On this Second Sunday after the Epiphany, the lectionary drops us into the Gospel of John with a phrase that is easy to miss: “the next day.”

The next day after what?

Well, the next day after John has been questioned by the religious authorities, interrogated, really, about who he is and what he’s doing out there by the river.

They want to pin him down.

They want him categorized.

They want him controllable.

And John refuses.

In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist—really, John the Testifier—keeps saying, in effect: “It is not about me.”

I’m not the Messiah.

Not Elijah.

Not the prophet.

Not the center.

He is a voice.

A witness.

A finger pointing away from himself toward Someone else.

Which is a word we need right now, because we are living in a moment that is saturated with people trying to make everything about themselves—about power, dominance, winning, control.

We are watching authoritarian impulses harden in public life: contempt for truth, scapegoating of the vulnerable, cruelty presented as policy.

We are carrying grief and anger and exhaustion as we watch unrest unfold in Minneapolis—again—and as we hear of a woman killed and others wounded, injured, and traumatized in the web of state violence and immigration enforcement.

Some of us feel afraid.

Some of us feel numb.

Some of us feel ready to fight.

Many of us feel all of the above before breakfast.

So here comes the Gospel with its quiet insistence: the next day is still God’s day.

The next day, witness still matters.

The next day, Jesus still comes walking toward us.

John sees Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Not the sin of a few bad individuals.

Not the private mistakes we whisper about in confession—though God is tender with those, too.

John says, the sin of the world, the sin of the cosmos, the whole tangled system of violence and fear and domination that distorts human life and wounds creation itself.

That’s important, because when the world is on fire, religion can become a way of shrinking the story: making salvation only about my soul and my afterlife.

But John refuses to shrink it.

The Lamb of God is not a private spiritual accessory.

The Lamb is God’s response to the world.

Now, “Lamb of God” is layered language.

It echoes the Passover lamb—liberation from slavery, a people marked and gathered and protected as they step toward freedom.

It echoes Isaiah’s suffering servants, someone who refuses the logic of retaliation, who absorbs violence without becoming violent.

And John doesn’t let us choose only one meaning.

In this Gospel, symbols pile up: liberation, protection, solidarity, self-giving love.

A Lamb, not a lion.

Not a war horse.

Not a strongman.

Which is already a direct critique of the authoritarian imagination.

Authoritarianism promises salvation through domination: If we can just control enough people, silence enough voices, deport enough bodies, punish enough dissent, then we will finally be safe.

That is the oldest lie in the book.

And the Gospel answers with a Lamb.

Not weak.

Not passive.

But committed to a different power altogether: the power of truth-telling love that refuses to become what it opposes.

John then says something equally striking: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.”

The Spirit remains.

The Spirit abides.

We tend to treat the dove as a pretty symbol, a religious logo.

But John is doing something bolder.

The Spirit of God takes on creaturely form: feathers and flight, breath and body.

God doesn’t hover above creation in disdain.

God enters creation.

God embraces the material world.

God shows up through water and breath and bodies.

And that matters, too, in a time when human beings are treated like paperwork.

When migrants are reduced to “cases.”

When Black bodies are treated as threats.

When political rhetoric turns neighbors into categories and enemies.

The dove says: God is present in flesh, in creation, in vulnerable life.

The Spirit abides in Jesus, and that abiding becomes a pattern for how God will abide with us.

Then the story shifts.

John points again: “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”

And two of John’s disciples begin to follow Jesus.

Jesus turns and asks his first words in this Gospel as a question: “What are you looking for?”

Or better, “What are you seeking?”

That question lands differently depending on the week you’ve had.

What are you seeking when you read the news and feel your chest tighten?

What are you seeking when you see the machinery of the state grind down the vulnerable?

What are you seeking when you want to protect your people, your family, your town, your community, when you want to do something that matters?

Some of us are seeking safety.

Some of us are seeking clarity.

Some of us are seeking courage.

Some of us are seeking a way to keep our hearts from hardening.

The disciples answer Jesus’ question with a question of their own: “Rabbi, where are you staying?”

Where are you dwelling?

Where are you abiding?

They are not asking for his street address.

They are asking, where does your life come from?

Where do you live from?

What holds you steady?

Because when the world is unstable, what we most need is not a quick fix but a place to stand.

A way to remain human.

A way to remain loving.

And Jesus answers with three simple words: “Come and see.”

Not “sign here.”

Not “agree to everything.”

Not “prove you’re worthy.”

Just: come. see.

We Episcopalians get nervous about invitations to religion.

