What are you looking for? [Epiphany 2A - John 1:29-42]
The Rev. Jeremiah
Williamson
John 1:29-42
What are you looking for?
Something gave them
away. Perhaps it was the persistent
crunch of the sand beneath their feet, the slap of their well-worn sandals, the
untimely snap of a stick. Today it would
be because one of them forgot to silence their cell phone; but this story takes
place in a much older world. They
stalked him like a pair of eager bounty hunters, tracking his every sanctified
step, until something gave them away.
And Jesus turned and he saw them.
And they found themselves in the crosshairs of a question that turned
them to stone before shattering them completely, a question that changed their
lives for good: “What are you looking for?”
Following Jesus was
not exactly their idea. They pursued
this mysterious stranger at the prompting of their chosen master. It was John, John the Baptist, who piqued
their curiosity – a curiosity that set them on their quest. It was John who identified this Jesus by a
most compelling designation: the Lamb of God.
Lamb of God: it is one
of many titles ascribed to Jesus in this first chapter of John’s Gospel. He is first named the Word, the Word that
becomes flesh and dwells among us. That
is how John’s Gospel begins. But he is not
just Word. He is also Life. And Light.
And Lord. He is Son of God, Rabbi
(which means Teacher), Messiah (which means Anointed), King of Israel, Son of
Man. And, of course, Lamb of God. Jesus is known by all of these names – each a
unique glimpse into his infinite identity – all in just one chapter of one
Gospel.
It is just one of
these titles, Lamb of God, that first intrigues these two spiritual seekers. For us, Lamb of God is the song we sing as we
approach the altar; for these young Jewish men, this title would harken back to
the Exodus story – a story in which God heard the desperate cry of desperate
souls and responded with salvation. It
was, of course, an old story – even two-thousand years ago. But also it was a story these two Jewish men
rehearsed and relived. It was an old
story but also it was their story. Andrew
and his unnamed friend were desperately looking for something, some kind of
salvation. And on this day, standing by
the Jordan, the watched as the Lamb of God walked right by them.
You see, you don’t end
up the disciple of a locust-eating wilderness prophet, without a little
desperation to fuel you. Andrew and his
friend, they were looking for
something – even if they weren’t sure exactly what that something was. And so when they found John, and his fiery
message and his watery work, they became his disciples. They were driven by a spiritual longing as old
as the breath of God. It was two-thousand
years ago that these two young men searched the Galilean hills hoping to find
something or someone who would help them quench their parched souls. They settled in with John because they hoped that
he might point them in the right direction.
And he did. They followed the Baptist until he pointed them
in the direction of something greater, of Jesus. They followed Jesus because someone they
trusted recommended him. John was like
their Yelp! But a recommendation is not
the same as an experience. They needed
to see for themselves.
And so, they left John
to follow John’s Lamb. But to them, to
Andrew and his traveling companion, Jesus was something else. They didn’t call him Lamb. That was how John talked about Jesus. But when they looked at Jesus they saw something
else. They called him Messiah, the
Christ, the one anointed by God to deliver them. Maybe that’s what they saw because maybe that
was what they were looking for: a Messiah.
These disciples never
answered Jesus’ question – at least not directly. Perhaps that is because we cannot really know
what exactly we will find until we encounter Jesus for ourselves. John sent them after the Lamb. They found the Christ. In the next story of John’s Gospel, these
disciples inform their friend Nathanael that they have found the Christ. Nathanael sees Jesus and calls him the Son of
God. All are true. But perhaps we find in Jesus what we are
looking for, what we need to see.
It is never enough to
hear about Jesus from someone else, never enough to simply read about him in a
book. In this Epiphany season, we are
reminded by John the Baptist that we come to know Jesus in the encounter. The revelation for which our souls long can
never come through second-hand testimony; it comes through a personal
experience of the living Christ. Twice
John says, in today’s Gospel, referring to the days before he encountered
Jesus, “I myself did not know him.” He heard
the rumors. He stood in the River
waiting to meet Jesus, to meet someone he did not even know. He had heard things about Jesus. But it was only when John met Jesus in the
water that he was finally able to say, “I myself have seen him and now I know.”
The late Marcus Borg captures this beautifully when he
writes, “For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was
important. For me, what that phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my
early adulthood, was ‘believing things about Jesus.’ To believe in Jesus meant
to believe what the gospels said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child,
and became more and more difficult as I grew older.
But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean
something very
different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word
believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean ‘to give one’s heart to.’ The ‘heart’ is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self.
different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word
believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean ‘to give one’s heart to.’ The ‘heart’ is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self.
Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about
him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to
the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us,
the face of God….
Believing in Jesus in the sense of giving one’s heart to
Jesus is the movement from second-hand religion to first-hand religion, from
having heard about Jesus with the hearing of the ear to being in relationship
with the Spirit of Christ. For ultimately Jesus is not simply a figure of the
past, but a figure of the present.”[1]
And it is this living Christ who wants your heart, who wants
your soul, who wants you. He wants you
to give yourself away, to stand as still as a stone before the fire of his
gaze, to allow him to break through your defenses and get into your heart, to
allow him to turn and see you. It is not
enough to follow Jesus at a distance. He
wants more than that. Jesus longs to
invite you into his life. So that you
can get to truly know him. So that you
will finally find what your soul is looking for.
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