4 January 2024 John 1:35-42
“We have found the Messiah,” Andrew said to his brother Simon.
How did he know? He’d known Jesus for only one afternoon, and people had been seeking the Messiah for centuries.
“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” John the Baptist said.
How did John know? He himself admitted – twice – “I myself did not know him” (John 1:31,33), and yet as soon as he saw Jesus, he knew.
How?
“My eyes have seen your salvation,” Simeon said, “which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people, Israel” (Luke 2:3-32). How did he know that that couple, with that baby, was in fact what we have called the Holy Family? How did Anna know when she “began to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38)?
What Andrew, John, Simeon, Anna and many nameless others had was what Eugene Peterson has elegantly called “a long obedience in the same direction.” All of them had been looking – and talking, and thinking, and praying, and studying, and wondering – about the redemption of Israel for a long time. Anna, we are told, had spent decades in the temple, fasting, praying and talking about the coming of the Messiah. The attention of them all had been sharpened to such a point that there were movements of spiritual genius that they recognized before everyone else.
It is because of people like Andrew, John, Simeon, Anna and many nameless others that we have had all the moments of genius we have ever had. There were generations of artists in the Middle Ages working with each other, striving with each other, each of them longing for a truer kind of beauty, a more beautiful truth, teaching the young how to draw and try to capture that – it took years of this kind of interaction to produce one Michelangelo. The creator of the David, the Sistine Chapel, and the Pietá didn’t come out of nowhere.
He came from a long obedience in the same direction.
Jordan Peterson has noted that just four classical composers wrote nearly all the music played by modern orchestras (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky), and those four wrote far more music than orchestras ever play. “Thus, a small fraction of the music composed by a small fraction of all the classical composers makes up almost all the classical music the world knows and loves.” These moments of musical inspiration didn’t come out of nowhere either. They came from nameless teachers, countless thousands of musicians, tens of thousands of hours straining to hear those harmonies that make people weep for reasons they can’t describe.
They came from a long obedience in the same direction.
The people who are long obedient are often not the great leaders. Andrew’s name appears almost nowhere outside the New Testament – no letters, gospels, essays. Nobody really knows what happened to him. But there was no Peter without Andrew. The name of Barnabas occurs only very rarely outside the New Testament, and nobody really knows what happened to him either. But he was the one who took a chance on Saul of Tarsus. There was no Paul without Barnabas.
We yearn for the next prophets, preachers, and saints who will clarify, inspire, and build. But we already know the nameless people and places where they will come from, the countless hours of praying, studying, longing that will produce them.
Longer obedience in the same direction.
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