A Sermon based upon John 1: 29-42, Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
2nd Sunday After Pentecost,
June 18, 2017, (Series: Questions Jesus Asked #1)
We’ve all heard of the popular bumper
which says, “Jesus is the answer?” Some
think of Jesus as the number one answer man.
But interestingly, when you check it out, Jesus answered very few
questions.
It has been calculated that Jesus asked
around 183 questions in the gospels.
Jesus only answered 3 of them.
On the other hand, Jesus asked 307 questions, meaning that Jesus was 40
times more likely to ask a question than to answer one. You remember some of those questions, don’t
you? “Who do you say that I am?” “Do you not understand what I’m
saying?” “When the Son of Man returns
will he find any faith left on the earth?” “Could you not stay awake?” “Do you love me?” It seems that Jesus preferred to ask thought
provoking, and some very hard questions rather
than give easy answers. Jesus’ style of
teaching is exactly opposite of most conservative TV preachers or even most liberalizing
“Dear Abby” answer sermons. Jesus is
simply too much of a Jewish prophet to satisfy either status quo with simple platitudes’ (Richard
Rohr).
During these weeks of summer, we are
going to consider some of the most important questions Jesus asked. By the time we finish, I hope you will
discover what many have, that there is a lot more wisdom found in asking the
right questions than having the right answers.
WHAT
DO YOU WANT?
Our question today is quite a question,
isn’t it? On the one hand it’s a fairly
common question: “What (or who) are you looking
for?” It’s one of the few
questions Jesus asked several times. He asked it here, when some wanted to be
his disciples. He asked it when they
came to arrest him (John 18.7). He also asked to a woman who came to the tomb
(John 20.15). This sounds like such a
simple question, especially if you are asking this to someone searching a matching
sock, their misplaced car keys, or their favorite ink pen. That’s one thing, but if you ask this kind of
question to someone who is following you around everywhere you go, either to be
with you, or to get rid of you, now that’s a whole different kind of question
isn’t it? What do you want? What do you want from me? Who or
what are you looking for?
The first time Jesus asked this question,
he was beginning his ministry as an traveling, itinerate rabbi. To learn from any rabbi, would-be disciples needed
to make an official request. It was kind
of like choosing the kind of college you wanted to go to and the teacher you
wanted. But Jesus didn’t work this way. In the gospel, Jesus chooses his disciples. People had to follow him around waiting for
him to ask them. It was kind of like
waiting on the acceptance letter from a university without ever sending in an
application. Jesus was the kind of Rabbi
who was asking all the questions, not giving all the answers.
In today’s text, John the Baptist bears
witness to Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world!’. John saw something different about Jesus: ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven
like a dove, and it remained on him’ (John 1:29,32). The day after John makes these dramatic
declarations about Jesus, a couple of John’s own disciples were standing close
by and recognized it as code language the coming of a true Messiah. So, they start following Jesus around
everywhere he went. They knew they
couldn’t ask to be his disciple, but they could follow him around. So, when Jesus realizes that they are
following him everywhere he goes, he turns and asks: “What
are you looking for?” “What is it that you want from me?”
This may be the most important question
for true discipleship, then or now. We
can never be very good followers of Jesus if we already have all the answers. Every generation has to learn to ask the
right questions and seek answers. Every
generation has to recognize how, who, and what they really need all over again. No true believer ever stops asking, seeking, knocking,
believing, or ever arrivals with all the answers. When the right question is God, we will never
have all our questions answered until we see God face to face.
When Adam and Eve committed the original
sin in the Garden (Gen 3), part of the temptation of the Serpent was to tell
them if they would eat the forbidden fruit, they would be like God. In other words, when they got what they
wanted, they wouldn’t need God, have any more questions or need anybody except
themselves. That is still the great lie
for both young or old. You how that
goes: When I get my driver’s license and
my car; When I marry that guy or girl,
when I get that job or promotion, or when I make X amount of money, have
X amount in the bank, or get this or that, then I’ll be ‘happy, contented, or
fulfilled’. That’s how many think, or
have thought, but it never turns out that way.
Have you ever noticed that most folks who ‘must’ have something, or
someone, or work only to obtain and get what they want, never seem to have enough and are seldom
satisfied with what they have?
The reason ‘money’ or ‘wealth’ or
obtaining stuff doesn’t buy happiness, was answered by a great Christian way
back when Christians were just starting to come into world respect in the 5th
century AD. The great Augustine said in
his own Confessions (Book 1): “You have made us for yourself, O Lord. Our hearts are restless, until they (finally)
find their rest in you.”
There is a great story from Hawaiian
pastor, Wayne Cordeiro about “a rabbi
living in a Russian city a century ago. Disappointed
by his lack of direction and life purpose, he wandered in the chilly evening.
