What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? What does that look like…today? Perhaps you’ve found yourself asking this question before – I know I have many times. Those of us who call ourselves Christians profess to “follow Jesus”, but what does that look like in January of 2017? After all, unlike the two disciples in today’s Gospel reading, we can’t just see Jesus walking by the Jordan River and literally follow him as he walks down the road. What are we who seek to be disciples called to do today, perhaps especially today, in this time and place in God’s world?

There is a common thread running through our Gospel lesson this morning that I think sheds some light on this question. Did you hear it? It can be a bit convoluted, a little hard to follow. But there’s something there, something the Gospel is trying to communicate about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. As John’s Gospels tell us the story of Jesus’ baptism and the call of his first disciples, we see a pattern, a model, set forth for discipleship, a pattern I believe, that still holds true for us today.

John the Baptist sees Jesus, and he names what he sees – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Son of God. In our text this morning, he almost breathlessly recounts to the readers what happened when he baptized Jesus, how he saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus like a dove, how he knew that this man was the one he’d been waiting for. Meanwhile, two of John’s disciples are listening: they see John point Jesus out as he walks by, they hear him describe Jesus as the Lamb of God, and so they pick up and follow him. And then one of these disciples, whose name we learn is Andrew, goes to his brother Simon Peter and tells him, perhaps breathlessly as well, “We have found the Messiah!” And Simon Peter listens to Andrew, and he goes with him to find Jesus and follow him.
There’s a pattern here – do you see it? For John, the story of baptism, the story of discipleship itself, is a story about a witness. When John the Baptist meets Jesus and tells his disciples what he experienced, he becomes a witness, someone who has seen something and then speaks to, points to, what they have seen. And because of John’s witness, his disciples follow Jesus. And then, again, after Andrew comes to know who Jesus is, he goes and shares his witness with his brother, Simon Peter, who comes to meet Jesus for himself, and follows him…and so the story goes, all through the Gospel. Those who have received the witness of someone else come to Jesus, follow him, and in doing so, witness to Jesus themselves.

Now, I recognize I’ve just said the word “witness” several times in a row, and that’s bound to make any good Presbyterian start to squirm in their seat! This idea of witness tends to make us uncomfortable, doesn’t it? I’m willing to bet that for many of us, it conjures up images of fanatics on street corners with signs that read “The end is near! Repent and be saved!”

Maybe we think of those so-called Christians who have made it their personal mission to publicly proclaim, to make sure we know who it is that God ‘hates’. I’ve heard these lists include groups like: “the gays”, Jews, Muslims, soldiers, college professors, women who have had an abortion, women who lead churches, Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists…the list goes on; you get the drift. These folks always remind me of a quote from one of my favorite inspirational writers, Annie Lamott, who says, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do.”

It probably goes without saying that I don’t think this is the kind of witness to which our text this morning calls us. But, words are tricky things, and whether we like it or not, they do hold a certain power over our thinking. Which is why I’m personally grateful for an experience I had about six years ago that transformed my understanding of what it means to be Christ’s witness, an experience I’d like to share with you this morning.

When I was in seminary in Virginia, I spent a summer working an internship in Washington, DC, with the Presbyterian Church’s office on Capitol Hill. Many Presbyterians don’t know that we even have an office on Capitol Hill (I didn’t until I saw the job posting!). But we do; it’s a part of our national social justice ministries. And I can tell you now, from experience, that it is a powerful ministry. In a nutshell, this ministry works in collaboration with people of all faiths and people of none to advocate for justice and peace in the policies of the U.S. government. It seeks, to quote Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, not just to feed the poor, but to ask why people are poor – and to do something about it.

This ministry calls itself the “Presbyterian Office of Public Witness.” And over the course of the summer, I began to realize why. I began to see how much of Christian discipleship I was missing out on by writing off this thing called “witness” as something I wanted nothing to do with.
Because you see, I did spend a good deal of time on street-corners that summer. But it wasn’t to shout or to tell anyone that I thought they were going to hell. In fact, on the contrary, I was on the street corner to pray. The building my office shared with other faith-based and human rights organizations was located right across the street from the Capitol building, the halls of power where decisions are made that affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, millions of people. And so every day at noon, we would stop whatever we were doing, gather on our small front lawn, and join together with other people of faith – Methodists, Quakers, Episcopalians, Catholic nuns, Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams, and leaders from various non-profit organizations – for a vigil to lift up those most vulnerable, in-need, and at-risk in our society.

