today. Getting on with earning an honest living. Yet people like Peter are also drawn to Jesus. And notice how it happens. It’s through others. His brother Andrew knows that there is more to life than work, he wants Peter to know that too, and he is confident enough with what he has learned of Jesus to bring Peter along too.
Another one of our five, Nathaniel is brought to Jesus by a friend as well. I know there will be some of you here who have been brought to the Lord by those they know and live with. Its good to be reminded that that is so often how people are brought to Jesus. If we know God’s love in Christ, then there is that possibility that we can bring others too. That is how God’s kingdom grows and that is so often the way that those we know and love find the reality of God’s love for themselves.

There is another thing about Nathaniel. He was cynical. ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ he says. We live in a very cynical age. We are cynical about our politicians, about our pop stars, cynical about our asylum seekers, the police and we could go on adding to the list. And as Christians we have to face the reality many people are cynical about the church. Now if we are honest we have to face the reality that there is much to make people cynical.

There is a dark side to all sections of society. There is self-interest and greed. There is pretence and dishonest. We of all people should know that we live in a sinful world. But the one thing that gives us reason to hope, is that God has not given up on his world. In Jesus, God had come to seek and to save, to redeem. So Philip could say to cynical Nathaniel ‘come and see’ and he brought him to Jesus.

Sometimes pride, or unbelief or sins of one sort or another can pervade the church, and there almost a constant need of humility and repentance, we will always be a fellowship of the forgiven. But if we, as part of the church can be a community where there is truth, and grace, and love, or to put it another way, a community where Christ is present by his Spirit, where together we can be the members of his body, then we can with good conscience say to the cynical folk of our age ‘come and see’. Different people are still drawn to Jesus, and so it will continue, and if we hold faith we can be part of that reality.

But above all, John in his gospel points out to us the profound truths about Jesus, the one to who people were drawn. Right from his birth, people have asked the question ‘Who is this Jesus?’ the debate goes on today, people hold many different opinions- a prophet a great teacher, some even say a mythical figure dreamed up in the imagination of the early church. John writes his gospel to answer that question and there are answers here in chapter one.

Lets look first of all at some of the things that Jesus is called in the passage that we have read:

Andrew says to Peter ‘we have found the Messiah’. It’s a Hebrew name from the Old Testament that means ‘anointed one’. The Old Testament Prophets had foretold that God would one-day send into the world a special person, in some ways like King David of old to save or deliver God’s people. Jesus was not just an exceptional child who just happened to be born by chance, he was part of Gods eternal plan for our world. Yet Jesus is more than that.

Nathaniel called Jesus ‘Rabbi’. A Rabbi is someone who teaches about God. He so lived and taught about God that later on he could say to Philip, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. People who were drawn to follow him became his disciples, which really is the equivalent to our word students. We should all be students of Jesus, because we all still have much to learn. But Jesus is more than a teacher.

When Nathaniel met and heard the words of Jesus, he gave him another name. He exclaimed ‘You are the son of God’. Now the Jewish people from their scripture and from the psalms knew that a true king of Israel could be called the Son of God. God had promised to King David about his descendant ‘I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me’. Now maybe Nathaniel, when he addressed Jesus as the Son of God, was saying ‘you are the Messiah, the anointed one, yet it is very clear from Johns Gospel that Jesus was God’s only begotten son. The one who had been there in the beginning with God. Jesus was the one who had entered the world’s stage as the central character of human history.

And yet there is something even more profound that John has to tell about Jesus than that.
It comes out in the name that John the Baptist gives to Jesus. John says ‘Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’.

God’s own son came into the world as a charismatic leader, as an anointed one, he came as a teacher to dispel our ignorance and folly. But most of all he came to do what we our selves could not do. He came as a sacrificial lamb to take away the sin that ensnares us, to pay the penalty for our human failure. To reconcile us to God, that we too might have the right and the power to become children of God, and therefore brothers and sisters to each other.

And that is Good News, and it brings hope to our cynical world.

Amen
 

Acknowledgement.

I lay no claim to originality in my sermons. They are an attempt to pass on the gospel message in a contemporary way and depend on the bible as well as others who have studied and written on the passages in question. In preaching from John’s Gospel, I acknowledge my debt to Roy Clements for his book Introducing Jesus and I have also used material from Readings in John’s Gospel by William Temple. PN Jan 04

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