PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

John 1:29-30, 35-42                                                                         What Do You Want?

Sermon January 20, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            The Gospel Lesson today takes us for another visit to John the Baptizer, camping beside the Jordan River with his followers.  Last Sunday he baptized Jesus, but Jesus is still in the camp.  Two of John's disciples hear John call Jesus "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," and they go to talk to Jesus.  Don't let the appearance of informality and life's little details fool you:  this story is operating on two different levels at the same time—just like most of the Gospel of John does.  First we see the surface.  Everybody is standing around, Jesus walks by, two followers start walking with him, what he says to them when he turns around sounds like "Hi:  what's up?"  The two ask him where he is staying, and he invites them to go see; and the three of them hang out together.  It's about four o'clock in the afternoon.  How ordinary, how conventional it all seems. 

            Here's the other level on which the story is working.  Every world religion proposes to give an answer to some particular problem that blights the human spirit and disrupts our life together.  Buddhism addresses suffering.  Islam addresses immoral behavior.  Confucianism responds to disorder in the kingdom, in the town, in the family and in the human heart.  Modern Judaism addresses aimlessness and meaninglessness.  Hinduism begins by asking the question, "What do you want in life?"  Jesus turned around and saw two young men shadowing him, so he spoke to them:  "What are you seeking?"  What are you seeking? 

 

This is not banter.  Jesus has driven his sword into the very heart of their humanity—and ours.  What are you seeking?  He's not just asking young Andrew and John this question:[1]  he's also asking you. 

            Andrew and John could have answered, "We want in on 'the Holy Spirit and fire' that you baptize with:  we want to become miracle workers famous for our powers."  Or they could have answered:  "There are many denominations around, each teaching its own brand of faith:  we want to know that we're right."  Maybe one or the other might have said:  "I just want to do everything I can to be a good boy."  When they ask where he's staying, they could have meant:  "All John the Baptizer eats is locusts and wild honey, and we're tired of that:  we're hungry and it's almost supper time."  Later in the Gospels, on the road to Jerusalem, they will reveal another answer:  "We want to be officials in the Messiah's government."

            Jesus asks, "What are you seeking?"  That question touches us where we live.  My sister used to begin her answer with a look into the future and say:  "When I get rich . . ." and then tell us something she wanted.  This election year we're listening to a dozen politicians answer:  "I want to be your President."  The Hollywood and television screenwriters are on strike, saying:  "We want our cut of the income from  DVD and internet sales of our work." 

            What's your answer?  Someone told me in her own way, "I want not to be alone."  You know somebody whose world has shrunk down to the size of the mattress on their hospital bed, saying:  "I want to feel good."  In this present mortgage interest environment tens of thousands of American families are saying:  "I want to keep my house."  After Harriet's brother died last month there was nobody to stay with their mother, so she has moved into an assisted living home and has broken up her house after a lifetime; if she didn't have so many friends in that assisted living home, she would be saying:  "I want to keep my house." 

            My father used to drive Buicks:  he had married a doctor's daughter, and none of her brothers was financially successful; so my father chose to drive Buicks—a car known ever since the 1920's as a "doctor's car."  He wanted to show people in a very subtle way that he had made it.  What are you seeking? 

            Think how many people whose pictures you see on television, are famous simply for being famous.  They haven't done anything.  They haven't had a real thought in several years.  Their lives may be falling apart; but "Here I am—I want to be famous."  And they are.  "I went to rehab."  "I have a baby."  "I go to clubs and get in."  "My shoe collection makes Imelda Marcos look impoverished."  What are you seeking? 

 

            Jesus turned around and saw Andrew and John, and he asked them:  "What are you seeking?"  And they answered, "Teacher, where are you staying?"  Where is your abiding place?  Frederick Herzog comments on their answer:[2]

 

 

It is as if they answered:  "Our eyes are wide open, our ears unstopped, the hairs of our skin are standing on end.  We don't know what we want!  We just know that it comes through you, and we want to go with you.  It's almost supper time—feed us with heavenly bread.  Let the fire that burns in your eyes singe our souls."  You have been that hungry, too, haven't you.  Their answer is, in one way or another, also your answer.  "I desire to drink from the fountain of the water of life." 

