Sunday 18th January 2026 – Upper Church CR
Epiphany 2 (Week of Prayer for Christian Unity) (Charles Gore)
Jn 1.29-42
And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.
Father, those thought and words which come from you, will you take them and bless them and those thoughts and words which come not from you, but from our own vanity, will you forgive.
Amen.
It is not difficult to see why today’s Gospel has been appointed to be read as we continue with the Epiphany theme.
John, who is both Witness and Baptist, whom we readily associate with Advent, is also an Epiphany figure.
Today we hear him announcing, revealing, making manifest through his declaration and testimony, the identity of Jesus.
If the prologue to John’s Gospel starts with a propositional theology of the eternal logos, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….. by verse 29, – where we begin this morning, – we in the realms of narrative theology and narrative Christology in particular.
Within this narrative, the identity and purpose of Jesus are consistent with the prologue, but this morning, we are in story mode and what we learn about Jesus is rooted in the sequential run of human events.
John announces that Jesus is the Son of God and, – twice in fact, – that Jesus is the Lamb of God.
John’s lips echo the eternal nature of Jesus who ranks ahead of him because, in God, he existed, before him.
John, ‘the baptiser-in-water’, testifies to having witnessed the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove, this time echoing, but famously not repeating the witness of Matthew, Mark and Luke, to the Baptism of Jesus.
He bears witness to Jesus both as ‘the anointed one’ – and the anointer of all who receive the Holy Spirit.
Followers of John are the hearers of this Epiphany, this testimony, this teaching, this foundational doctrine and the encouragement to follow Jesus.
Scripture leads us to understand John, himself, as expecting Jesus to carry out judgement against sinners, with his winnowing fork in his hand, gathering wheat into the barn and burning the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Perhaps John saw in Jesus the apocalyptic warrior-lamb of some Jewish writers as he proclaimed him the Lamb of God
Unnerved by what actually unfolds in the ministry of Jesus, maybe, John later sent to him to ask if he was the one who is to come or whether people should look for someone else.
The Evangelist, however, allows John’s proclamation to allude to the sacrificial lamb who will be slain to save sinners rather than to a warrior-lamb who will execute Judgement.
I am using words like “announces,” “echoing,” and “testify” because this teaching is all found in the narrative about John the Baptiser and Witness.
Narrative is shy of precision; it allows nuance it permits interpretation and re-interpretation and occasionally holds together apparent contradiction.
It is open to perception, to allusion, to fresh understanding and, perhaps, to deliberate ambiguity – so – whether or not John personally baptised Jesus, the Evangelist leaves open to debate and to the testimony of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
If theology is derived from the narrative of believing witnesses, and the evangelists in particular, then our own narratives are important too – for the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – or on Easter Evening, as John has it – is the one who baptises, anoints and inspires with that same Spirit today.
If the fruits of the Spirit were evident in the Apostolic age, are they not evident today in those who bring love and joy and peace to the lives of others?
In pondering the Gospel for today, I was struck by the commentator’s term ‘narrative Christology.’
There are ambiguous strands to the narrative of Christology and to the language of where we find Christ.
In a famous quotation, attributed to Theresa of Avila, Christ is somehow located within us:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
It is in our earthly bodies and their works that others are to encounter Christ and the fruits of his spirit.
Christ is to be found in us as we are to be found in him through baptism.
The compassionate Christ within gives rise to the service of our neighbour.
But that is not the only narrative – for we are called to find Christ in the faces of friend and neighbour.
In that we have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, housed the homeless, we have fed, clothed, visited or accommodated Jesus.
Jesus Christ is not simply inside us or outside us but both; we are Christ to one another…..a narrative set to music in modern hymnody:
Brother, Let Me Be Your Servant
Let Me Be As Christ To You
Pray That I May Have The Grace
To Let You Be My Servant, Too
Epiphany – the making manifest of Jesus Christ, begins in the human experience – and then expressed in the narrative of scripture; but that scripture, itself bears witness to the ascension of Christ and his continued presence in the world through the Spirit…….all richly described and explained by St Paul in his letters……
Epiphany – moves us from the Christological narrative of who Jesus is to the Pneumatological narrative of how he remains present in the world today and to the Ecclesiological narrative of his body present to countless countries, for Jesus Christ, the Son of God continues to be revealed to the world today.
The narrative, of course, is a tapestry made of scripture, history, story, tradition and reason…….and is still being woven today by you and me who are both weft and warp as well as weavers.
If the narrative were captured on something like the Bayeux Tapestry, it would be woven in different styles over different periods, by people with differing skills and techniques and competence, through history from creation to today’s unfinished working end.
As this week of prayer for Christian unity begins, we might imagine sections woven in images of eastern iconography and texts of non-conformist hymnody whether in German or Welsh.
May God bless the continuing witness of the whole Church and of every Christian soul – to the one who is the Lamb of God, present, by His Spirit, in the world today, and in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.