January 16, 2011 - Epiphany + 2

“Come and see!”
John 1:29-42
Epiphany 2 – January 16, 2010

“What are you looking for?”

That's the crucial question, isn't it? “What are you looking for?” Former bishop of the ELCA, H. George Anderson (many of you just know him as Bishop George) once said, “People are hungry for God, yet are settling for spiritual junk food.”

Looking around the world, looking inside myself, I know that's true. We are a people, a society, that is spiritually hungry, but we don't quite know what it is that we are looking for, and so we fill up on lots of stuff that tastes good, but really just has a lot of empty calories. For example, I was a little amused and a little dismayed this week at all the hubbub over the reported changes in the zodiac. If you didn't hear about it, there was some report about how our alignment with the stars has changed over the eons, and so what was once true about which constellation you were born under has shifted – you may not be the same sign you always thought you were. There was all sorts of Internet chatter about this – people who were vehemently declared their identification with their sign – and how they weren't going to change. Who knew our horoscopes gave us such a sense of meaning and definition to our lives?

Of course, that's not the only thing. What are we looking for? Well, if we're not sure, the world will give us 101 answers... We are seeking meaning and purpose, a sense of direction and fulfillment, a feeling of happiness and satisfaction – and the world around us will tell us that we can find these things through our work, through our possessions, through our favorite football teams. We can find it in the clothes we buy, the food we eat, the school we went to or hope to send our kids to someday. Whatever it is we're looking for, we think we might find it in the latest self-help book or what some refer to as the church of Oprah, who now has her own TV network. And after all this, still we resonate with that U2 song. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. That liitle voice inside our heads speaks up periodically to say, “Is this all there is?” We want something more, something deeper, something truer.

It's age-old, this quest for more, this longing for a life with meaning and purpose. We see it in today's gospel with Andrew and the disciple who is not named. Clearly, they're looking for something. Apparently they hadn't found what they were looking in their local synagogue, because they had become disciples of John the Baptizer. And yet still, they must have felt that something was lacking, because when John the Baptist gives his testimony, pointing beyond himself to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, they hear what he has to say, & it's bye-bye John, and off to follow Jesus. Who knows what they thought they'd find. Did they just take John at his word? Are they just curious? Happy to go after the latest religious guru who comes on the scene? Whatever the reason, they set out behind Jesus, following him.

And then Jesus turns and sees them there and asks that pivotal question: “What are you looking for?” “Rabbi, where are you staying?” And Jesus simply says, “Come and see.” Come with me to the place where I am. Come and get to know me, not by following at a distance, but by spending time with me. Come and see, not only who I am, but who you can be in & through me. Jesus invites them into a relationship with him, to dive in deep, to become a part of this new thing that God is doing. “Come,” Jesus says, “come find what you are looking for in me.”

There was a movie some years ago – I don't even remember what it was – but the commercial for it always showed this scene where the man says to the woman he's fallen in love with, kind of awkwardly, but you can tell he really means it, he says, “You're everything I never knew I always wanted.” I think maybe the disciples would have understood that – because they didn't exactly know what they were getting into that day, they didn't know where following Jesus would lead them, they may not even have known for sure what they were looking for, but in Jesus, they found it; in him, they found everything they never knew they always wanted. Andrew goes and tells Simon Peter his brother, “We have found the Messiah!” John the baptizer points him out, Jesus invites them, they follow, and their lives are never the same.

Many of us still haven't found what we're looking for, or maybe you have, but we all know someone who's still seeking. Well, Jesus' invitation is an invitation for us too, & for anyone we know who is searching. Come and see. Jesus doesn't promise an automatic fix. His invitation is not to get “ your best life now!” It's an invitation to a relationship, a call to come close, to dive deeper, to get to know him more and more intimately. If what we're looking for is money or fame or the easy comfortable life, if we think that Jesus will be satisfied with just being the icing on the cake, instead of the bread of life who is at the center of who we are, then we'd better look again, because that's not what Jesus is about.

But if you're looking something more, something deeper, something truer; if you're looking for the one who gives meaning and purpose, the one who will call us up out of ourselves to be something more, to find ourselves by giving ourselves away, who will teach us to find true life by losing it, then come and see. You just may find that life in Jesus is everything you never knew you always wanted.

Thanks be to God. Amen.