Christian Pathway

John 1 29-42

If ever I see any of you again and I hope I do, and I don’t immediately recognize you please don’t be offended I do it all the time. If people even those I know and love, turn up in unexpected places I am terrible for not recognizing them. I take some comfort from the fact that this is a known condition called inattentional blindness. It happens because our brains don’t process every detail of the world. They filter. This means If you’re not expecting a particular face, your brain may not “activate” the recognition pathways quickly enough and very rudely walk by them in Tesco’s, fail to recognize colleagues in your high street etc.

So apologies if I don’t recognize you straight away but I am a man, I don’t multi task and my brain is on where it’s on and if I don’t know you straight away I know I am really bad with inattentional blindness. Generally speaking, my wife has to prod a thing before I find it.
Mary Magdalene had this blindness when she thought Jesus was the gardener until he spoke her name, and then she overcame her grief and knew him. Then later on the road to Emmaus they had been with Jesus a while but it wasn’t until He broke bread as it says in Luke 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”.

So this burning means other parts of them knew before their conscious minds took over and knew him.

However in our reading today. John knew him the moment he saw him. As it ssys John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
This is the same John who while in his mothers womb leapt when she entered Zechariah’s home as it says . 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she blessed Mary for believing God’s promise.

So John knew Jesus in places deep , deep beyond the conscious. When in psalm 139 it says that God knows us before we were born, John knew Jesus in that place. You could say John spotted the signs, but I think this comes from a place of prophecy. John’s recognition is prophetic, not psychological.

Also I never think scripture is alien, the bible is a human book, Jesus is unique in so much as he is a God that shared time and space with us in human form. This means we can share his journey. We too almost certainly have had our john the Baptist moment. When the tuning fork of our soul met Jesus . When that place knit before our mother womb recognises Jesus as john did today and in Elizabeths womb.

My story is I was lonely in a little flat in a place called corfe mullen, just nearby Wimborne Dorset very lovely and very remote for a boy that had just left home, from a busy forest gate family , of five, we all worked shifts and the lights never went off., to a little flat with fields all around. So when you shut that door you were properly alone. There was a tree that tapped on my window when the wind blew and a wind that whistled and made the loneliest noise ever as it flew over the moors and Canford heath.

I had been given a little red Gideons bible, and I was properly alone. It was a 4 hour drive before the M25 was built from east London to Bournemouth in an old avenger estate and with everyone working shifts I knew not to ring unless it was an emergency till about 6pm earliest. Scare my old mum half to death if I rung too early.

So I clutched that little bible, and scrunched my eyes shut and with a pleading soul all alone I said Jesus if your really real, I really need you now, help me please. In that moment my little room cross legged on the bed , my little room was filled with unalloyed Love, just Love filled that room and I have never been alone since that moment. I from that moment on could point to Jesus in here. I can never be lonely and I have never been alone since that moment cos me and jesus carry on a dialogue at a consciousness level
That’s my story you will have yours, maybe not a bingo moment like that, maybe cradle to grave . maybe a gradual awareness growing whatever. But that feeling of knowing him , knowing who he is, is exactly what John experienced today , well beyond the reach of our conscious brain, beyond where inattentional blindness can disconnect us from recognition is where you and me and john all met him and knew him when we met him. Its one of the places atheism falls down because it cant describe an encounter at the spiritual level?

Its not just a who he is, but a what he is, what he is going to mean to us. These things happen in life when I met my wife and we went out for dinner, I got home and my dad said did you have a nice time I said very nice thank you, what I didn’t say but thought in my heart, was I am going to marry that girl. Here we are 33 years later.

John knew jesus and we know jesus at the same level, Andrew did as well. He went of to his pals and naturally knew and simply said “ to his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah”. That’s called knowing in the deep places where the daek magic lives as it says in lion the witch and the wardrobe.

That’s the place you encounter Jesus, in the dark Magic. You can see it with john knowing him, with Andrew knowing who he was. With my personal relationship borne of calling out to him, with all the ways you here today knew him however you met him.
Then there’s that thing that he does to us when we know him for what he is. Because he knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. You see this time and time again in the bible. Jesus cuts straight to where we are, in the good Samaritan when the lawyer tries to find the clause , Jesus explodes this in every way and shows him love doesn’t have a clause, extreme altruism as martin luther king says. Or the other thing he does is he names us, not the silly names we give ourselves but truly he names us our true names .

Then the last part of this reading today Jesus calls Simon , he then he calls him Peter – the rock. That’s not who he is right now, but who he will become when Jesus makes him hoel, hoel the old world for saved. The who you were made to be before this broken old world diverted you , and moved the stream away from its intended path. Jesus gives us the identity he made us with. Simon gets told what he was made as , the rock, that our church will be built on, the body of christ will be made on this roc.

so we meet him, we know him in the deep places well below where inattentional blindness starts, and then he knows us in these same places, like aaah this is who I made you to be , heres a reminder seeing as you seem to have wandered off.

That is the question I will leave you with today. Now that you know him and have met him. What will he change in you?

Have you met the You he made you to be?