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. . God who said, out of darkness, the light shall shine, is the same God who made light shine our hearts to bring us the knowledge of God's glory. Shine in the face of Christ.

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So let's worship God. Please be seated. And let us confess before God the words that are printed in our prayer of confession that is located in your bulletin. Merciful God, you pardon all who truly repent and turn to you.

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We humbly confess our sins and ask your mercy. We have not loved you with a pure heart, nor have we loved our neighbor as ourselves. We have not done justice, loved kindness, or walked humbly with you, our God. Have mercy on us.

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O God, in your loving kindness, in your great compassion, cleanse us from our sin. Create in us a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within us. Do not cast us from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from us. restore us the show of your salvation, and sustain us with your bountiful spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Amen. Lord, have mercy Lord, have mercy Christ, have mercy God, have mercy Lord Have mercy Lord have mercy Friends, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. I declare to you in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.

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May the God of mercy, who forgives you all your sins, strengthen you in all your goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life. Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us forgive one another. With these words, may the peace of Christ be with you. And also with you.

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It's my pleasure and my honor tonight to introduce to you John Walton, our preacher for this year's midwinter lectures. But before I do, I want to put in a little reminder about our early bird Ash Wednesday service. Early bird in terms of the calendar year, and early bird in terms of time, tomorrow morning, right here, 7.30 A.m. So I heard those groans.

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Please join us here. It's a very brief service before the lectures. And if you can get up that early, we would love to see you here. I do have the honor of introducing John to you tonight.

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If you were here and you worshiped here last night, you heard Ted Wardlaw introduce John and you learned about his degrees from Macalester College, from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, his doctorate from San Francisco Theological Seminary. You also heard about his impressive teaching and preaching ministry. He's filled some of the greatest pulpits, teaching and preaching throughout the United States. And you also heard Ted speak about his parish ministry and the churches that he served.

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I only wish to add two remarks, one about the congregation he now serves, and one about John himself. The first is about First Presbyterian Church in the city of New York. And I want to tell you about it because I hope the next time you're in New York, you go and attend this church. This is known throughout New York as a congregation with remarkable combination of glorious music, inspiring worship, pastoral care, and progressive ministries.

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And that's not even counting powerful preaching, because John is known to be among the best of the preachers in New York City. And on any given Sunday, you'll see people gathered there to worship from Greenwich Village, its location, around the city, from several states, from the nation, visitors from around the world. Please visit there. It's a historic church, dating back to 1716.

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And its roots have been there in ministry through the American Revolution, all the way through 9/11 into the present day. First Presbyterian Church is near to my heart because one of my heroes, Jonathan Edwards, spent eight months there as an unordained supply pastor in 1722. Actually, the church was having a schism, and he had to go be pastor of one of those schisms. He was only 19 years old.

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His first time in the big city, 10,000 residents. You might say this was his seminary internship. or, as we would say, his supervised practice of ministry setting. He recounts these months as the best of his life.

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He grew to have a wider understanding of world affairs, and at the same time, he wrote that he felt a sense of divine things in a much higher degree than he had ever done before. When Edwards left New York City in the spring of 1723, he wrote this. As I sailed away, I kept sight of the city as long as I could, and when I was out of sight of it, would affect me much to look that way with a kind of melancholy mixed with sweetness. Would that all of our seminary internships have ended that way.

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The second brief remark. that I want to make is about John as a preacher and the impact he's making in the lives who are new to the preaching task. Last year in the Introduction to Preaching course here at Austin Seminary, I encouraged students to listen to John's sermon, which are on the web. And a few students actually became what I would call Walton wannabes.

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But I mean that in the best sense, not to be imitators. But they wanted to think critically about how a preacher engages a text and a context and brings the word of God to life. What was most impressive to me was that these students came from a broad theological spectrum and they disagreed on many, many things. And yet somehow John's sermons spoke to each of them.

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It made me think of a book that was recently published in 2004, What's the Matter with Preaching Today? I don't know if you've read it. Twelve famous homileticians wrote fantastic articles about the promise, the problems and issues of preaching. But you know what?

