The Apprentice

The story is told of the man who had quite a successful painting business. John the Painter always seemed to come in with a lower bid then his competitors, and he got the job done much faster. What folks didn’t know is that John thinned his paint. He’d dilute it with some kind of solvent so that a can of his paint would go twice as far as a can of anyone else’s paint; he could cover twice the amount of surface and because the paint was so thin he could go twice as fast.

One spring the local Baptist church decided that they needed to paint their building. It was a big old barn of a church, and it was going to take a lot of paint, so they wanted to get the best deal they could. They got bids from several painters, but of course John had the lowest bid, so he got the job. Now John was on the horns of a moral dilemma. It just didn’t seem right to cheat the church the way that he cheated all everyone else. So he decided to do the job right. He wouldn’t dilute the paint. It would cost him more, and he’d lose money on this job, but it was the right thing to do.

First day on the job, everything went fine. He was even feeling good about reforming his ways. But old habits die hard, and after a while he got to thinking about all of the money that he was losing, and he decided that thinning the paint a little bit wouldn’t hurt anyone. So on the second day he was slapping on the thin stuff. But he’d used up so much paint the first day that his paint was running low. So as the second day progressed into the third day, he was thinning the paint more and more.

It was late in the afternoon on that third day, and he was just about done – and just about out of paint – when he noticed that the sky was getting dark. And then he heard the thunder. And all of a sudden it was just pouring rain. And the downpour was taking all of that thin paint right off the church. When there was yet another flash of lightening and a great big crash of thunder, John the Painter knew that God was angry with him, that God was judging him for cheating this church and for cheating all of his other customers. So John called out, “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

And God replied – wait for it – “Repaint, repaint; and thin no more!”

The third chapter of Matthew’s gospel tells the story not of John the Painter, but of John the Baptist. And John’s message – which was really God’s message spoken through John – wasn’t “Repaint;” it was, “Repent!” Which means, “Turn around! Change your ways! Your life is going in the wrong direction, so you need to turn around and go a different way and live a life that will please God!” That’s what John was preaching out there in the desert near the Jordan River, and as his message spread west to Jerusalem and up the Jordan Valley to Galilee, people went into the wilderness to hear this guy preach and learn from him and even allow him to give them a ritual bath in the Jordan; which symbolically cleansed their bodies as they experienced the grace of God cleansing their souls. Some of then decided to stay with John out there in the desert. They formed a little community. They became his disciples; which means they became his students, his followers; those who were being trained by him to practice the same kind of austere lifestyle that he was living; to follow God in the way that he was following God.

In Matthew 3:1 we read that “Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.” Now we learn in Luke’s gospel that John and Jesus were cousins. Distant cousins, perhaps; we don’t know how closely their mothers were related; the Bible simply says that Mary and Elizabeth were relatives (Luke 1:36). But regardless of how close they were on the family tree, they were close enough emotionally that when Mary learned that she was pregnant with Jesus and that Elizabeth was also pregnant, Mary went to stay with Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah (see Luke 1:39-56). If their mothers were close, then Jesus and John probably spent time together as boys. They would’ve been only a few months apart in age, and John being the older one was maybe the leader of the two during those childhood years. Makes me think of my best boyhood friend, Peter. He was only a week older than I was, but Peter was the leader, he was the one who came up with the great ideas about what to do when we were together and I was happy to go along for the ride because it was such a joy just to be with him. Maybe John and Jesus had a relationship like that. In fact, you know that time when Jesus was twelve years old and he went with his family to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover and he got left behind? Maybe John got left behind too. Maybe it was John’s idea to go running around Jerusalem and get into some mischief. Maybe that’s how they ended up in the Temple, going into places where no twelve year old boys had gone before.

It’s reasonable to think that John and Jesus had been close as boys. And then probably they went their separate ways for a while. I imagine John being the wilder one of the two; maybe like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ story (see Luke 15:11-32), he went off for a few years and enjoyed some wild flings with women and spent money that he didn’t have before the Spirit turned his life around, and he started to preach the good news of repentance and forgiveness to others. And Jesus; I think he was the more cerebral one – after all, it was Jesus as a twelve-year-old talking to the teachers in the Temple, not John and Jesus together but Jesus alone because maybe John was still running around Jerusalem getting into mischief and Jesus had gotten bored with that – I imagine Jesus as the more cerebral one who spent time learning Torah with the rabbis and learning the trade of carpentry with his father while John ran around being wild.

But Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized by John. He had heard his cousin’s message. No doubt he too longed for this monastic life that his once-wild playmate had chosen in the wilderness. Some scholars think that in fact Jesus became one of John’s disciples. Seems plausible. They both talked about the kingdom of God; or, as it’s called in Matthew’s gospel, the kingdom of heaven. They both retreated to the wilderness. In fact, the way that Matthew tells the story, Jesus’ early message was identical to John’s. They both said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (see Matthew 3:2 and 4:17).

