Our life-long journey of faith, as with any long distance trek, proceeds by stages. Andrew and John began their spiritual journeys as followers of John the Baptizer. He was God’s messenger crying in the wilderness. John was credible because of his authentic and passionate commitment to God. His surroundings, wardrobe and diet demonstrated that he wasn’t in it for the money! He was also a man of courage, who did not mince his words. He challenged injustice head-on and had zero tolerance for religious pretense. The response he demanded from his
hearers was that they should clean up their act, symbolized by a ritual washing in the Jordan River. Hence the name
recorded in history, John the Baptizer.

The role of John the Baptizer was to announce the coming of the Kingdom and to prepare God’s people by his urgent appeals for repentance. He was a voice crying in the wilderness, not a preacher in the temple. The wilderness was the place of repentance and renewal. He baptized in the River Jordan, flowing along the frontier of the Promised Land. So when the baptized emerged from the water they represented another significant wave of occupation, just as it had been at the time of Joshua’s conquest and, hundreds of years later, of the return from exile in Babylonia. They gave notice that God was unfolding a new chapter in the history of his people.

In John’s eyes establishment religion had lost all credibility. Consequently, he pointed people away from a corrupt institution toward the coming of God’s reign, which he believed to be close at hand. Jesus, John the Baptizer’s cousin, had journeyed from Galilee to be baptized by John as a way of showing his identification with sinful people. Soon after that significant event, which signaled the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the phasing out of John’s, he pointed Jesus out to two of his closest followers declaring, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

Although this description may not communicate much in our present day cultural context, it was an attention-getter as far as Peter and John were concerned. “The Lamb of God” refers to the Passover lamb that they killed to commemorate God’s anger passing over them, leaving them unharmed when God’s judgment fell on Egypt for Pharaoh’s refusal to release Israel from bondage. Animal sacrifice became central to the worship of Israel representing the transference of the guilt of their sins onto the substitute animal. The Feast of Passover, celebrated annually in the Temple, was the most important pilgrimage of the year. The hills around Jerusalem were dotted with grazing flocks of sheep, ready for sacrifice in the Temple. For Peter and John a lamb dedicated to God represented a vivid picture of an innocent one suffering on behalf of another. So from day one they knew from John the Baptizer’s description that Jesus was destined to bear in his own person the sins of humankind.

John the Baptizer was no empire-builder. His concern was to prepare people to recognize and follow his Lord. When Jesus approached him in the midst of the crowd of people coming to be cleansed from the defilement of their sins, John was not only reluctant to baptize Jesus. He confessed, “I need to be baptized by you” (Matthew 3:14). The task of the witness is always to point people to Jesus and not to attract a personal following. Our goal must never be to gain control of a person’s life but rather to influence them in order that God’s purposes be fulfilled in their life.
There comes a moment with every human leader when it is time to say goodbye and move on. That individual has taken us as far as he or she is able. So now Peter and John leave John’s company never to return. For them John had provided a half-way-house. They now must follow the Lamb of God.

Jesus, realizing that he is being followed, turns to face them and asks, “What are you looking for?” Jesus throughout his ministry was acutely aware when people took their first steps in following him, and what prompted them. Jesus invites them to accompany him home and spend time with him. Little did they realize that this first encounter would represent a turning point in their own lives as well as for many other people.

Any relationship takes time to develop and can only deepen on the basis of trust. Peter and John trusted John the Baptizer sufficiently to follow in the direction he now pointed. They had probably witnessed Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and were at least aware that John had singled him out in the crowd. They accepted his description of Jesus as “the Lamb of God“ by faith. It would be three more years before Jesus fulfilled the role that John saw with such prophetic clarity and certainty.

To know where Jesus lived did not signify the beginning of a relationship of mere convenience. Their discovery was not like that of finding a reliable family doctor with whom one could then make future appointments when needed. The house they visited that day was not Jesus’ permanent address. It was only his lodging place for the time he was visiting Jerusalem. We are later informed that the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. In the Gospels Jesus is constantly on the move.

They immediately acknowledged Jesus as teacher, and that afternoon they received their first lesson, which lasted from four p.m. throughout the remainder of the day. We do not know anything that Jesus taught them on that visit. But one thing is clear; they came away convinced that Jesus was the one they should now be following.

We may define a witness as that individual who can tell another clearly and precisely how and where to find Jesus. We cannot send people back to the place where we first found him. Rather we must accompany them to the place where we encounter Christ at this present time. In other words, our witness must be current, not a nostalgia trip. The invitation is always “come and see;” never, ” go on your own to discover for yourself.”

The relationship begun with Jesus that day could only be sustained by Peter and John being prepared to continue in his company wherever he went. But that is the subject for another day.