We read from our Holy Scriptures, we sang, we laughed, we cried, and we prayed and witnessed to something that all our diverse faith traditions held in common as vitally important, as near to the heart of God. We prayed that God would guide all of our elected leaders – Republican, Democrat, and everything in between – to enact policies that would protect those people whose lives were in the balance, who had the most to lose – people who are hungry, poor, sick, homeless, disabled, the elderly, children, single parents, veterans…and many, many others.

That summer, I learned that bearing witness is not about angry people shouting on street corners. I began to understand something of what our Gospel lesson this morning teaches us, that witness is about faithfully following Jesus, so that when people ask what we are up to, we can point to the one we follow and say, “Come and see.”

John’s Gospel teaches us that witness is about much more than telling people about Jesus. It’s about pointing to Jesus with our lives and actions, about being a light that shines brightly enough so that those around us can see the one we follow. It means being about the things Jesus is about. In the end, a witness has a lot less to do with saying, and a lot more to do with doing. In fact, it may look a lot like the invitation Jesus issues to those first disciples: “Come and see.”

Of course, a faithful witness can look very different in different times and places. For John the Baptist, it meant baptizing people with water in the Jordon River and testifying to the one who was to come – the Word that would become flesh. To the disciple Andrew, it meant running to tell his brother Simon Peter that he had found the Messiah. For faith communities on Capitol Hill in 2011, it meant gathering each day to pray for those struggling on the margins of our society – and then calling, writing, or meeting in person with our elected leaders to share these prayers and hopes.

Last November, at the University of Michigan, it looked like over 200 students, faculty, and staff showed up to form a protective circle around members of the Muslim Student Association during their prayers. They showed up in love, solidarity, and support after a Muslim student was threatened by a stranger, who told her he would light her on fire if she continued to wear her hijab head scarf.

Last June, the witness looked like Chick-fil-a restaurants in Orlando, Florida, breaking with their usual policy of remaining closed on Sundays and opening their doors Sunday, June 12th, to provide free food for first responders and blood donors in the aftermath of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub. Likewise, the LGBTQ community in Orlando bore witness to forgiveness that day, as people graciously accepted this neighborly love and hospitality from a corporation whose founder has publicly come out against marriage equality.

I have seen witness look like holding a friend’s hand as they cry, being a supportive presence in a time of unspeakable grief. I’ve seen it look like showing up week after week to volunteer at the local food pantry. I’ve seen it on an elementary school playground when a child who sees his friend getting picked stands up to the bully and tells them to stop.

Have you seen any of this kind of witness lately? What might witness look in this time and place, to go where Jesus goes, and be about the things that Jesus is about?
I think it’s interesting, going back to our text this morning, that when those first two disciples begin following Jesus, Jesus doesn’t start by telling them who he is, what he is doing, why he’s there. He gets to that in the rest of the Gospel, to be sure. If Jesus is anything in John’s Gospel, he’s chatty! But in this story, Jesus starts with a simple question: “What are you looking for?”

It’s a good question, really. Not just for those disciples, but for us today. Stop and think about it for a second. What are we looking for here? Comfort? Direction? A purpose in life? A way to give back to the world? Something to do on Sunday mornings?

The two disciples in our story never answer Jesus’ question. Maybe they don’t know what they’re looking for. There are certainly days when I don’t know. Instead, they ask Jesus where he is staying, and he invites them, “Come and see.” “Come and see where I’m staying, what I’m doing, what this Gospel thing is about. Come and see where God is at work in the world. Come and see how you might be a part of that work.”

Jesus’ invitation points to one more thing I learned about a witness that summer in Washington D.C. Something that sticks with me as both deeply humbling and a tremendous relief. I learned that when we show up to witness, to testify to what we have seen, we point to the presence of God in a certain time in place. But we do not bring God, for God has been there all along. God was and is already present and at work in the halls of Congress and in nonprofit board rooms, in soup kitchens and on elementary school playgrounds. God is already present and at work here at First Presbyterian Church, and in the streets of Taos, the streets lead to high-dollar tourist destinations and the streets that lead to run-down drug houses.

God is there. Our job as witnesses is to recognize God at work and join in. Just like those first disciples, Jesus invites all who would be his followers today to “Come and see” what God is up to in this time and place. And I encourage you, today and in the days to come, to accept that invitation. I’m willing to bet you won’t be disappointed.