With his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he aimlessly walked through the
empty streets, questioning his faith in God, the Scriptures and his calling to
ministry. The only thing colder than the Russian winter air was the chill
within his soul. He felt so enshrouded by his own despair that he mistakenly
wandered into a Russian military compound off limits to civilians. The bark of
a Russian soldier shattered the silence of the evening chill. “Who are you? And
what are you doing here?” “Excuse me?” replied the rabbi. “I said, ‘Who are you
and what are you doing here?’” After a brief moment, the rabbi, in a gracious
tone so as not to provoke the soldier, said, “How much do you get paid every
day?” “What does that have to do with you?” the soldier retorted. With the
delight of someone making a new discovery, the rabbi said, “I will pay you the
equal sum if you will ask me those same two questions every day: ‘Who are you?’
and ‘What are you doing here?’” (Wayne
Corderio, Doing Church as a Team, p.
32-33).
Of course, the Russian soldiers were not
asking an ‘open ended’ question. They
were asking a very specific, closed-ended one.
In the same way, many of us go after ‘closed-ended’ answers, like money,
fame, success or stuff, when in reality, what we need is something much less
material, and much more spiritual and open ended, perhaps even unanswerable in
this life. I’m convinced that most human
desires don’t start bad, but get misguided.
We all have ‘desires’ and most of those wrong-headed desires go back to
having missed asking, reflecting upon and trying to deal with the most
important questions we should have been asking all along; Why am I here? What is life about? What does love mean? What should I do with my life? When we try to ask and answer these kinds of
big, life-long, even unanswerable questions, each and every day, as this
Russian Rabbi needed, it is much more difficult to become misguided, empty, and
going after things that get us lost and never satisfy.
WHERE
ARE YOU STAYING?
But how do we get back from Z to A? How do we, when we’ve lost our way, gone after
wrong things, or now find ourselves alone, empty and unfullfilled, as Bill
Murry once described, “Lost in the Cosmos?” And how do we get our life back on track when
we end up in such an unwanted place? If
the unexpected comes, the letdown, if cancer comes, or if heartache comes, or
if great loss, disappointment, or a growing emptiness starts keeping us awake
at night, and we realize that we’ve lost our way, or that a sense of peace, joy
or hope has left us; if we realize we’ve taken the wrong road, how do we find
our way back home, when we are much farther away than we’d like to admit?
There is another little joke that is
more real than funny. It is about a drunk fellow who is spotted by a police
officer. The drunken man is intently
searching the ground near a lamppost and the officer asks the question: what
are you looking for? The fellow replies
that he is looking for his car keys.
The officer helps for a few minutes without success, then asks whether
the man is certain that he dropped the keys near the lamppost. “No,” is the reply, “I lost the keys somewhere
across the street.” “Why are you looking here?” asks the surprised and
irritated officer. “The light is much better here,” the intoxicated man
responds.
Interestingly, this story is often use
to illustrate something called ‘The
Streetlight Effect’ to help in the training Police Detectives. The
Streetlight Effect is an ‘observational bias’ that occurs when people are
searching for something, but settle for looking where it is easiest instead of
where it is hard to look. When we want and
need answers, even we are not police detectives, we can settle for quick
answers, not taking time, making effort, or walking in or through the most
difficult places where it can be too dark to look. In the same way, out of our need for finding a solutions for
our greatest longings and human needs, we too often settle for ‘things’ (going
for the instant light) instead of doing the hard work of dealing with the spiritual
darkness or difficulty we are in. Most
of us don’t really want, or have time to go, start, or stay here, so we settle
for less, much less, but we end up starving our souls.
Even we Christians can do this. I recall someone who, when I extended a
public invitation after the message, continued to come down the aisle several
times. This person responded time after
time. They seldom had time to talk. They seldom said much of anything. When they finally did make an appointment to
talk, they didn’t tell me much. It was obvious that they were struggling
with something that went way back, perhaps into childhood. They were dealing with a lot deep stuff, but they
didn’t ever get to ‘heart’ of things.
Maybe they didn’t know how.
That’s one of the reasons, I’m not as big on ‘public invitations’ like I
used to be. Too often going ‘public’ or
‘through the motions’ of resolving something quickly, keeps us away from dealing with the hard
questions, for which there are no easy answers. Even answer that are found in faith, if they
are too easy, can be misleading too.
What I like about this story and the
disciples being asked, “What (or who)
are you looking for (In Greek it could be either) is that they don’t respond by spelling out
what or who they are looking for. Maybe
they don’t know, exactly. Maybe they’ve
been disappointed with wrong answers before.
What I find interesting is that even when they are standing right there,
with Jesus in front of them whom John has named ‘the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, they don’t
immediately rush to conclusions, decisions or answers. No, they respond to Jesus’ question with
another question. It shows that they are
seeking something real, not some fly-by-night, instant, quick, or shallow
answer. Instead of a quick answer, they
asked Jesus a question, showing him great respect, along with caution and
wisdom: “Rabbi, Where are you staying?”
