Isaiah 49:1 – 7 Psalm 40:1 – 10 1 Corinthians 1:1 – 9 John 1:29 – 41
“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the two disciples.
“What are you looking for? – a handout? A healing? An autograph?”
I place myself in that scene, kind of following along behind Jesus – at a safe distance, of course – I don’t want to get too close, but I am curious – and Jesus suddenly turning, looking me in the eye, and saying, “What are you looking for?”
What am I looking for?
What do I want from Jesus?
What do we want?I’m looking for a perfect world – fix it, Jesus, please!
Certainly the disciples might have been looking for some of the same things: liberation from Roman rule; peace; healing and health for everyone; an end to natural disasters; an eradication of poverty and hunger.
But that’s not how they respond to Jesus’ question, “What are you looking for?”
“Rabbi,” they say, “Teacher – where are you staying?”
They are following Jesus because they sense in him something powerful – a force, a presence. There is something that draws them to him, and they want a share of it!
“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks them.
Whatever it is you’ve got! Whatever it is that animates you! May I have some, too?
Elsewhere in John Jesus’ response to a similar question is, “I abide in my Father, and my Father in me…”
Here Jesus simply says, “Come and see.”
Come and see.
Little children make that demand.
They don’t tell us –they take us by the hand and lead us into their world…
“Come and see,” Jesus tells Andrew.
Words aren’t enough.
Words might just wash over us.
You need to see, engage, be drawn into what I have to offer.
Jesus doesn’t fix the world; he offers us a new way of being in the world!
Today we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
He might well have been Andrew or one of the other disciples, following Jesus at a safe distance.
His daddy was a preacher, and he grew up in the church, after all. He could well have been a pew-follower of Jesus – I’ve heard of you, I’m curious, interested – but keeping a safe distance, a “telling” distance, not a “seeing” distance, much as we all are wont to do.
But then something happened.
Jesus turned to him, looked him in the eye, and said “What are you looking for?”
“What are you looking for?”
King’s obvious answer is “Justice. Equality. An end to segregation, discrimination…”
Fix it, Jesus!
But I’m sure there is more. I don’t think King started there, that that’s his first answer to Jesus’ question.
Because as much as we remember King as a political activist and change agent, he was a Christian whose activism was shaped by his religious beliefs.
King responded to Jesus’ call to “Come and see” and discovered himself transformed by that abiding place.
Jesus tells us repeatedly that it’s not safe to come and see, to follow him: He exhorts people to “take up their cross,” and then warns of arrests and persecutions.
Following Jesus is not a “feel good” proposition, something King knew intimately: King was stabbed three times, physically attacked three more times, bombed in his home three times, and jailed fourteen times before he was shot to death at the age of 39.
So – what’s the draw?
When a good man is striving to do the work of God in the world and something bad – lots of bad things! - happen, it’s easy to ask the question, “Where is God in all this?”
Where is God when things aren’t safe?
Where was God when King was shot?
When the Gabby Giffords and the others in that crowd were shot down?
When I lost my job or my spouse or my child?
When my life turned upside down?
Why follow Jesus?
Because there is something compelling about him.
Because, if we open our heart and let him in, let him abide there, something wonderful and amazing and transforming happens to us: we begin to see the world with new eyes; we begin to see ourselves in the world in a new way; we begin to let go of those fears and concerns which wall us off into our own separate fiefdoms and see our commonality as children of God.
God doesn’t promise safety.
God promises relationship.
He realized, he said, that “The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk position, prestige, and even life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, they lift some bruised and beaten others to higher and more noble lives.”
Joan Chittister comments that with those words Martin Luther King “takes the indifference of all of us and turns it into the stuff of sin” (Chittister: A Passion for Life: Fragments from the Face of God, p. 42).
Harsh words! Frightening – and challenging! – at least for me.
I’m comfortable.
I don’t want to get beat up, or die, or go to jail. I can be compassionate – but I want to set limits on it, what I will and won't do as a response.
I care – but sometimes it’s easier to care at a distance.
Do I have to get up and do something? Be up-close-and-personal about my neighbor far away – a distance often not as great geographically as it is in terms of lifestyle?
It’s encouraging to me that Jesus chose as his disciples ordinary, flawed human beings, people who repeatedly “didn’t get it,” who often stumbled and fell and had to pick themselves up again.
It gives me hope.
And yet – if we do more than just hear the words of Jesus, if we “come and see” and experience his abiding place in God, we can no longer be indifferent – or fearful.
We will be caught up in relationship, in a passion for life; we will no longer live as though we belong only to ourselves, but in the sure and certain knowledge that we belong to God!
- “the courage to confront evil square on without the hope of being able to ignore it;
- the courage to confront ourselves square on without the luxury of despair;
- the courage to love when hate is more satisfying;
- and, the courage to continue to live until death so that others may have life.”
That’s quite a legacy.
It’s the legacy of a man whose life was transformed because he had the courage to respond when Jesus said, “Come and see.”
Today, let us each consider how we might respond to Jesus’ question, “What are you looking for?”
What are you looking for?
Come, and see.
Amen.
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