What Are You Looking For?

John 1:35-42.  (January 18, 2015) 

I.

            It is now the third day since the story began with John’s affirmation to the delegation from Jerusalem that he is the voice crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord.  And it is the day after John testified about how he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus, causing him to identify Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

              John is standing with two of his disciples when Jesus walks by.  John looks at Jesus and exclaims: “Look, the Lamb of God!”  And the two disciples of John immediately follow after Jesus.

            When Jesus notices these two guys following him, he turns around and he asks them this basic question.  “What are you looking for?”  And he’s not just asking them this question, but he is asking us as well.  What are you looking for?  What are we looking for? 

            These are the first words of Jesus in this gospel.  And the Lord is saying that we have to get a grip on what we are seeking, what we are expecting, what we want and hope for, and we have to do that first, before anything he says or does is going to make any sense to us.

            Because very often what we are looking for will determine what we will find.  Until we are conscious of what we are looking for, we will not find the truth; we will just see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and have all our selfish agendas thoroughly affirmed.

            The important thing is that we recognize this at the outset.  We have to become conscious of what we are really looking for.  Once we see that, we will be better able to see as well when we are just feeding our own self-image, and reinforcing our own personal defense mechanisms, which means we are not seeing the truth at all.  We are only seeing what we want to see, not what is really out there.

            The first step in being able to see the truth is becoming aware of our own preconceptions, our prejudices, our blinders, our biases, our projections, and our sin – that is, our ego-centric, personality-driven way of looking at the world, and its devastating effects on the world.  And this is really hard to do.

            Because it is easy for us to hear Jesus as a kind of salesperson who is asking what we are looking for so he can get it for us.  As if he were in customer-service.  As if he were a genie granting us three wishes.  As if he were here to give us what we want, and if he doesn’t we will find someone, some other religion, some other provider, who will.  I mean, that’s our expectation as consumers.  We shop around for the best deal. 

            Ultimately, the things we are all looking for are good: we seek peace, security, freedom, happiness, health, good relationships, and we want these things for everyone, at least in theory.  The problem is that we can’t get there easily from here.  To get to these things requires a kind of transformation of our perceptions and our consciousness, and transformation means breaking our egos.  That’s why Jesus says we have to take up our crosses, that’s why so much of what he says is deeply challenging to our cherished self-image and our habitual ways of acting. 

            These things begin to emerge in our lives when we give up what we want, change what we are looking for, and reshape our desires according to what God wants.

II.

            The two disciples of John do not answer Jesus directly.  He asks what they are looking for, and they don’t say.  But to some degree it is obvious. They are looking for the One John indicated as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  They are looking for the forgiveness, freedom, and life implied by the image of the Lamb of God.

            What the two disciples do ask is where Jesus is staying.  They want to be with him where he is.  Jesus replies to them with an invitation, “Come and see.”  If we are looking for God’s living, saving Presence, we have to be in relationship with the Lamb of God.

            In order to find what we are looking for, what our hearts truly seek, we have to set aside what our egos have convinced us to look for.  We have to realize that what we are looking for cannot be simply provided like a commodity, measured out, packaged, and sold.  It can only be found in relationship, in community.  It is not information for us to hear or read; it is not a doctrine or a creed to be memorized; it is not something we can simply download to our hard-drives, or access from the cloud when we need it.  It is not an object at all; it is something to be experienced between people in interaction, in conversation, in coming to where Jesus is staying, seeing how he lives, and paying attention to what he chooses to rest in and surround himself with.

            The Greek word here gets translated as “staying.”  This word will become important in this gospel.  It is more often translated as “remain,” or “abide,” or “wait.”  John just used this word when he described the Spirit as coming down in the form of a bird and “remaining” on Jesus.

            This gospel is interested in what is stable, solid, grounded, and reliable, in a changing, chaotic, swirling, violent, and stormy world.  We stay, we remain, we abide, we sit, in those places where we find nourishment, like a bee or a butterfly sticks with the flower with the good pollen or nectar.  We do not get swept along by every fad, or bullied by every worldly power; we remain or stay freely with what feeds and enriches and empowers us.  We remain in the place where we find life and light.

            So the disciples aren’t just asking out of curiosity to see Jesus’ accommodations.  They want to know in what Jesus is grounded, where he has decided to sit, what Word he has immersed himself in.

            And the only way to know this is, as Jesus invites us, to “come and see.”  This is not theory; this cannot be communicated in words alone.  We must first come – that is we have to put ourselves in Jesus’ presence, we have to move out of where we were and relocate to be with him, we have then to stay with him in relationship, in the community he gathers.  And that is where and how and when we will see – that is, we will perceive and experience who he is and what he does.

