First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church

Rev. Sam Pendergrast

January 20, 2008

John 1:29-42

 

 

“What Are You Looking For?”

 

I imagine that anyone who has worked in vocational guidance or has been a school counselor will recognize familiar territory in Jesus’ question: “What are you looking for?” A large part of those jobs is helping people discover the answer to that question and to help them find the motivation to get there. There is a nearly endless variety of inspirational posters on setting goals, catching a vision and discovering your purpose. “If you never chart a course, your boat will never leave the dock.” That’s the general idea. “Without a vision, the people perish” is the way we find it stated in the Christian Scriptures. Vocational counselors will tell you that the hardest people to work with are not the ones who are overflowing with conflicting possibilities and ideas. The most difficult people to help are the ones who have no idea what they want to do, or those who are so used to failure that they’ve given up.

 

There is an even more basic question than, “What are you looking for?” In the end, the question behind the question is “Who are you, and who are you going to be?” What you are looking for depends on what you think your life means and what it will take to live out the purpose of your one, unique and precious life. But what we are looking for and who we are is not always clear, as both Andrew and Simon discovered.

 

John the Baptist had absolutely no trouble answering any of those questions. His sense of vocational direction was unwavering. He said, “I came baptizing with water so that he (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel.” The way John the Evangelist tells the story, John the Baptist is clear that his purpose is to point the way toward this other one who is coming. Leonardo da Vinci's painting of John the Baptist shows him pointing to the Cross. He was a signpost, a witness to the revelation of God in Jesus. In fact, he seems to have been hanging around where Jesus was and pointing him out to people. “Hey! Look! There's the Lamb of God!” It is unique to John's Gospel that John the Baptist plays a role in the calling of Jesus' first disciples. After he points them to Jesus, Andrew and another go and follow, at which point Jesus turns around, sees them and asks the question: “What are you looking for?”

 

Did they know? Could they possibly have had any idea of the ways their lives would be changed by following this new teacher? They could never have anticipated the pain and the joy their relationship with Jesus would bring them. They could never have imagined what they would leave behind, what they would find, and where the road would take them. On this day he was a new rabbi, pointed out by John the Baptist. They didn't know what they were looking for beyond a wise teacher and some interesting discussions. All we know is that these two men spent the rest of the day with Jesus. John does not tell us what they talked about, what Jesus said. What we do know is that it made such an impression on Andrew that he went and found his brother, Simon, and told him, “We have found the Messiah!” Poor Simon! He didn't have a chance. The first thing Jesus said to him was give him a new name, called him Peter. Jesus gave him a new name, a new identity, a new direction, a new purpose. Didn't even ask him what he was looking for or give him a chance to object. Just told him he was Peter, the rock. Suddenly, Peter was part of something new that it took him a long time to catch on to. In the meantime, he did his best to follow along.

 

Here at the beginning of John's Gospel, the first disciples follow a signpost held up by John the Baptist and are swept up in the current of Jesus' purpose. He gives them a new direction and purpose. They did not choose him; he chose them. What they were looking for was not clear. But what they found was something that changed them, and the world, forever.

For better or for worse, we do not have Jesus here among us in the flesh. We can't go stay at his house or sit up through the evening and talk with him. For some of us, maybe that's a relief. Given what happened to Andrew and Simon, we would not come out of the encounter unchanged. The question for us is the same, though. What are we looking for? Why do we come here on Sunday mornings? Do we want to see where Jesus is staying? Do we want to go hang out with him? Do we expect to be changed? Do we want to get involved in what he's up to? Or, do we only want to be spectators? Do we want to stay safe on the edge of a religious feeling that we can feel good about but that does not require very much of us?

 

In his book on the essence of Christianity, Marcus Borg writes of the difference between the wholesale God and the retail God. The wholesale God is abstract, safe, distant and generic. This God can be spoken of in philosophical terms as Ultimate Reality, Being Itself, one's Higher Power, or, to use a term from Star Wars, The Force. This depersonalized God is non-threatening, warm and fuzzy, politically correct. The retail God, on the other hand is personal and particular, and can only be known through a local outlet, such as a church or synagogue. This God has a name and a face. This God speaks and acts in particular ways. This God wants to know us and hang out with us downtown. The only problem, says Borg, is when we think our tradition or understanding defines God or is the only way that God can be known, or when we begin to trap God in our limited notions. The reason God gets personal with us is that God wants us to get involved with God, to follow closely enough that our relationship with God will change us and make us new.

 

I can understand why people would rather hear about the generic God. The more vague and indistinct we make God out to be, the more we can keep ourselves safe from having to grow, to change or to be born again. The one John pointed to, the Lamb of God, came in the flesh, walked among us in order that we could follow in his way. And his way is dangerous. It got him crucified. His followers for nearly three centuries lived on the margins of the Roman Empire, refused military service and were tortured and killed for their faith.

 

Recently the magazine, Presbyterians Today, invited young people eighteen and under to write short essays about their hopes, dreams and prayers for the church and world in 2008. For her winning entry, seventeen-year-old Sylvia Sullivan, a member of Ridgeview Presbyterian Church in Farmers Branch, Texas, received a $100 award. Her essay is titled “Share the Glory.”

