Sermon for the second Sunday after the Epiphany

The biblical text is John 1:29-42.

Most of us have experienced what it feels like to be misjudged or misunderstood.

The pain of that memory can sometimes cause us to seethe with anger at the injustice, even years after the fact.

Less common and less visceral are memories of times when we have discovered ourselves to be the ones misjudging others.

Psychologists have discovered a reason for this: they call it “the fundamental attribution error.”

What it means is that people tend to name external circumstances as the cause of their own faults, while simultaneously blaming other peoples’ faults on defects of character.

Here’s an example: You are at a stoplight and rush in front of another driver.

You think to yourself, “Sorry about that, but I can’t be late for work!”

Now, if you’re the driver in the other car, and you see this happen in front of you, you think, “What a jerk! They don’t know how to drive!”

That’s the fundamental attribution error in action. The first driver chalks the mistake up to circumstances, while the second driver chalks it up to the other person’s character.

People do this. In the story of our own lives, we tend to cast ourselves in the role of either the hero or the victim, but never as the bad guy. The role of villain is given to someone else.

But here’s the funny thing: the “bad guys” in each of our stories are the “good guys” in their own story, while we ourselves are the “bad guys” in their stories.

The world loves to divide people into categories: us and them, good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains.

We pass judgment on one another and react, rather than respond, when circumstances turn inconvenient.

It’s as though each of us is in the process of writing our own superhero comic book, fighting like mad to ensure that the “good guys” win in the end.

The problem is that, when we do this, we aren’t relating to each other as whole people, each with their own complex challenges of circumstance and character.

Life is complicated. People are complicated. And at the end of the day, there are no good guys or bad guys, just people.

In today’s gospel, we get to see an example of a time when one person was able to look at another and see the truth beneath the surface of that person.

When St. John the Baptist looked at Jesus, he saw past the categories that other people put on him. John saw Jesus for who he truly is.

Jesus was no stranger to being misjudged by other people. Time and again in the gospels, people can’t get past the categories in which they had placed him:

Son of Joseph, carpenter, heretic, radical. Even his own family came to believe that Jesus was crazy.

All of these people made up their minds about Jesus and dismissed him.

But John the Baptist doesn’t do that. John sees Jesus with a different set of eyes.

The gospel calls John a “prophet”, one who was “sent from God” as “a witness to the light.” Whatever else this may mean, we can at least say that it means this:

John the Baptist saw Jesus for who he was, from a spiritually-centered point-of-view.

We know that John lived simply, out in the desert. He had few possessions and sustained himself, as the text of the Bible tells us, on “locusts and wild honey.” As far as we can tell, he was unmarried. He was given to prayer and the preaching of spiritual renewal in baptism.

When Jesus arrives on the scene, John is ready to see him differently too.

Where some saw just another crazy person or heretic, John saw Jesus’ true self, beyond the categories imposed on him by the world.

This ability is not unique to John.

We get a glimpse, in John’s vision, of the way God sees each and every one of us. When we feel misunderstood or misjudged, God looks at us and seeing past the shell of worldly categories to the treasure beneath the surface of our lives.

That treasure is there in your life because it was placed there by God.

Even better, God wants us to see that treasure too, so that we can share it with others. Whenever our dignity is maligned by our neighbors (or even ourselves), God is working quietly behind the scenes to bring prophets like John into our lives who will see and draw out that divine treasure.

I believe that John’s gift of spiritual insight is available to all of us, if we choose to make use of it.

Our spiritual practices sharpen and focus the way we look at the world and our understanding of the people around us. The Scriptures and the Sacraments keep us connected to the core beliefs and values that tell us there is inherent dignity in every human life, no matter what categories people may try to impose on it.

We read in the Bible that our neighbors are reflections of God’s image, members of the Body of Christ, and living stones in the temple of the Holy Spirit. In the Sacraments, we all pass through the waters of Baptism and partake of the bread and cup of the Eucharist as members of the one Body of Christ. We are part of each other, precisely because we are part of Christ. This is how St. Paul is able to say, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” (1 Cor. 12:21)

In prayer and meditation, we connect the joys and concerns of daily living to our divine life in God. Even secular psychologists have come to admit in recent years that the practice of meditation is good for human relationships. It lowers stress levels and raises empathy, so that we can respond to crises from a place of peace, rather than react out of anger.

Spiritually centered people don’t see “good guys” and “bad guys,” but “people.” They don’t think in terms of “us” and “them,” but “We.”

God sees each of us as beloved children. People who see the world from God’s point-of-view see their neighbors in that same way.

That’s how John saw Jesus. That’s how God sees us.

My prayer this morning is that we too will continue, day by day, through Word and Sacrament, through prayer and meditation, to look at each other in this same way. When we do, we will be seeing one another with the eyes of God.