 

            There is a deep yearning in the human spirit, and over the millennia people have sought out teachers, gurus, masters whom they hoped could point them in the way to go.  Even among the stories of the Desert Saints of Christianity we find people coming, seeking answers.  Here's one such story. 

 

Two monks came to a certain elder whose custom it was not to eat every day. But when he saw the brothers he invited them with joy to dine with him, saying: "Fasting has its reward, but the one who eats out of charity fulfils two commandments, for he sets aside his own will, and he refreshes his hungry brothers."[3]

 

            These people were coming to teachers seeking…something, they weren't sure what; but they knew life contains more than the common round of people and activities and worries.  I want a moderate level of comfort, a few friends, a flow of ideas that will keep my mind interested; I want the love of my wife and my children.  Some of these wants are deeper than others, but after listing them all don't you feel that there has to be more?  "What are you seeking?" 

            Is it possible that out there beyond the well-worn pathways of human activity and memory, out beyond the easy and the hard and the impossible, there just might be this "more" that teases your soul.  We light two candles on the Communion Table—they represent the prayers of God's people, the fires of praise and petition.  But at the tip of each candle there is a little flame.  That literal flame is a symbol of the fire that burns, or perhaps sometimes flickers, in the most hidden corner of your spirit.  It's the fire of your seeking. 

            Jesus told a parable about a man who was messing around in somebody's else's field and discovered a hidden treasure; so he buried it right there and went to the owner and made him an offer for his land.  The price cost him everything he owned, but he was willing to pay it.[4]  He may not have been looking for wealth, but he knew it when he found it, and he did what he needed to get it.  "What are you seeking?"  "Teacher, where are you staying?" 

            Jesus told another parable about a jeweler who specialized in pearls.  In the course of business, one day a pearl came across his desk that got his attention.  It was the purest, whitest, largest pearl he had ever seen in his whole career.  His soul got lost in the perfect reflection of its surface.  He had to have it, so he sold everything he owned just to buy that one pearl.[5]  "What are you seeking?"  "Teacher, where are you abiding?" 

 

            Where Jesus abides was, perhaps, a little bower of branches; or maybe it was in the home of a friend who lived nearby.  Where Jesus was staying might have been a little cave carved into the bank by the Jordan River when the water was high, or maybe just a bedroll under the stars.  But that's not what Andrew and John wanted to see.  "Where are you abiding?"  In fact, he was already abiding in their lives, in their souls, in their motivations and choices and the hope that lived within them which only God can meet.  "Come and see," he said.  Come and see who this Jesus is, and who he is making of you.  Come and see what you are becoming, little by little, as the Spirit of God is transforming you from inside out into "the image of God's dear Son."[6]  This is where Jesus is staying. 

            I knew a man named Floyd.  He and his wife, Mary, were retired.  They lived in a little brick house on the right side of the Amtrak tracks.  Because of some health problems they had put a swimming pool in their back yard, and the grandchildren were there most of the summer.  They invited Harriet and me to come swim, but there was hardly a place to stick our toes in.  There was something very special about Floyd.  He loved people.  He had served for years as a volunteer EMS worker.  When you went to see him, he didn't talk TO you, he talked WITH you; and his words were full of that kind of trust that gives you the freedom to be yourself, even to disagree with him, and he would still be your friend.  Floyd had cancer, and a couple of years after I got to know him, it got bad.  I was his pastor, so I went to his home to talk with him; but the house was full of people, and he was laughing and enjoying his family.  A few days later I went back again, hoping then I could talk with him alone; but no—just after I got there some friends drove in from two hours away.  The next week I went back again, still hoping to have that pastoral conversation where he could say what he needed to say; but his teen-age granddaughters were there, running in and out of the kitchen between Floyd and Mary.  When he went to the hospital it was the same:  it didn't matter if it was visiting hours or not, he had a room full of visitors.  And at no time was the atmosphere gloomy:  just to be in the same room with Floyd was to have your spirits lifted.  I never got to have that conversation with him that the pastor comes to have.  But you know what?  Looking back now, I don't think I needed to have that talk with him.  I knew where he was staying:  and it was with Jesus.  And it changed him—and it changed us. 

 

            Andrew and John started shadowing Jesus as he walked beside the Jordan River.  He turned around and asked, "What are you seeking?"  "Teacher, where are you abiding?"  "Come and see."  You come, too.

AMEN