This must have pleased Jesus greatly and he then issues this great
invitation: “Come and See!” We read that
they ‘came’ and ‘saw’ and ‘remained with
him that day. It was about four o’clock
in the afternoon.’ They all got lost
in conversation. Wouldn’t you love to
know what they were all talking about? Or,
maybe, just maybe, the reason we don’t know ‘what’ they were talking about,
doesn’t matter as much as ‘who’ they were with. The answer was not a ‘what’, but it was it was a ‘who’.
WE
HAVE FOUND THE MESSIAH
Now, we can look closely at where this question
of longing, ends up? One of the two,
who heard John speaking and ‘came’ and followed to see ‘where’ Jesus lived, was
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. It was
after that long, long conversation, that Andrew went to find his brother,
saying, “We have found the Messiah!”
Perhaps what is most important for us
here, is that these first disciples started where we all must be, not at one
point, but for all our lives, if we want to find hope, meaning, purpose, and
fulfillment in our lives, whether we are at the beginning of life’s journey, in
the middle, or at the end. If you
really want to start looking for what any of us can lose, which can make us
spiritually hungry, emotionally needy, or materialistically poor, even if you
have all the money in the world, you need to look where you need to look, not just where you want to look.
Where You need to take it slower, not
rush into things, but simply move a little closer, answer Christ’s invitation
to ‘come and see’ where he lives, and not keeping asking him to come where you
are? They ‘journey’ to Jesus’ house
might have been the best part. Perhaps
they got so ‘lost’ their conversation, that they found what they were seeking, not in
having or getting an ‘answer’ but in just being with him. Pastor Eugene Petersen calls it: “The Long Obedience in the Same
Direction”. Isn’t this exactly where
this whole story ends up. The point
wasn’t that Jesus answered all their questions, but that Jesus really ‘knew’
‘loved’ and cared about them. “Where, or how did you get to know me?” (1:48), Nathaniel asks. Or as the Woman at the Well says, just a
couple of pages later, “Come meet
someone who told me everything I’ve ever done!
Can he be the Messiah?” (John 4: 29).
Do you see what was happening? Their discipleship in Jesus wasn’t about
getting all life’s answers, it was about Jesus knowing, loving, and choosing to
be with them, and they deciding to be with him. Could this not be the Answer we are all
looking for? U2, the Rock Group, who
are Christians, but prefer they can reach more people by not using that title,
have a hit song, “I Still Haven’t Found What
I’m looking For.” They are right, we
never will find ‘what’ we are looking for, because of ‘who’ we need to be with.
‘Who’ is the real hunger, isn’t it? You go into the kitchen, head directly to the
refrigerator, open the door, and peer in. You are vaguely hungry, but you
cannot tell exactly what you are hungry for. You survey the options. Cheese?
No, that’s not it. Cold pizza? No, definitely not. Leftover chicken salad?
That’s not quite it. You go so far as to take a bite of strawberry yogurt but
put it back on the shelf. The refrigerator
is full enough, and your stomach is empty enough, but nothing seems exactly
right. The cold air emerges and brings
with it a remembered voice: “Don’t leave the refrigerator door open.” It is not ‘what’ you are looking for, but
‘who’ you miss? Anything but ‘who’ just
doesn’t seem to satisfy.
Martin Copenhaver tells about a
television news report I saw too, but had forgotten until he wrote about
it. It tells the story of a group of men
who spent years in the pursuit of a particular stash of treasure they knew was
buried off the coast of Florida. One day they uncovered it; and it was
everything they had hoped and imagined it would be— golden coins and priceless
antique jewelry. Success at last. Of course, there was great jubilation at the
discovery, but there was also a hint of something else. The report ended with a
picture of one of the discoverers, looking at nothing in particular with an
almost wistful expression. And while that picture was on the screen, the
reporter closed by asking this question and letting it dangle in the air: “What
do you do when you have found what you were looking for?” There are two great tragedies in life, Oscar
Wilde mentioned: “Losing Your Heart’s
Desire or Finding it!” (Copenhaver, Martin B.. Jesus Is the Question: The 307 Questions Jesus Asked and the 3 He
Answered (Kindle Locations 361-366). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition, 2016).
What we
really long for, Martin Copenhaver
says, “It is have the broken and
scattered pieces of our lives brought together in ways that we are unable to
do. This is why our greatest longing in
life is not about ‘what’, but ‘who’. It
is a yearning for God who is our only sure ‘dwelling place throughout all
generations’ (Psal. 90:1). “As a deer
longs for flowing streams,” that same
Psalmist says, “so my soul longs for you, O God” (Psalm 42: 1). Whether it was when Jesus was just starting
his ministry, or after Easter was all over, the question worth repeating over
and over, was not about ‘what’, but it was about ‘who’. There is a hole in our hearts that nothing
else, no career, no amount of money, or no other relationship, but only God can
fit and fill. “Who are you looking
for? Are you willing to ‘come and see’? Amen.
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