III.

            The gospel goes on to tell us that “they went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.”  That means these two disciples are seeking the Lamb of God, the source of God’s life, forgiveness, and freedom.  They come to Jesus and in relationship with him they perceive the truth in which he is centered.  And they begin also to ground and anchor themselves in his truth and life.  They enter into community with him; they sit with him; they immerse themselves in his reality and identity.

            The Presence and charisma of Jesus is so visible and powerful that simply being with him, listening to him, having a conversation with him, immediately transforms these disciples of John into disciples of Jesus.  It is only the beginning of their journey with him; but it is the beginning.

            Near the end of the day, one of these two disciples, Andrew, goes to find his brother, whose name is Simon, to tell him “We have found the Messiah!”  They were looking for the Lamb of God; and they have found the Messiah.  And he brings Simon to Jesus.  Jesus takes one good look at him and says that from now on he is going to be called Peter, the Rock. 

            A rock is also an image of stability, immovability, solidity, and constancy.  A rock kind of embodies this idea of remaining, staying, waiting, and abiding.  This is not to say that rock doesn’t change or move at all.  But a rock does stand firm in the face of all kinds of tempests and storms.  In the other gospels Jesus uses the image of a rock as something steady and reliable enough to build a house upon, as opposed to the shifting and unstable sand.

            Peter does not end up being the absolutely solid rock; later in the gospel he denies Jesus three times.  But then he does receive forgiveness and Jesus still makes him the chief shepherd of the early church.  And that’s the thing: the Lamb of God is about forgiveness; forgiveness is the stability of God.  The renewing love of God seen in Jesus’ sacrifice of himself is the constancy of God in which God’s people remain, stay, rest, and abide.  The one thing we can absolutely depend on God for, is to love us infinitely.

            So we should not take all this talk of stony stability to mean that God is hard, harsh, unbending, or uncaring.  The Lamb of God is the One who gives up his life for us and gives God’s life to us.  The Lamb is about freedom, forgiveness, and life.  He is the Word, the light of the world.  He is God’s infinite love always being poured out.  It is that love that we can rely on always.  It is that love that never changes.  It is the constant stream of God’s being and goodness that is always flowing into the world, animated by God’s breath, resonating to the frequency of God’s Word, and thus becoming real.

IV.

            That pouring and flowing, that shining and glowing, that perpetual arrival and coming into the world means that God’s life is always spreading.  It is not confined to a few.  John has to tell Andrew and the other disciple; Andrew has to tell Peter.  The gospel itself is written to strengthen the faith of disciples, and encourage others to trust in the story of God’s coming into the world.

            Like these early disciples, we too are called to these three things: to look for, remain in, and proclaim the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus the Messiah.  This work is imperative, because the sin of the world is killing the world.  It is killing creation by greed, gluttony, over consumption, pollution, and distorting the delicate chemical balances in atmosphere and ocean.  It is killing people by war and injustice, torture and slavery. 

            We look for the Lamb as One among us, finding him in the world he made, indicated by the Spirit in nature.  We look for the One to whom the Scriptures point, especially in the prophets of whom the last was John.  We look for One who will baptize, who will immerse people and creation in tht energizing bath of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love, who enlivens all things, and who connects all creation together, who is the breath and Wisdom of God bringing life to all.  We look for God’s Presence within and among and around us, in Jesus Christ, and in the things God’s has made.

            We remain in the Lamb by being “rooted and grounded in love,” as Paul says.  By taking upon ourselves his self-giving life, as a witness to the way God is always giving life to the creation.  We remain in the Lamb by our lives of forgiveness, gentleness, healing, peacemaking, and goodness.  We remain in the Lamb by gathering in his name into this community of peace, characterized by acceptance and welcome, honesty and courage, where we live the truth of God’s love with each other.

            And finally we proclaim the Lamb of God by our invitation to others: “We have found the Messiah!”  We have found in the world the Presence of the One who made, and is always making the world!  We have found the One who has the power to take away our human selfishness and violence, to wash us of our defiled and depraved hatreds and fears, and to free us from the chains of our addiction to destruction and disorder.

V.

            May our lives and our little gathering reflect and express these three values as we move forward.  May we find ways of organizing ourselves so that we are always looking for God’s saving Presence, always remaining steadfast in our trust of him, and always reaching out to welcome others with the good news of God’s love for the world revealed in his Son, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

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