 

I often run around a creek near our house. In a suburban area, it's one of the few places where you find plenty of birds. The other day I was jogging, when ahead of me I saw about a dozen ducks and geese sitting on the warm concrete, fast asleep.

 

As I approached, my footsteps – made louder by the early morning silence – woke up the birds. As they stirred, they noticed breadcrumbs scattered all around them. What a hungry chaos ensued! Birds waddled every which way, pecking at the chunks of bread that covered the sidewalk.

 

As I passed, I slowed my pace to watch. The larger, more forceful geese were snatching away breadcrumbs from the smaller, weaker ducks. They drove them off the path and away from the food.

 

My hope for our church is that the Holy Spirit can be the runner whose footsteps wake up the dormant congregations, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk fast asleep. And that when those people awake, they are filled with joy at the breadcrumbs all around them that are the innumerable blessings God has given them.

 

My hope for our world is that, as we all rush to gather up those blessings that have been showered upon us, the bigger birds – the developed nations, the wealthiest classes – will not gather up all there is before the smaller birds – the suffering countries, the impoverished peoples – have a chance to taste the glory.

 

What are you looking for? What are your hopes, dreams and prayers for the church? How would you describe the reason you come here on Sunday morning? How has your relationship with Jesus changed you? How are you different because you answered the call to follow? This is a beautiful and quiet place to meditate. But so is a museum, or an art gallery. Who do you find here who helps you learn what it means to live in community and to forgive? What ways are you stretched by the challenge of following Jesus in the messy reality of a real place with real people who are hard to love? Like Andrew, can you stay with Jesus long enough to tell God who you are and to find out who God is? And then, does it make enough difference to you that you can go and tell somebody else about this wonderful new thing you have found? How does coming here help you to know who you are and what your direction is in life?

 

In our country in our lifetimes we have been sheltered from the kind of persecution that the early Christians faced, the same kind of violence that Christians face today in many parts of the world for acting on their faith and standing up for what they believe, for bearing witness to the gospel and refusing to take part in the conflicts that surround them. We have not faced the pressure of having to know who we are and what we are looking for in the face of life and death challenges.

 

You may have heard of the recent rioting and violence in Kenya, following disputed election results. President Kibaki was narrowly re-elected. The supporters of Odinga, his challenger, believed the election was rigged and sparked a wave of rioting throughout the country. Much of the unrest has subsided, but in the Rift Valley a smoldering land dispute between members of the Kikuyu and Kalingin tribes has become all-out tribal violence, similar to the genocide in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi, though, fortunately, involving far fewer deaths to this point. Steven Buru is the pastor of a church that was burned in which 30 women and children were killed, burned alive. Most of the church members are Kikuyu, though not all. Members of the Kalingin tribe set the fires and burned houses throughout the area. Steven Buru and some other men pulled four children out of the fire through a window. They were trying to reach a fifth child when the flames overcame them and they had to pull back. When they turned around, they saw a group of men standing at a distance from the church, watching the fire. They were holding clubs, spears and bows and arrows. The pastor remembered when he saw the arrows that he had preached the previous Sunday on Psalm 91. “You shall not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.” He walked up to the men to speak to them and to greet them in peace. He and the others with him were beaten unconscious. When he was interviewed for the story I heard on the radio, his face and head were swollen and he was missing eight teeth. Pastor Buru said that the next Sunday he would tell his congregation to prepare for the possibility that tomorrow will never come. He said he would preach salvation so that they could prepare for the end, should it come.

 

Jim Wallis, writing in the January issue of Sojourners magazine, said that “Because the Body of Christ is an international community, we are called to be Christians first and members of our tribes or nations second. Last fall, several World Vision leaders from Africa told me that simple assertion [if taken seriously] could change their churches and their countries.”

 

It would change us, too. Though we do not face the direct, daily violence that confronts the church in Kenya, in Sudan, in Iraq and Indonesia and Palestine, we do live in the most powerful nation on earth during a time that our political leaders call a “war on terrorism.” If Christians all over the world could be Christians first and members of their tribes or nations second, even if we lost some of our teeth, how would it affect our neighbors? What witness could we give to the power of God, the power of self-giving love?

 

Why are we here? What are we looking for? How do we expect our encounter with God this morning will change us? Here, on Sunday morning, we get personal with God. We get specific. We really do believe – at least I hope we do – that in the specifics of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we have seen God, not as some vague religious principle, but as a person, a person walking among us to reveal the truth of God and calling us to live out that truth.

 

God is always asking us, “What are you looking for?” Our answer changes as our knowledge of our self and of God grows and changes. I pray that our answer is that we are looking for ourselves, the selves that God made and has called to be his witnesses, his partners in ministry. We are looking for what we are going to do with the lives God has given us amid the challenges and changes of the world around us. We hope we live so that what we do with who God made us to be will be part of God's redemption of the creation.

 

Sylvia Sullivan's essay, noticing the ducks and geese and connecting that simple, daily event with the activity of God's spirit in the world, reminded me of Mary Oliver's poem, “The Summer Day,” in which she asks a question similar to the one Jesus asked of Andrew.

 

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean ­

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down ­

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 

What are you looking for? What is it you will do with the one, wild and precious life God has given you? I hope you are willing to get close enough, personal enough with God and to hang out long enough with God so that your life can be part of what God is doing for the redemption of the world.