Everyone’s talking about them and pointing them out: the latest and the greatest products, programs, and apps promise to transform your life in the new year, if you will just commit to them. The message of Jesus isn’t something new. It’s been spoken and reviewed for thousands of years, yet Jesus has the power to make you new. He does so as the lamb of God that John had to point out – the lamb of God who takes away sin. In Jesus, you know that it is your faithful God who has committed himself to make you new. That is the foundation for what we can expect in this series.
Everyone’s talking about them and pointing them out: the latest and the greatest products, programs, and apps promise to transform your life in the new year, if you will just commit to them. The message of Jesus isn’t something new. It’s been spoken and reviewed for thousands of years, yet Jesus has the power to make you new. He does so as the lamb of God that John had to point out – the lamb of God who takes away sin. In Jesus, you know that it is your faithful God who has committed himself to make you new. That is the foundation for what we can expect in this series.
It’s 2023. It’s January 1. You know what that means! NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION season, right? New Year’s Day naturally sparks us to think about changes, progress, and fresh starts. There’s something about turning the calendar or seeing 2023 on our phone lock screens that breathes a sense of optimism. There’s a reason why when you search Amazon for books on “New Year’s Resolutions” there are over 20,000 book results. People love resolutions. As the end of a year brings reflection, a new year brings hope. Hope that maybe I can kick that habit, fix my finances, or lose weight, be happier, work more efficiently, and get along with my family and coworkers. Hopes that as you know often aren’t realized, but we keep making resolutions anyway. I think there’s a deep reason for that. These resolutions have become almost a mantra-like tradition each year since around the 18th century in America. The mantra goes like this: Build a better you, make the changes you need to make, and become new and improved. Is that what you’re thinking about this morning? As you look ahead into 2023, what will lead you on New Year’s Day 2024 to look back and say, “That was a good year?” It really boils down to the big question we face this year and every new year: What do you want in life? Which is really the same thing as asking, “What do you really want from Jesus?”
It’s an important question, right? One that has been asked since the very first disciples followed Rabbi Jesus. People in John the Baptizer’s time didn’t know the answer to that. John walked into a tough situation. God had sent him to prepare people for Jesus to come. He talked a lot about repentance, baptism, and leaving a life of sin. People knew he was different. In fact, even how he dressed gave that away (show picture). But John’s role was a temporary one. If he had a New Year’s resolution it was this, “Let me fade into the distance and run to Jesus!” Why? Because the Spirit had revealed who Jesus was to John. But this took some time for John’s students to swallow. After Jesus was baptized by John, the beginning of what we call his “public ministry” when he was publicly revealed to be the Son of God, John immediately starts talking about not just repentance but the Lamb of God. He keeps telling people, “Forget me, and follow him! Follow the Lamb whose blood will deliver you from death, the Lamb who lifts away the sin of the world, the Lamb who sends guilt into the void.” But this, “Look the Lamb of God” message took some time for John’s students to swallow.
Notice it wasn’t until the next day that two of John’s disciples approached Jesus. Had they been wrestling about this? The Lord knows, but what happens next catches us off-guard. John again sees Jesus, has a huge smile on his face, and says to everyone gathered there listening to him: “Look over there, that’s the guy you want to follow, the Lamb of God!” So two disciples start walking behind Jesus, and Jesus turns around, and in classic Jesus fashion, he responds so differently than we would expect. I would think Jesus would say, “Thanks for joining me today!” or “It’s great to see you guys!” but instead the very first words out of Jesus’ mouth, in fact, the very first words of Jesus recorded in John’s gospel are: “What do you want?” It makes me think of the caricature of an old man sitting on his front porch, seeing someone come up to him and saying, “What do you want?” Jesus cuts the small talk and gets to the heart of not only John’s gospel but of the Christian life. What do we want from Jesus?
Do you and I look at him as our Resolution Resolver, or our Self-Help Helper without even realizing it? I’ve found myself so often not looking to Jesus solely as my Savior, but as my Enabler. Jesus if you enable me to be free of that sin struggle, then I know you’re really with me. Jesus, if you give me what I need to achieve my health goals, that would be fantastic. Jesus, if you could fix my family problems or my work stress, I’d really appreciate that! Do you see the dynamic going on there? When we put ourselves in the sandals of those first disciples and hear Jesus ask the question he still asks you and me in the Bible, “What you do want from me?” Do we want the right things?
How would these students of John the Baptizer, answer? A lot of rides on this, expectations everywhere, and in Socratic fashion they answer Jesus’ question with a question, “Where are you staying?” This question is deeper than you might think. They’re not just asking Jesus where his bachelor pad is, they’re not just inviting themselves over, it’s a significant question when it comes to the student-teacher relationship in the Jewish culture. What they are really asking is, “How can we follow this life pattern that you are teaching?” “How can we learn from you?” They really couldn’t have answered Jesus’ question better, in other words, they are saying, “Jesus, we don’t know yet what we want from you, can you show us?”
