What are You Looking For?

(Uriel Presbyterian Church )

Sermon

“What are You Looking For?”

16 January, 2011

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, A

“The answer is always Jesus” 

Text: Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Listen to me, O coastlands, 

pay attention, you peoples from far away! 

The LORD called me before I was born, 

while I was in my mother's womb he named me.

2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; 

he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.

3 And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."

4 But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God." 5 And now the LORD says, (who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength)

6 he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

7 Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

Text: John 1.29-42

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' 31 I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." 32 And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' 34 And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." 

35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" 39 He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon, son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).

Most of us at some point have had our refrigerators decorated with children's drawings, and on the door of my office I proudly display drawings that our children have done and presented to me over the years.  I cherish all the pictures that have been given to me: the ones where sun is shining; Jesus, or momma and daddy are twice as big as the trees and the five legged dog  has a great big smile on her face. 

Another thing about children's drawings is that they can be very powerful statements about a child's identity. When I was teaching elementary school, and later on when I went through counseling and christian education classes at divinity school, I discovered just how  deep those pictures can go. One week I was working with a team that worked with families in an alcoholism treatment programme. The head social worker asked a little boy  to draw a picture of his family. The boy's father was half way through a 30 day residential treatment program. In the picture, it was raining.  Mom was taller than the house and dad was shorter than both mom and the house.  A brother was holding mom's hand.  There were no smiles on the faces.  And it seemed the boy was missing from the picture all together.

The social worker said, "This is a very nice picture Todd.  I see mom and dad and brother, but I don't see you.  Why isn’t there a Todd in the picture?"

The boy pointed to a small black scribble in the corner of the drawing and said, "There I am!"

All of us (the social worker, the psychologist and myself) winced. It hurt to see this little boy through his own eyes as nothing but a formless, black series of scratches. It struck me at that point that the issue of identity for this child in this family didn’t happen over night and it was going be a life long struggle for him. Can you imagine what it’s like feeling like nothing but a small black scribble in the wider picture of your life? *

As a matter of fact, many of us can relate.   Our struggle may not be quite so visible as that little boy’s, but no one escapes the inner question; "Who am I -- really?"  Even at age 65 it crops up:  "Here I am getting ready to retire and I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up!"  

Our scripture this morning is a very strong statement about identity. It is perhaps the clearest statement about Jesus’ identity in all the gospels. All four gospels feature the meeting of Jesus with John the Baptist, but in Matthew, Mark and Luke, immediately after Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is made known, he goes off into the wilderness to grapple with his own self awareness. In John’s gospel, the 40 days in the wilderness appears to be of such negligible importance that John doesn’t even mention it. What IS important to this writer is that John the Baptist repeatedly points out who Jesus is is several different ways: lamb of God, Son of God, Messiah, outpourer of the Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel is SURE who Jesus is. 

And that intrigues two of John’s followers, so much so that they immediately start following Jesus down the road. Jesus turns and gets right to the point: “What are you looking for?”

These two disciples don’t even know what to say, but they approach Jesus and use the technique that Jesus will use over and over again in the Gospels, answering a question with a question. They ask Jesus seemingly completely irrelevant question: ‘Where are you staying?" Jesus replies, "Come and see," and then they spend the whole rest of the day together, discovering who Jesus is. Around about  dusk Andrew rushes to find his brother Simon. It is such a simple story, but John seems to wants us to see something significant. At the risk of getting all Psychological on you, in discovering Jesus identity, they are beginning to place themselves in the picture. It’s exactly like a child drawing her family; placing the most important people in first and then drawing themselves in to the relationship. In those hours with Jesus, they are beginning to form a new identity, an identity based on the testimony of John the Baptist and what they are hearing from Jesus’ own lips. 

It’s an identity that is going to be radically different from John the Baptist’s followers. John’s identity was bound up in ritual purity . He was  deeply antagonistic to the world around him because it didn’t live up to the standards of the temple  and the Hebrew ideal of religious life. Therefore in protest, he dressed differently from others, he ate differently from others, and he had no tolerance for those who were not fanatically focused on being washed clean of sin in a very narrow Jewish way. And John was convinced that the wrath of God was the way to salvation. In short, a lot of black squiggles on a fire-coloured picture.

Contrast this with the way that the disciples are going to learn to see through Jesus eyes. We don’t know precisely what Jesus and Andrew and the other disciple talked about or how the two disciples were convinced of the rightness of Jesus’ approach, but by dusk they were filled with excitement and a new understanding of who they were called to be. From the testimony across the breadth of the gospels Jesus paints a very different picture of who God’s people are. 

Instead of seeing evil in the world that an angry GOD was going to do something violent about, Jesus was about a world in which WE  do something about the evil in the world in partnership THROUGH God--peacefully. No awkward black squiggles, but whole people delineated beautifully in relationship to each other. It’s all there, in Jesus parables, in his healings, in the example of his life lived in relation to evil and good. It’s there in the way he laid aside his divinity to be human with us, dying on the cross to be restore our brokenness. The difference between John’s identity and Jesus’ is the difference between us waiting impatiently for God’s wrath on others and the realization that God is waiting patiently for us. Our evangelism is simply a reflection of this truth. 

Our gospel passage concludes with another person finding their identity in Jesus. Simon, Andrew’s brother meets Jesus. the words that signal the beginning of the Christian church "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called the Rock." The gospel writer, the beloved disciple, John wants us to see that finding who we are is as crucial to the life of redemption as  proclamations of faith. This is how the church begins.

Jesus invites them to "Come and see." Christ invites us to enter into a shared life with this Gracious Host. From this point on, the way to truth will be constituted by personal encounters.

Everyone in today’s reading was shaped by their identity. Does that hold true for us, today? After all, I'm no John the Baptist or Simon Peter and I live in a different world. What do these long dead people have to do with discovering who I am today?

Yet we can re-discover ourselves in the presence of Christ. If I ask the question, "Who ARE you?" What would be your immediate reflexive response?  (Pausing for a moment to listen for answers)

Did you think of your name?  Your occupation?  The answer we need to find within ourselves is ,"I am a child of God!" That is our baptismal identity, that is the identity that will never change, whether you’re a corporate executive or an alzheimer’s patient. 

“I am a child of God” is stronger than  “I am an alcoholic”, “I am an abused spouse”, “I am unsure who I am”. No one can say “I am worthless” who has an identity as God’s child.  As with John, Andrew and Peter, we will discover most fully who we are in relationship with the God who made us.

Our job is to spread the good news that each of us is a child of God. to show young people....and not so young people: "You are a child of God."   Instead of, "You’re a little black scribble."  When we set ourselves in God’s picture, in relationship with the One who made the universe, you find the courage to disregard the identity other people want to hang on you.

Todd didn't become a scribble by himself.  A lot of hard and awful work went into crippling his life.  Todd needed love and care and help to find a new identity, and there are so many like him all around us.  I remember a couple of years ago after my children’s sermon, Hunter K---- pulled on my sleeve and whispered “You know how I know the answer to the question you asked? The secret is...the answer is always Jesus.”  Momentarily I thought... “hmmm then maybe I need to vary the questions some.”.. but then I thought: “No, ‘out of the mouth of babes’... let the answer always be Jesus”. And let us rediscover who we are in the arms of the Lamb of God, in the presence of the Son of God, the outpourer of the Spirit.

I pray that you too, by the grace of God, will help others discover who they are in Christ!

Amen

*Thank you to my friend, Dr. John Lorance, Art Therapist, for reminding me of Todd.