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Not one of them serves in a parish and preaches week by week. I want students to think about the problems of preaching today, but I also want them to experience what's good about it. John, welcome again to Austin Seminary.

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Let us pray. O gracious and holy God, give us diligence to seek you, wisdom to perceive you, and patience to wait for you. Grant us, O God, a mind to meditate on you, eyes to behold you, ears to listen for your word, a heart to love you, and a life to proclaim you, through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Amen. A reading from Psalm 27. Listen now for the word of the Lord. The Lord is my light and my salvation.

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Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and foes, they shall stumble and fall.

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Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident. One thing I asked of the Lord that will I seek after, to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. This is the word of the Lord.

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Thanks be to God. The second reading this evening comes to us from the Gospel according to St. John. Listen for the word of our Lord.

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The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I have said, after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, But I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.

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And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. and I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God. The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, Look, here is the Lamb of God! The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

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When Jesus returned and saw them following, he said to them, What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi, where are you staying? He said to them, Come and see. They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.

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It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah. He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, You are Simon, son of John.

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You are to be called Cephas. This is the word of our Lord. Thanks be to God. Join me again in prayer.

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Come to us, O Lord, in splendor bright. Fill our hearts with everlasting light. Amen. There is an old saying that seeing is believing, but we all know that isn't true.

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Iran's President Ahmadinejab, like all the rest of us, have seen the pictures and film footage of the Holocaust, but he says it never happened. Some people believe that Americans have never set foot on the moon, and the whole lunar landing was telecast from a Hollywood set and the white boots of Neil Armstrong never touch lunar dust. There's a story going around these days, documented with engineering studies and documented with political intrigue, which argues that the World Trade Center was wired with bombs 11 hours before the attack on September 11, 2001.

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Men in black raincoats did it. A friend of mine said, straight-faced and earnest, a few weeks ago. It was a plot hatched by the vice president, she said. Two students at Oneonta State in upstate New York have proven it.

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They have a website. Well, no particular admirer of the vice president myself, I nonetheless sat there slack-jawed and bewildered that a friend so bright could be so gullible for an obvious urban legend. Seeing helps. And being there helps even more, though not everything we see or experience is necessarily what it seems.

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There's a bit of that at play in the text we read from John's Gospel, a dynamic piece in which way too much happens in the short span of a few verses. John the Baptist, whom we left just before Christmas out in the wilderness savoring locusts dipped in wild honey, has by this time come under investigation by the priests and Levites of Jerusalem. They ask a civil question. Are you the Messiah?

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And he answers, I am not the Messiah. In the following days, as John sees Jesus repeatedly, he tells his disciples, Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And again, this man is the Son of God.

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Mighty strong character references. So 2 of John's disciples, taking John at his word, decide to investigate the claim. They start trailing Jesus to see what they can see. And Jesus, after a while, wonders why these two are tagging along after him.

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At some point, it is enough. Jesus turns on his heels, looks at Andrew and the other disciple and asks, what are you looking for? Now, there's a great question on the face of it. Don't you think?

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What are you looking for? There's a sermon right there. I have a friend who tells the story of his salad days when he first moved to New York, renting a shoebox apartment on Avenue A. He was cleaning out things one day, and he misplaced A spiral-bound notebook with some very important jottings from a class that he was taking.

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He was concerned that the notebook had accidentally dropped in the wastebasket, and when he took out the trash, he had inadvertently tossed the notebook as well. So he went down to the dumpster behind the building to see what he could find in the trash. When he got there, was a homeless man going through all this rubble. My friend decided, oh well, what the heck?

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And he joined the man going through the trash. Eventually, this homeless fellow said to him, oh, I see you're a trash picker too. no, said my friend, feeling a bit embarrassed at the enterprise he was sharing with this vagrant. I'm just looking for something.

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To which the homeless man muttered, yeah, buddy, we're all looking for something. Just about everybody here is looking for something. And I don't just mean your glasses or your car keys, though more and more that is precisely what I spend a lot of time looking for. But regardless of income or station in life, regardless of the usual markers, we're all looking for something.