The humility in this answer is convicting to me. How often in my sin, I demand from Jesus what I think I need to be new and improved, instead of asking him to show me what I need. Can you relate? We’re quick during resolution season to pray to Jesus and ask him to give us success in all our personal goals, instead of approaching him in awe and wonder and saying, “Jesus, what do I really need?” Such a question is so counter to our human nature. By nature, we make demands of God, question his goodness to us, want him to give us what we think we need to be happy, healthy, and whole. We look for a Self-Help Savior, not the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We think we know what we need from Jesus, but we’re so far off.
As we often look to Jesus for self-help, not knowing what we need from him, Jesus shows his compassion and grace by not turning away from us in frustration, but like with those disciples in John 1, he says to you and me in the Word one beautiful sentence: “Come and you will see.”
And the disciples did! “They went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him.” They take the Lord up on his offer. These two disciples, one named Andrew, the other is unnamed, probably the disciple John who wrote this gospel, spend the day listening to Jesus tell them what they need from him. We don’t have that conversation recorded, but it’s fair to say that he told them about how he is the Lamb of God. The Messiah who came not to give us a 12-step plan to become the best versions of ourselves, but instead to give us a new self, a new identity. A redeemed life through his cross that bought us back from the chains of sin to give us hope and life far beyond anything New Year’s Resolutions can offer.
Jesus’ invitation wasn’t a one-time-only event for these two disciples. When you and I talk with God, thinking we know what we need from him, he leads us through Word and Sacrament to realize he alone can tell us what we really need from him. But he doesn’t stop there. He says to you and me, “Come and you will see.” Come and see how my blood has set you free. Come and see that in this world of constant death, you’ll find life in me because I found you. Come and see that I can give you more than self-help, but salvation. Come and see that you are a new creation. Blameless in the eyes of the Father.
This “Come and see” approach is what Jesus loves to do for you. He invites us in his Word, and we rediscover over and over the amazing grace it is that he through his death and resurrection has made you new. The old has gone. The new you has already come, won by the Lamb of God, Jesus, now we want it to remain! I know this is radical, but your life is not about self-reforming, self-innovating, or self-help, your life now is all about the Savior! You have a new heart given to you by the Redeemer, and the natural result of that heart of faith is to replicate the “Come and see” approach to yourself and the people you love most!
We see this happen immediately with these two disciples in John 1! Look at how Andrew responds to the amazing gospel good news he heard from Jesus, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah!” Andrew’s heart of faith bursts with excitement in sharing Jesus. How could it not? In Jesus, he had everything the world and no amount of self-discipline could give him: He had meaning to his life. He had a purpose to live. He had a Savior who loved him. He had it all! How could he not want his brother to know of such an existence too!
How can we not want our loved ones to hear Jesus’ teaching too! But before we do that, we must remain in him. By faith, we keep asking Jesus, “What do I need from you?” and he promises he will give us precisely what we need. Sometimes this means more trial than treasure, more refinement than luxury, more pain than gain, but we trust Jesus because we know what we have in him. We live a “found” life. That’s no small thing. You know as well as I do how many people are living a “lost” life. So many are searching for what we celebrate every Sunday: the certainty that God loves me, that’s there a purpose for me, that death isn’t the end for me. So let’s give them that answer. If we’re going to make a resolution, let’s make this one: To keep remaining in Jesus and to invite more and more to the place where he is staying: The Gospel in the Bible and in the Sacraments, baptism and Holy Communion. Let’s echo John as we tell our community, “Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And yes, let’s echo that to our own hearts too, so hard-wired by sin for self-gain and self-focus, that when we find ourselves to be failures or people who haven’t reached our potential, that we remember the old has gone and the new has come. You are a child of God through Jesus. You don’t live for self anymore, you live for the one who lived, died, and rose so you could live in a constant state of resolution, led by the Spirit to find again and again the resolute heart of your Jesus who will always give you exactly what you need.
So, what’s your answer to Jesus’ question, “What do you want?” When a year from this moment, you look back at 2023, what will lead you to say, “That was a good year?” God-willing for you and me it will be this: “Jesus gave me exactly what I needed and more than I could ever deserve.” By faith, we don’t live for self-help, or peer-recognition, we live for Jesus, we live known and loved by God. We live redeemed by a Savior who will never stop looking at you and me and saying, “Come and see.” What a joy it will be when we do see fully, when in all things the old has gone and the new will resolutely stay. Live heaven-bound, because the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world, and all God’s people said: AMEN!