January 16, 2011
2 Epiphany
John 1:29-42
When I was in law school and getting ready to look for summer internships, our career services folks gave a little seminar about how to interviewing. They talked about strategies for dealing with a question you weren’t sure how to answer. My favorite suggestion, and one that I found to be fairly helpful, was that we could try answering a different question and see if we couldn’t steer the conversation away from the original question. Children do this all the time (my children anyway!) – if they don’t understand the question, don’t like the question, or are afraid of the consequences of their answer – they just move on to a different subject. “Have you done your homework?” “Mom, how do clouds stay in the sky?” Is that what Jesus’ first two disciples are up to this morning?
Jesus sees them walking behind them and he asks them, “What are you looking for?” They answer with a seeming nonsequitor, “Where are you staying?”
But we should go easy on them. It’s a hard question Jesus asks. “What are you looking for?”
And so I ask you: What are you looking for?
I ask you, because I don’t know how to answer it myself. It seems to change all the time, depending on our stage in life and the context in which we ask it. As children we might be looking for stability, guidance, entertainment. We get older and we might look for more adventure, for companionship, for approval of our peers. At work I might look for inspiration, for challenge, for satisfaction. At home, as a mother of young children, sometimes all I’m looking for is to get through the day with my patience and sense of humor still intact. It’s a hard question to really get to the heart of.
Maybe the question is so profound, so deep that it’s unanswerable. We have a vague sense of what we are seeking at best, but we see in a mirror dimly and all that. How can we know what we don’t know, after all? All of our answers are just scratching the surface. Even when we find what we think we are seeking, it only fills the gap for a while. We have trouble getting to the real heart of the matter. Sometimes all we have is a sense that we’ll know it when we see it.
Which is right where those two disciples are when they deflect Jesus’ question this morning. What are they looking for? All they can think to say in response is “where are you staying?” They have a sense that they need something; that there is something they are looking for but they can’t quite put their finger on it. And they sense, they hope, that maybe Jesus has something to do with whatever it is. That maybe if they can just learn more about him, spend a little time with him, they’ll have more of a clue about how to answer his question.
So Jesus’ response to their nonsequitor is incredibly reassuring. Much better than the interviewers that I tried this evasive technique out on. Jesus doesn’t chide them for avoiding his question. He doesn’t start spouting off about what they should be looking for. He doesn’t send them away until they figure it out on their own. He issues them this beautiful invitation to come and see. And he invites us along too. Follow along, learn to trust me a little bit at a time, and discover the answer as you go. Amen.
2 Epiphany
John 1:29-42
When I was in law school and getting ready to look for summer internships, our career services folks gave a little seminar about how to interviewing. They talked about strategies for dealing with a question you weren’t sure how to answer. My favorite suggestion, and one that I found to be fairly helpful, was that we could try answering a different question and see if we couldn’t steer the conversation away from the original question. Children do this all the time (my children anyway!) – if they don’t understand the question, don’t like the question, or are afraid of the consequences of their answer – they just move on to a different subject. “Have you done your homework?” “Mom, how do clouds stay in the sky?” Is that what Jesus’ first two disciples are up to this morning?
Jesus sees them walking behind them and he asks them, “What are you looking for?” They answer with a seeming nonsequitor, “Where are you staying?”
But we should go easy on them. It’s a hard question Jesus asks. “What are you looking for?”
And so I ask you: What are you looking for?
I ask you, because I don’t know how to answer it myself. It seems to change all the time, depending on our stage in life and the context in which we ask it. As children we might be looking for stability, guidance, entertainment. We get older and we might look for more adventure, for companionship, for approval of our peers. At work I might look for inspiration, for challenge, for satisfaction. At home, as a mother of young children, sometimes all I’m looking for is to get through the day with my patience and sense of humor still intact. It’s a hard question to really get to the heart of.
Maybe the question is so profound, so deep that it’s unanswerable. We have a vague sense of what we are seeking at best, but we see in a mirror dimly and all that. How can we know what we don’t know, after all? All of our answers are just scratching the surface. Even when we find what we think we are seeking, it only fills the gap for a while. We have trouble getting to the real heart of the matter. Sometimes all we have is a sense that we’ll know it when we see it.
Which is right where those two disciples are when they deflect Jesus’ question this morning. What are they looking for? All they can think to say in response is “where are you staying?” They have a sense that they need something; that there is something they are looking for but they can’t quite put their finger on it. And they sense, they hope, that maybe Jesus has something to do with whatever it is. That maybe if they can just learn more about him, spend a little time with him, they’ll have more of a clue about how to answer his question.
So Jesus’ response to their nonsequitor is incredibly reassuring. Much better than the interviewers that I tried this evasive technique out on. Jesus doesn’t chide them for avoiding his question. He doesn’t start spouting off about what they should be looking for. He doesn’t send them away until they figure it out on their own. He issues them this beautiful invitation to come and see. And he invites us along too. Follow along, learn to trust me a little bit at a time, and discover the answer as you go. Amen.
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