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If you're under 40, you're probably looking for yourself, trying to understand who you are and what you're doing here in this life and what you're going to do with the rest of it. If you're a pastor, it's probably more urgent a question than you'd like to admit. The research shows that clergy in the fifth year of ministry become an endangered species, and a large percentage of clergy leave about that time, especially if they are women hitting the glass ceiling. If you're married, you're probably looking for more in your relationship, how to make things better, more enduring, more peaceful, more intimate.

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If you're a parent, you're probably looking for the operating instructions, that should have been included on arrival but weren't, the ones that tell you how to be a parent in the 1st place and not mess it up the way your parents did. If you're divorcing, you may be asking what went wrong, looking at where you go from here, how you put your life back together again, and how do you keep from going over the same issues with yourself, with another, and should you even try? Maybe you've come to midwinter lectures to juice up the bone-dry supply of just about everything you're doing.

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The emptiness you feel when you spend all your time taking care of others and too little caring for yourself. What are you looking for? Jesus asked. Andrew and the other disciple who trailed him.

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The logical thing for them to say would have been, we're disciples of John, and he says, you're the Lamb of God, the Messiah, the Son of God. We've come to see if it's really so. That's what you'd think they'd say. But instead, Andrew and the other disciple answered Jesus with a question.

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Rabbi, where are you staying? I think this is really a strange thing to ask at this point. The tension is building. Rabbi, where are you staying?

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Here they were meeting for the first time, these two fellows trailing him, and Jesus asked them, what are you looking for? Poignant, you know, soul-searching. And these two fellows asked Jesus, where are you staying? What kind of question is that?

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What kind of answer? let me warn you that there's more going on here than meets the eye or ear. There is text and there is subtext. There is that which meets the eye and ear and there's something more that does not.

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The abundance of weighty titles like Lamb of God and Rabbi and Messiah and even Son of God in the text all tip us off to the fact that what's under discussion here is very important. John has laid layer upon layer of meaning on this exchange, much of which he wants to tell us in the whole gospel is embedded right here. Andrew asks, Where are you staying? And Jesus says, Come and see.

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It's a phrase that we will hear throughout the gospel, Come and see. Philip goes to Nathaniel and announces that he has met the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, to which Nathaniel says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip says, come and see. When Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well one day, he talks to her seriously about her life, her five marriages, her live-in boyfriend, and about her faith.

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And when she leaves him, she runs around town and invites everybody to come and see a man who told me everything that I have done. Can he be the Messiah? And then when Lazarus died, Jesus went to his home and Mary and Martha, Lazarus' sisters, told him that their brother was dead. And Jesus asked where they'd laid his body, to which the crowd said, come and see.

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And when Jesus went and saw, he wept. and he raised Lazarus from the dead, the greatest of all his signs and wonders, save the sign and wonder of his own death and resurrection. The Gospel of John is a gospel that invites us to come and see the life of Jesus, his mighty acts and deeds, and ponder their meaning for our lives and for our world. That invitation that he extends to come and see

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is the answer that Jesus gives to the question, where are you staying? Where are you staying? Andrew asks, an odd question, to which Jesus answers, come and see. The word that's translated here as stay, staying, is the same word that Jesus uses elsewhere in the gospel when he speaks of abiding.

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Abide in me and I will abide in you, he promises. Those who abide in me and I in them will bear much fruit, he says. Among his last words at the Passover meal the night of his arrest are, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.

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In John's gospel, there is a story about what happens when you come and see the life of Jesus. And it is a story about where it is that the journey will take you. It will take you to His abiding place, where God dwells and God's people gather in His name. Oh, and I almost forgot, there's one other little thing I should mention.

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When Jesus invited the two disciples to come and see where He was abiding, they followed Him and remained with Him that day. And John notes it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Don't you think that's kind of a funny thing to add there as well? I mean, to look at your watch at that point, to note what time it is?

