January 15, 2023

Epiphany 2,

Epiphany, Winnipeg

John 1:29-42

I’ll ask a question, and you answer right away, the first thing that comes to mind. And try not to answer with what you think I want to hear, or what the person sitting next to you would be glad to hear, or what Jesus wants to hear. Here’s your question:

What are you looking for? Be honest. And I’m not going to ask you to tell us all what your answer is. That way I won’t have to tell you mine.

But what are you looking for?

A friend of mine, when she was a pastor in a large suburban church in a place other than Manitoba, had a young couple stop by her office one day and they told her that they were wondering about joining her church. She asked why they were interested in this church – what are you looking for? - and one of them said right away, “We’re looking for a new financial advisor.” They talked a little more and it soon became clear that they weren’t looking for financial advice like, “Sell all that you own and give the money to the poor” – that’s one of Jesus’ more well-know pieces of financial advice. What they wanted was someone who would help them make more money. And someone who would tell them that it was OK that that was what they were really looking for.

She might have asked someone else, whose lives were very different than that couple, the same question, and they might give an answer that also had something to do with more money but their answer would be more along the lines of “I’m looking for my poverty to end.” Or “I’m looking for my neighbour’s poverty to end.”

Of course our answers would go all over the place. What are you looking for? One person’s answer might be “I’m looking for more time to go skiing,”….and another’s might be “I’m looking for my body to stop hurting so I can go for a walk again.” Another’s answer could be “I want to live forever,” while another just says, “Someone I love did not live forever, and I want my grieving to end.” In my years as a university chaplain I met a lot of students who were looking for way to figure out how to put all the pieces together into something called the meaning of life… and I met so many more students who were really just looking for a place where someone would notice them, and where someone would know what their name is.

So what are you looking for?

I wonder what Jesus is looking for when he asks that question. The neat thing, or the frustrating thing, or the mystifying thing or the really good thing is that he never really lets on what he’s expecting when he asks, and he never says what our answer should be. These are the very first words that Jesus says in the Gospel of John, and they might just be the very first words that Jesus says to us. And when Jesus asks us that question it might make you or me uncomfortable; it might make me want to look away or change the subject because I know that so often what I’m looking for is really just what I want for me, but what I really need the most, or what my neighbour needs or what the world around me needs the most is the furthest thing from my mind. Jesus’ question forces us to be honest. And the good news is that when we are honest in that way Jesus doesn’t turn away from us or tell us that our answer is wrong so we’ll have to find someone else to follow. He just says, “Come along and see.” Maybe even the couple who were looking for a new financial advisor hear the same thing. “Well, come along and see. See what happens.”

What are you looking for? When Jesus asks that question it might not make you feel uncomfortable, but it might make you say something like, “Finally someone cared enough to ask.” Jesus asked me what I’m looking for and finally someone opened up some room for me to say, “I’m looking for a place where I feel like I belong; I’m looking for someone to know me by name and not to tell me that I have to be better or smarter or thinner or richer;” Or “I’ve got this aching inside or this longing for peace and finally someone asked what I’m looking for and now they’re just listening while I answer.”

Or maybe you’re the one who answers, like one of those students I knew, something like “I’m looking to figure out what the meaning of life is.”

Jesus asks “What are you looking for?” And to all of us, whatever our answer might be, Jesus says, “Well, come along and see. See what happens.”

Maybe you already noticed that when Jesus asks these two new disciples what they’re looking for, they don’t really answer the question. They just come back with a question of their own. They just say to Jesus, “Where are you staying?” Maybe they’re avoiding the question and hoping he’ll be distracted by a new topic, but Jesus answers their question with a non-answer of his own: “Come and see.”

We’re pretty fresh into this new church year – the first Sunday of Advent was only seven Sundays ago, and it’s only about three weeks ago that we celebrated Jesus’ birth – And right from the start Jesus asks us this question: “What are you looking for?” My hunch is that Jesus already knows all of our answers to that question. And right from the start we are invited to join two new followers of Jesus and to answer by asking, “Where are you staying, Jesus?” And Jesus says to us, “Come and see.”

We’re invited to come and see where Jesus is staying, and these are some of the things we’ll see: Jesus stays with people who fish for a living, just people doing their work as pieces in a big economic system. Jesus stays with people in the synagogue, where they gather for religious life and where they gather because, you know, be honest, even if the religious stuff isn’t always a hit it’s really nice to get together with a few neighbours and friends you haven’t seen for a few days. Where are you staying, Jesus? We’ll see Jesus staying with a crowd of people on a mountainside who are hungry for wisdom and Jesus delivers; and we’ll see Jesus staying on a hillside with people who are hungry for real food, like bread that will fill them, and Jesus delivers. We’ll see that Jesus stays for awhile on a mountaintop, bathed in glory and light, and we’ll see that Jesus stays in the wilderness so much longer, parched and thirsty and aching for some food. Where are you staying, Jesus? With a religious leader named Nicodemus who just can’t figure it all out, with a woman at a well and a lively conversation, with Mary and Martha whose hearts are broken by the death of their brother and whose hearts leap with surprise and wonder and sheer joy when that brother named Lazarus lives again. Jesus will say, “Come and see where I’m staying,” and we’ll see that he stays on the cross – settles in there and stays – and he takes his place in a tomb with all those who have died. And then we’ll see that Jesus stays in a garden, in a new day outside of that tomb, and he calls Mary out of her grief, and he calls his friends out of locked rooms and fear; and he calls a beloved world back to life.

We are invited to ask the question ourselves: “Jesus, where are you staying?”, and Jesus will say to me, to you, to us, “Come and See.” We don’t need to know what we’ll see. We don’t need to know how Jesus will answer. But we will find…that Jesus is staying wherever we happen to end up today or tomorrow or the next day. Imagine starting each day like that. “Jesus, where are you staying?” And every day Jesus says to us, “Come and see.” And we go where we go, and we see….

We don’t really know what’s happening next. Sure, we do know that the hymn of the Day is next, and then a bit more worship and then coffee, but after that we have no idea. That is, assuming that we make it that far. The next time Jesus says, “What are you looking for?” you or I or we might have a completely different answer than when he asked us just now. When Jesus says, “Come and see” we don’t know what we’ll see and we don’t know what we’ll become. But whatever happens, whatever we become, however we change, we walk into our future and will see that Jesus stays, lives, abides, with a beloved us in this beloved world.

AMEN.

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January 8, 2023