I’ve
only played a proper game of Dominoes a couple times in my life. It’s enjoyable, especially if the
dimple-numbered pieces being used are a nicely weighted kind. But still, for most of my forty-two years dominoes
have been used for another form of play.
You know … for diligently and oh so delicately setting them up one in
front of the other in a pattern constructed to create a delightful chain reaction.
The
goal is always to make a long line that will work. The fun tension is in knowing full well that
one slightly out of place piece might bring the movement to a dead stop. My,
what frustration and a sudden sense of failure can happen when it’s all been
set in place, the first piece tipped into motion, and then it glitches a few
seconds later! When all that forward
motion plays out perfectly, though, it’s such a joyful sense of
accomplishment. Hmmm … I wonder how many
dominoes we could successfully set up in here in our sanctuary?
Today’s Bible passage is what has
caused me to be thinking about dominoes, chain reactions and … church life. The Fourth Gospel begins so beautifully
and poetically. The mystical sounding language
paints a broad picture about Jesus as the Word in the world. All of John is full of this sort of symbolic
language. Yet as we reach verse 19 of the first chapter it
also starts to get very direct and practical as well …
This is where we read about religious
authorities from Jerusalem grilling John the Baptist about his identity and authority
to baptize with water. It’s where we
read of his confession that he is but a vocal mile marker pointing the way to the
Messiah, the Lamb of God. His purpose
was to help set the Messianic movement on earth further in motion … to humbly
fall forward and help start the chain reaction of responses to Jesus’
ministry.
After telling the religious
authorities what they demanded to know, John was standing with two of his own
disciples. We read that as they stood
there together, Jesus passed right by them.
This set up the scene up nicely for John to put faith in motion. So he did so by telling the two about who
Jesus is. They reacted by moving on
from John and starting to follow the Lord.
Jesus noticed the two toppling forward in the Messianic movement. He asked them what they were looking
for. They responded by saying that they
wanted to know where he was going to be staying. Jesus responded
to them simply by saying, “Come and See.”
This was not an invitation to one
particular time and place. He would be
staying in on place. He would be staying
the course of his divinely constructed destiny.
This was an invitation to move forward with him in His mission.
This inspired one of the two, Andrew,
to soon after continue the active chain of invitation by proclaiming the
identity of Jesus to his brother Simon, who was later renamed Peter by
Jesus. Around that time Jesus found another man,
named Philip, who was from Andrew and Simon’s hometown, inviting him to also follow
the new movement. Philip did so by going right out and finding a
friend named Nathaniel to tell him the Good News.
Noticing the motion pattern
here? The pattern of being found then
going out to find? Of seeing and then inviting
others to see? Are you catching on to
how we can consider all this faith in motion, this movement, this Jesus chain, to
be like line of dominoes? We can call
it Domine Dominoes, after the Latin
word for Lord!
As we know, though, one piece even ever so
slightly out of place can bring the chain to halt. In this case, the out of place piece could
well have turned out to be Nathaniel.
And so early in the line!
Specifically, what was out of place was Nathaniel’s response to the
invitation. He didn’t move his faith
immediately forward. He instead asked, in what sure seems to have
been with a straight-up skeptical, plainly prejudicial attitude, “Can anything
good come out of Nazareth?”
Now, to Nathaniel’s point, a fellow
pastor has written this – “Nazareth was a dump. It didn’t feature in any Old
Testament prophecies. No great personage had come from there. It wasn’t the
seat of any power and no great families hailed from Nazareth. It was a simple
backwater town. No great schools, colleges, universities. There was nothing.
Nazareth was nowhere.”[i]
What was Philip to do with this response? Condemn and dismiss his friend for having
this prejudicial attitude? Re-set the movement someplace else? What would you have done?
The Gospel only tells us that he replied
with understanding and further invitation to move forward in faith. Philip
did so by repeating Jesus’ invitation to come and see.
We can tell from the text that Jesus
had been observing and listening to this exchange. How did He, our pure example of righteous
living, respond to Nathaniel’s prejudicial comment about people from
Nazareth? He responded to the human prejudice with holy positivity. Jesus just
toppled it with grace by praising Nathaniel for being a truly open and honest
Israelite. There was no harsh judgment here, just loving
a person right where they were at in their thinking and believing. Having been accepted in this manner,
Nathaniel’s faith moved forward. He thus
fell into the growing line of disciples on the move. The first chapter of John ends with Jesus
promising Nathanial that he’d be seeing even more awesome things as the
Messianic movement progressed.
What a beautiful lesson this teaches
us about how the kinetic movement of the Messiah and His disciples does not come
to a dead stop when skepticism and prejudice are presented. It instead stands with such fruits of sin and
helps the person move ahead along the path of peace and hope in Christ.
The positive and peaceful chain
reaction to the Good News of Jesus Christ is still going strong today. It is a most impressive and endless display
of faith in forward motion. And praise
be to God, as it moves through modern day disciples, it continues to overpower
skepticism and prejudice in our human race.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve sure
had a few Nathaniel moments in my life.
The environments I was raised in had lots of different prejudicial seeds
being planted and watered and pulled and used. And I believe I have absolutely had our
Lord meet me in many great moments of deep honesty with myself, always with the
invitation to “come and see” greater, more holy realities where equality and
justice are in motion and have been in motion through history.
Speaking of God and history, of the
Jesus chain, my children have the day off from school tomorrow. We will all not receive our mail. It’s a federal holiday, signed into creation
by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
This gets me wondering if a few decades ago anyone ever skeptically,
prejudicially asked, “Can anything good come out of Atlanta?” I’m
sure lots of good has come out of Atlanta throughout American history. We must
to be especially mindful, though, how eighty-three years ago today, On January
15th, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born there on Auburn Avenue,
the heart of the African-American business district. He was steeped in the freedom-forwarding
movement of Christ and His disciples from the start. As he grew and aligned further in Gospel faith,
he both personally experienced and learned about the hard history of racial segregation
and slavery in America. As a Baptist
minister and bold, leading civil rights leader he preached the positive,
peaceful, forward motion of non-violence as the only faithful reply to deep,
nation-dividing racial bigotry.
One inspiring example of this is
what he had to say following a fire-bombing of his home by terrorizing white
supremacists on January 30th, 1956.[ii] Aware that the situation could quickly topple
forward into mob violence between blacks and white police, God gave Rev. Dr.
King the grace stand on his porch and proclaim the following –
“We must love our white brothers …
we must make them know that we love them … Jesus still cries out in words that
echo across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you’ …
this is what we must live by …remember,” concluded King, “if I am stopped, this
movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this
glowing faith and this radiant assurance."
What a powerful and proactive witness
to faith in forward motion, to movement with Jesus Christ that does not cease
to invite any member or group in the human race to come and see greater things
like reconciliation and justice for all.
Though this prophet of holy peace died in tragic violence, the positive
and peaceful chain reactions of his work have helped me and my children to live
in a much more harmonious America than before I was born. Even more racial and economic reconciliation is
needed and Dr. King’s legacy pushes me to keep faithfully falling forward in
the cause of Christ alongside all God’s children.
Through the Holy Spirit and until a final
day of divine peace for this world, Jesus will keep finding and calling people right
where they are at. It does not matter where they are from or
whether they are at first skeptical and prejudicial. And
our Lord will keep inspiring us to find each other, to accept each other, to
positively push each other toward actively sharing in the Good News
movement.
Hmmm … I wonder how many more Domine domino chains I – and we -- can
help God set up across our country and the world? Amen.
1 comment:
Cleverly and eloquently said! Grateful I can read your words every week.
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