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Except if you understand the meaning of what happens at 4 o'clock in the afternoon in the early church, in John's church. Four o'clock in the afternoon, you see, was when John's church gathered for worship. And they broke bread and shared the cup, and they knew that Jesus was abiding with them and they with him. No church can ever claim exclusive rights as Jesus' sole abiding place.

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as if Jesus could be limited to the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, or to University Presbyterian in Austin, or Memorial Drive in Houston, or Liberation Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Jesus no doubt abides in all those places, maybe even in some of those wonderful Methodist churches in North Alabama. And it is not to say that God cannot be known in the beauty of the creation and the glory of the heavens and the intricate wonder of a fingerprint etched onto an infant's hand.

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It's just that Jesus promises that when we do gather here or wherever we gather in His name and we break bread and share the cup, He abides with us and we with Him. Someone has said that the rhythm of the church is simply this, Gather the people, tell the story, break the bread. Place, people, story, as Dorothy described it so well this morning.

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John remembers that when the disciples gathered and broke bread and prayed and sang and worshiped and shared fellowship and ate together, and went out to serve the needs of those who were poor, the widowed, the homeless, the hungry, the fearful, those who were alone. When they gathered at St. John's Church to do that at 4 o'clock, they knew Jesus would be there abiding with them.

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This is good news for the church, for your church and my church, for every church, I think. The promise that when we gather, Jesus is present among us, abiding with us, because sometimes he is so obscured in the church. I look at the church sometimes, Christ's church, and wonder if anybody comes and looks around to see what's going on, whether they will see Jesus abiding there among us.

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Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Methodists all tearing themselves apart on ordination issues. Southern Baptists running the finest and most respected of their faculties out of their seminaries in a purge of theological intolerance. The Roman Catholic Church plagued by clergy who cannot keep their vows of celibacy. In our local congregations, we fight over the most amazing things.

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Babies crying in worship and whether they belong there. Whether God can be praised by PowerPoint projection or whether God needs hymnals. Whether it is proper to raise one's hands in prayer or whether they must be by your side. Whether lime green carpeting is acceptable in the vestibule or only fuchsia will do.

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Over the years, I've seen a lot of things in the church that must give Jesus a headache, if not heartburn or maybe even break his heart. abiding with us in the way he does all the time, except perhaps when we drive him out with a spirit of discord. Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, writes about the imperfect vessel that the church is. Writing of her own congregation in North Dakota, she says, We are not individuals who have come together because we are like-minded.

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We are like most healthy churches, I think, in that we can do pretty well when it comes to loving and serving God, each other, and the world. But God help us if we have to agree about things. I could test our uniformity by suggesting a major remodeling of the sanctuary, or worse, that holy of holies, the church kitchen. But I value my life too much.

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She goes on, The church is like the incarnation itself, a shaky proposition. It is a human institution full of ordinary people, sinners, like me, who say and do cruel, stupid things. But it is also a divinely inspired institution, full of good purpose, which partakes of a unity far greater than the sum of its parts.

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That's why it's called the body of Christ. And that is why when the battles rage, people hold on. They find a sufficient unity and a rubbed raw, but sufficient love, and even the presence of God. What are you looking for?

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It's finally not the church that we come seeing, but the one who abides there. And every now and then we see him, if only briefly, in of all places, one another. Exactly as he promised. Many of you know the story that Annie Lamott tells about her small Presbyterian church in Marin City, California.

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As you know, Annie Lamott is white, and her church is mostly African. American. It's a church where even in her drug-addicted and alcoholic days, when she was pregnant without a husband, she came and sat in the back, lured by the music, and they accepted her. One of the newer members of that tiny church in Marin City was a man named Ken who was dying of AIDS, disintegrating right before everybody's eyes.

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Shortly after Ken started attending, his partner died of the disease. Ken said that right after Brandon died, Jesus slid into the hole of his heart, that Brandon's lost, left, and he's been there ever since. Ken, says Lamott, has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he's radiant. He looks like God's crazy nephew, Phil.