Jesus and John may’ve been close as boys. Jesus was probably one of John’s disciples. Jesus the follower and John the leader; I think that was the pattern for much of their time together. But you know, the time comes when you have to strike out on your own. Jesus the Follower had this nagging sense that he was called to be Jesus the Leader, so at some point he and John split. John said, “Repent!” and yes there was the promise of forgiveness as well, but his emphasis seems to have been on the sins of the people, on how they were doing things wrong; on how their lives were going in the wrong direction as perhaps his life had once gone in the wrong direction, and they had to turn things around. Even Luke, who tells a more gentle version of the story than Matthew does, even Luke makes it clear that John has some hard things to say (see Luke 3:7-14). “You brood of vipers,” he said, “you pack of snakes; quit ripping off the poor; quit telling lies about people; turn your lives around!” It was as if John was saying, “Repent and [much more quietly] you will be forgiven.” Whereas Jesus’ message was more like, “Repent and you will be forgiven.” Jesus said some of the same hard things that John said, but as I read the gospels I sense at the same time a gentleness about Jesus that maybe John didn’t have. Jesus could hit you right between the eyes when he needed to, but the next day Jesus might be sharing a meal with you. Jesus made it more clear, I think, than John did that on the other side of repentance, there is forgiveness. You have to stop doing things that hurt people, you have to stop doing things that dishonour God, but once you’ve turned it around, you can walk straight into God’s gentle and accepting embrace.

Jesus and John had their differences; so much so that at some point Jesus decided that he had to strike out on his own. Jesus the Apprentice became Jesus the solitary man in prayer; and then Jesus the Mentor, Jesus the Leader, Jesus the Son of Man. Jesus shifted the focus a bit from judgment to forgiveness; from merely preaching to both preaching and action; from beating people over the head to focusing on individual and social needs. Sometime after they went their separate ways, two of John’s remaining disciples came to Jesus and said, “Hey Jesus, your old teacher has a question for you. Are you the Messiah, are you the Liberator of the Jews, or should we be looking for someone else?” And you can almost hear something like sarcasm and maybe even something like jealousy in their voices; the jealousy of John, perhaps. “Hey big shot, you’re healing all of these people and even bringing the dead back to life and attracting all these crowds with your preaching so gee, I guess you must be the Messiah!”

And Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (see Luke 7:18-23). You can sense the conflict in this exchange between Jesus and John’s disciples; probably between Jesus and John himself. “Tell John to cool his jets,” Jesus says; “tell John not to be so uptight; good things are happening.”

By his answer, Jesus defined his understanding of messianic responsibilities. What defines the Messiah is not ultimately doctrine, but what he does. What’s more important than getting it right up here is doing what’s right in the world. “Forget about your conventional ideas about what Messiah means,” Jesus says, “and get out there and heal the sick and feed the hungry and offer hospitality to the homeless and the lonely.”

At first Jesus was probably John’s disciple. But then he went his own way, because there comes a time when you have to strike out on your own. Shamus [whom we baptized today] will be raised in a wonderful home, filled with love and laughter; but there will come a time when he will strike out on his own. Eli Manning, the quarterback for the New York Giants, has been living in the shadow of his famous big brother, Peyton; but the way he’s been playing these last few weeks suggests that the time has come for Ely to strike out on his own. Some of us have come to this church from China, from a nation where Christianity has been discouraged and where free thinking has sometimes been crushed, but you’ve come to Canada and you’ve decided to see what Christianity has to offer because the time has come for you to strike out on your own. Some of us have been content to be followers in our families or the workplace or the voluntary associations of which we are a part; some of us have been content to be followers and to let others speak freely and do most of the hard work even when maybe you didn’t always agree with what was being said or done, but the time comes for you to strike out on your own.

It takes a lot of courage to leave the comfort of the group and strike out on your own. But that’s what finding your calling is all about. That’s what figuring out what you are meant to do and be is all about. Because, you see, comfort is not always a good thing. In the book Watership Down some wild rabbits come upon some other rabbits who have a real comfortable home with plenty to eat and they don’t even have to work hard to find their food; it’s just given to them somehow; and these wild rabbits figure that their new friends have it made. Until they discover that these friends in fact live on a rabbit farm. And sure they have it easy and comfortable, but the price that they have to pay is that every once and a while a few of them get killed for their meat. You see, sometimes when you opt for the comfort of the group and the comfort of convention and the comfort of the familiar; when you choose comfort, sometimes what you opt for is a slow death.

As they say in New Hampshire, “Live free or die.” Sometimes you have to strike out on your own.

It can get pretty lonely when you do so, and that too is a big price to pay. When Jesus walked away from John’s camp out there in the desert near the Jordan, when he walked away from John’s camp, he spent more than a month alone in the wilderness (see Matthew 4:1-11). But it’s better to be alone with yourself than comfortable in a crowd that’s telling you to be something other than the person whom God made you to be. Amen.



Text: Matthew 3:13

Preached by Bruce D. Ervin

13 January 2008