We’ve seen coercive evangelism.

We’ve heard the threats dressed up as good news.

But John’s Gospel gives us a different model: a spacious invitation into encounter, relationship, participation.

Jesus does not recruit an audience; he gathers companions.

They go with him, and John tells us, almost casually, “It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.”

Such a specific time.

Why mention it?

Because life happens in time.

Because some moments brand themselves into memory with holy particularity.

You remember the hour you got the call.

You remember the afternoon the diagnosis came.

You remember the minute your child was born.

You remember the moment you realized things had changed.

And you remember the hour you first stayed with Jesus, not as an idea, not as a doctrine, but as a presence.

We are living through an hour like that.

We are living through afternoons we will remember.

And the question is not whether these times will shape us.

They will.

The question is what they will make of us.

So, what does this Gospel call us to do, as followers of Jesus, in an anxious and authoritarian-leaning time?

First: we practice testimony.

John’s whole vocation is witness: I have seen.

I have heard. I can’t unsee it.

I can’t unknow it.

The church’s task is not to be “neutral” about human suffering.

The church’s task is to tell the truth about who God is and what God desires for the world.

Testimony means we name what is happening.

We do not spiritualize state violence.

We do not baptize cruelty as “order.”

We do not let propaganda replace reality.

We tell the truth: every person is made in the image of God; no human being is illegal; Black lives are not expendable; fear is not a moral philosophy; and the power of the state is not the same as the reign of God.

And testimony is not only words.

It is presence.

It is accompaniment.

It is showing up—at vigils, at town meetings, at courtrooms, at protests when conscience calls, with our bodies and our prayers and our willingness to be counted.

Second: we follow the Lamb. The Lamb does not mirror the violence of the empire.

The Lamb exposes it.

The Lamb takes away the sin of the world not by becoming a bigger bully, but by refusing to let violence have the last word.

So, our action must be both fierce and nonviolent, both courageous and rooted in love. That can look like supporting immigrant neighbors with practical care—rides, meals, accompaniment, legal aid funds, community networks.

It can look like joining racial justice work that is led by those most impacted.

It can look like calling elected officials, yes—but also building local solidarity that does not depend on federal sanity.

In a place like Newcastle, it can look like forming partnerships beyond our town lines, remembering that rural and coastal communities are not exempt from the moral choices of the nation.

Third: we learn to abide, to remain, to dwell.

Not as a retreat from action, but as the source of it.

Because here’s the truth: if we do not learn to abide in Christ, we will burn out—or we will become what we fight.

Abiding looks like prayer that tells the truth: lament, anger, grief, intercession—not performative positivity.

Abiding looks like Sabbath as resistance: refusing the empire’s demand that we be endlessly reactive, endlessly consumable, endlessly available to outrage.

Abiding looks like Eucharist: week after week, God feeding us with God’s own life, re-humanizing us when the world tries to dehumanize.

Abiding looks like community where we can say, without shame, “I’m scared,” and hear back, “You are not alone.”

It looks like singing when we don’t feel like singing.

It looks like telling the stories of the saints and the freedom movements and the ordinary brave people who kept going because Love was more real than fear.

And abiding also looks like listening for Jesus’ first question: What are you seeking? Not what are you doomscrolling.

Not what are you outraged about today.

But what, deep down, are you seeking?

If you are seeking a way to stay tender, come and see.

If you are seeking courage, come and see.

If you are seeking a life that is bigger than despair, come and see.

If you are seeking a love that can outlast authoritarianism, outlast cruelty, outlast death itself—come and see. Because the Gospel does not end with John’s testimony.

It spreads.

Andrew goes and finds his brother: “We have found the Messiah.”

And then Jesus looks at Simon and gives him a new name.

A new identity.

A new future.

That is what Jesus does.

He interrupts the identities the world assigns—threat, alien, disposable, enemy, nobody, collateral damage—and he speaks a truer name.

Beloved. Child of God. Disciple. Friend.

So, in this difficult hour, our calling is not to be spectators.

It is to be witnesses.

It is to follow.

It is to abide.

It is to invite.

Not with coercion.

Not with superiority.

But with the humble confidence of those who have found a place to stand.

“Come and see,” Jesus says.

And we, the church, say it too—not only with words, but with lives that point beyond ourselves: to the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, to the Spirit who abides, to the Love that does not let go.

It may be about four o’clock in the afternoon in our nation’s story.

The light may feel like it’s fading.

But the Gospel insists: this is still the hour when Jesus meets us.

So, come.

And see.

And remain.