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And he says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus and us. There was a woman in the choir of the church named Rinola, and she had been brought up as a Baptist in the South. She was always a little standoffish toward Ken. She always looked at him with confusion if she looked at him at all.

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Ken missed church for a few weeks, battling an opportunistic infection and got weaker. And when he finally made his way back, he was looking considerably thinner and his face even more lopsided. On that particular Sunday, the congregation sang Jacob's Ladder as the first hymn. Every rung goes higher, higher, but Ken couldn't stand up.

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Nonetheless, he sang while sitting down, the hymnal in his lap. The second hymn that day was His Eyes on the Sparrow. The piano was playing, the congregation was standing, the only one still sitting was Ken, too weak to get up. As the congregation began to sing, why should I feel discouraged?

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Why do the shadows fall? Rinola watched Ken rather skeptically at first, and then her face started to contort and melt like his. And she went to his side and bent down to lift him up, lifted this white rag doll, this scarecrow, and she held him next to her, draped over against her like a child while they sang. And Annie Lamott says, it pierced me.

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In the final analysis, it is not always possible to see Jesus present either in the world or in the actions of the church, which is, I suppose, why at the end of John's gospel, Jesus says to Thomas, the doubting disciple, you believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. And maybe that's what we hang on to when we cannot see Jesus clearly, that even beyond what we see with our eyes or hear with our ears, we can still know Him present by faith in our hearts, and especially at the table where He abides with us and we with Him. Take, oh, take me as I am.

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Summon out what I shall be. Set your seal upon my heart and live in me. Take, oh, take me as I am. Summon out what

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out what I shall be. Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God. Scripture says that we shall come from north and south, from east and west, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. This is the Lord's table, and our Savior invites all those who trust in Him to share in His feast that He has prepared.

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The Lord be with you. And also with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.

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Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. We give right to give our thanks and praise. Almighty God, creator and sustainer of life, your majesty and power, your continued blessings and your great goodness fill us with wonder. We are unworthy of the pardon you have in mercy given, and we can only bring our thanks, putting our trust in your Son, who alone saves us from evil.

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Therefore, in joy with prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints of every time and place, we join in giving you praise. Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, God. Takers of his body and blood, so that he may live in us and we in him. God of mercy, in thanks we remember that the Lord Jesus invites us to his table.

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imprinting on our hearts his sacrifice on the cross. So in humility we bow before the righteous one, who was wounded for our transgressions, and who for our sake became sin and suffered death. God of glory, in gratitude we recall your victory over evil, raising the Lord Jesus from the dead, and in raising us to eternal life as we await his appearance. Almighty God, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us and these gifts, that as we receive bread and wine, we may be assured of our Savior's promise, given in these signs, that they will be fulfilled.

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Remember, Lord, your church throughout the world and all who minister in it. Remember also this seminary, and all who have gathered here this night within the embrace of your community. Remember, Lord, the world of nations, and for this nation, during the fervor of this election season, may your peace and justice prevail.

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Remember, Lord, all our companions on the way, those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, and who are suffering or dying or grieving. Hold us all in your outstretched arms. Eternal Lord, lift our hearts and minds on high, where with Christ and your only Son, and with the Holy Spirit, all glory is yours, now and for ever more.

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Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debts. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. My brothers and sisters, the night which our Lord was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread, And giving thanks, he broke it and said to his disciples, This is my body which has been broken for you.

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In the same manner after supper, he took the cup and said to his disciples, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sin. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you remember the Lord's death. The gifts of God for the people of God. Come, for all is ready.

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Mercy on host. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on host. Lamb of God, you take away.

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Now, let us all pray together as one. Almighty god, we give you thanks and praise that when we were still far off, you met us with your son, brought us home. Dying and living, he declared for love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of the Lord. life.

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We, who drink this cup, bring life to others. We, who the Spirit enlightens, give life to the world. Keep us firm in the hope which you have set before us, so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name, through Christ our Lord. Strengthen the famed artists who work weak and honor all men and women.

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Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the beloved God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit given you and those who love forever . .

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. . . .

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. . . .

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. .