Seeker
John 1:29-42

January 16, 2004

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the three interrelated Gospels that provide the lion’s share of our Lectionary readings. Yet, almost like a guerrilla fighter, John jumps in unexpectedly and intrudes with a different way of seeing things - 12 times this year, all in the first half of the year.

John is a lot like us. He was the last Gospel writer, probably in the 90’s A. D. He not only knew the traditions about Jesus, he probably knew about the first three Gospels. He wanted to write something completely different, so he wrote from the beginning knowing how it would end.

That’s what it is like for us as well. We know where this story is going, we’ve even seen the movie, so we hear and read with a prejudiced mind. We need to start all over again, not a bad idea.

It’s deja vu all over again. John is baptizing the many in the Jordan. He knows his place, and has no pretentions to grandeur. The person he is anticipating is too great for him to describe adequately. And then John sees him coming. Whether it was intuition, revelation, personal relationship? He knew who it was.

“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” is very familiar to us from prayers and liturgies, but it’s a little presumptuous for John. To call Jesus “the Lamb of God” requires a sophisticated foreknowledge of what Jesus is going to do and be. John may have understand exactly what God’s Messiah was supposed to do, what he had to do, but did anybody else understand down by the river? Lamb of God refers to the Paschal Lamb sacrificed at Passover for the sins of the Jewish people. It does become a title for Jesus on the cross.

Last week in the Gospel of Matthew, the Spirit descends upon Jesus “like a dove,” and no one saw it except we the hearers of the Gospel. Here John the Baptist definitely sees “the Spirit like a dove” himself and lets others know. He points out Jesus to two of his disciples, and they get the point. Following Jesus like a superstar, they are not yet at the articulate stage. “What are you seeking?” asks Jesus, bemused, annoyed, we don’t know.

Their answer is so simple it is either profound or inane. “Rabbi, where are you staying?” “Come and see,” and they went and stayed. Only one is named, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter who will be a little more famous in time.

“Where are you staying” is not the real question, but “What do you seek?” has never ceased being asked.

A whole movement of Christian churches has based its way of reaching out to people who have had no connections or roots with the church or Christianity. The most well known is Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, where “Seeker services” have been successfully instituted. What do they think we are seeking? Different, jazzier music? A non-churchy physical environment? - Willow Creek looks like the Galaxy Theatre from the outside and the inside. A multi-media sermon that does not sound “preachy” at first? Support groups, classes, and seminars on every possible personal and social problem? 5-10,000 people queue up every Sunday to seek, and now there is an association of satellite churches which worship along the same model.

Just exactly what do you and I seek when we worship in this room, when we sit in the meeting rooms, and gather around food and conversation with friends and people we have not yet met? I know there is no one answer, nor even a list of correct ones.

There is always a social respectability about coming to church on Sundays, though today that respectability is turning more and more into social ridicule by all sorts of authority figures. If you are seeking a social position in worshipping, then it is probably going to be that of a non-conformist.

Seeking solutions to your personal problems is a worthy goal. Trying to get on a solid ethical and moral footing again is not to be disparaged. Many of us come here because we assume that the church is the place where morality reigns, people act kindly and generously to others, the truth is always spoken, and a certain holiness rubs off on even the least suspecting. Nobody tells us first that in the church we will inevitably find people – lots of people who act more like ordinary people than they do saints. The church acts more like any other social organization or grouping of people with all its worst arguments and conflicts than a holy club.

Maybe you have come here simply to feel the presence of God. Worship, prayer, beautiful music, inspiring words help transport our minds to heavenly realms, away from the ruthlessness of the everyday world. Thankfully, many of you have also come to put into action the love God has shown you and to act upon the indignation you feel upon seeing other people poorly treated and abused. You are seeking social justice, God’s reign of freedom and equality and love among all peoples.

I too am seeking something important. I could not have answered Jesus any better. Perhaps I would have muttered something about what do you eat to keep healthy, or how much exercise do you get, or what good books have you read recently? I am cautious, even suspicious, of those who have a straight forward answer limited to 25 words or less.

I am seeking the presence of God, yet even all these words do not get it right. There is no absence of God I am working against. God is here, but God is too deep for me and I struggle to understand. As much as we work hard to create an atmosphere of worship and holiness during this hour, it is not in our power to create it. We cannot seek God’s presence, we can only be found by the grace of God. Nevertheless, I am going to do all the little things that prepare me to receive the presence of God and it’s not going to happen quickly.

I am a pilgrim on a life’s journey. I won’t see some important mile markers until late in the trip. I won’t see some of those mile markers I’ve seen ever again. What is my purpose in this life? God is still working on that one. I may never be able to articulate accurately what that purpose is. Other people may be able to tell me. But here in the seeker’s place is where I can ask such questions and not be ridiculed. Perhaps an answer that is helpful will find me.

I am seeking to become a full human being, whatever that precisely means. Certainly, that means understanding my emotions and feelings and loves and hates and learning to use them in the pursuits of beauty and service to others. I know that my mind is something beautiful from God and not to be dismissed as some cold intellectual tool. I want to think hard about God, not to confine God into my little backyard, but to come closer and closer to how God lives.

Once you start to get close, you are a changed person. No cool objectivity and academic ivory towers can protect you from what happens when you think closely of God. Injustice to other people is an ungodly reality that cannot be ignored. The purpose in my life is to do what is necessary, God willing, to be close to God. To live in a way that acts as if God is not a presence is depressing, a gaping chasm that makes no sense and has no meaning or purpose at all.

Yes, we do have to go and see where Jesus is staying. The Gospels spell it out for us, though not always in the easiest way. But in this church there are people who have heard and seek and been found by the way Jesus lived and spoke and loved. And by the way, Jesus is staying in this church, in this particular unholy world, and he is staying in the lives of the successors and imitators of Andrew who came and saw and then followed.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan