Sermon: What Are You Looking For?
Texts: Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
Date: January 16, 2005
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church


Would you tail the Messiah down the street if you got it from a reliable source that the person passing was the one? 

Tail, you know, not get too close, so as not to invade the alleged messiah's personal bubble…but not too far behind, for fear you'll lose sight of him? 

I think Andrew and his unnamed pal took a reasonable course of action after hearing John declare with great confidence that he was IT.  They were John's disciples, which meant they put a lot of stock in what John said.  Yet they couldn't just swallow the Messiah story whole without looking into it on their own.  They followed Jesus at a respectful distance, hoping, I suppose, to catch a glimpse of a miracle or something that would reveal who Jesus was.  I can see them, can't you, dodging donkey carts, keeping an eye on the target but trying not to look obvious.

But Jesus caught them at it.  He turned, looked each of them in the eye, and asked one of the most profound questions in the Bible: "What are you looking for?" 

What are you looking for?  It's a sort of meaning-of-life type question.  But it's personal.  You can ask someone what they think is the meaning of life, and they can answer in a fairly impersonal way.  That is, one can make a statement about the meaning of life on a grandiose, universal scale, so that it applies to everyone.  I have a book of brief answers to the question, "What is the meaning of life?"-some of us are more sure than others, if the book is representative.  Jerry Falwell is pretty sure: "Our purpose on this earth is to come into fellowship with God through his Son who died that we might be reconciled to the Father."   Lynn Andrews writes with equal certainty, "We are born onto this earth to become enlightened…"  Sun Myung Moon: "Our great purpose in life is to live for the sake of others and to meet the heart of God."  Seyyed Hossein Nasr: "Man can be defined as being born to transcend himself.  And the meaning of human life resides in man's seeking become what he was, and will be eternally in God."

What is the meaning of life?  There are all kinds of ways to answer that question.  You can try to answer for everyone.  But "What are you looking for?"  That's personal. 
Since modern life leaves little room for reflection on a question of this kind, and since we're all here, and we've got a little time to spend, I'm going to invite you to grapple with this question for a few minutes.  Imagine you've been following Jesus and now Jesus is looking you in the eye, and asking you to answer.  What are you looking for?  You might want to write yourself a few notes on the cover of your bulletin.  Be honest with yourself.  I'm not going to make you tell anyone.  It's between you and this Son of God you've been following.

Any surprises?  One of my old devotional magazines notes that Jesus' questions have a startling quality to them.  "We no sooner respond to their surface meanings, than we are confronted by the eternal dimensions of our answers.  When we think about what we truly seek in following Christ, we [may] become uncomfortably aware of the intricate web of desires that compete for our attention, our time, and our energy.  Some of our goals are materialistic, others touch deeply upon the spiritual…At times we are motivated by personal ambition; at others, by a desire to serve.  This tension that we experience between the temporal and eternal is the whole point of Jesus' question."

What are you looking for?  We might answer that question in different ways in different stages of our life.  As children, we might be looking for someone to give us comfort.  As young adults we might look for someone to teach us how to live lives that are meaningful, lives that accomplish something.  As older adults, maybe we want some assurances that we will not be forgotten at the time of our death.  I like what Harold Kushner wrote in the Meaning of Life book: "I no longer ask the young man's question, 'How far will I go?'  My questions now are those of the mature person: When it is over, what will my life have been about?"
What are you looking for?  And how will encountering the living spirit of God in Jesus Christ help you find it?

The first disciples were living in expectation of a Messiah, someone anointed and sent by God to save the people.  They were looking for a savior.  They began following Jesus and kept following because, presumably, they found the savior they sought in Jesus.  When we hear that word, "Savior," many of us think automatically of what we learned in Sunday School, that Jesus saves us from our sins.  We might not really get it, but we still think of it, and we might assume that the "Jesus died for our sins" lesson is the only legitimate way to talk about a savior. 

But the "What are you looking for?" question Jesus posed invites a more multifaceted approach to notion of Savior.  What do you need saving from?  I think that follows right on the heels of the question of what we are looking for. 

Maybe you are looking for a savior in the very orthodox sense of it.  That is, you may be struggling with sin over which you have come to see you have no power.  You may affirm with countless other believers that we humans are sinful to the core and we cannot save ourselves from sin.  You may experience that sinfulness in a general, original sin way or may experience your own particular bundle of sin. You may be addicted to drugs or alcohol or unhealthy food.  You may be enmeshed in destructive sexual practices, or mired in dishonest business practices.  You may have compromised your ethics in any number of ways and find that you feel stuck in a habit you cannot break.  You may have come to hate yourself for the ways you have failed, and the self-loathing just sticks you deeper into the behavior you hate.

If what you're looking for is a savior from your sin, whatever it may be, rest assured that you have found what you are looking for in Jesus Christ.  Jesus revealed to us God's will to forgive, not just once, not just 70 times but 7 times seventy times for the same offense.  God's will to forgive is inexhaustible.  That assurance of forgiveness is what gives us the confidence to turn toward God in repentance.  And once the turn is begun, God gives us the strength to set aside the burden of sin.  There are countless testimonies that God in Christ frees us from the bondage of sin, bringing liberation from the sin that clings so closely.  Christ is in this sense what John proclaimed him to be, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.  Christ's liberating power succeeds in freeing us where human programs fail.   If a savior from sin is what you're looking for, follow Jesus into freedom.

If what you're looking for is a savior from your wounds, look no further.   The world is full of the walking wounded.  Our encounters with people may leave us bruised and bleeding, sometimes literally, often figuratively.  We encounter shocking cruelty and heartlessness in people we wanted to trust.  Losses of various kinds leave us breathless with pain.  Failing health pulls the rug out from under us.  We may look well and whole on the outside while all the while we are aching deep within.

Are you looking for a healer?  God was in Christ bringing healing wherever Jesus went during his earthly ministry.  From that day to this, deeply wounded people have found healing in the love of Jesus.  Many will testify that Christ has mysteriously healed them of physical illness, though not everyone who seeks physical healing will be cured.  It's a continuing mystery who will get sick and who will get well and when and how it will happen; it's a certainty that none of us gets out of this world alive.  I was talking to Stephen about his cancer a couple of weeks ago and remarked that he had seemed pretty sure he was going to die within five years at one point, and it didn't look like that was going to happen-good news!  And he reminded me in his gentle way that he was still pretty sure he was going to die, but it looked like it would be later rather than sooner.  The rhythms of health are unfathomable, aren't they?  But this we know for certain: healing can happen even where curing does not.  Love heals.  Christ brings us strength to endure our physical trials.  The love of Christ is a balm for the wounds caused by human relationships gone awry.  Christ gives us the capacity to transcend our losses and go on living.  If what you are looking for is a Savior to heal your pain, follow Jesus into vitality.

If what you are looking for is a savior from meaninglessness, Jesus Christ is the one you seek.  Our days here on earth are precious and few.  How tragic it is when humans go through life focused only on their own pleasure or pain, bumping through their years as randomly as a pinball banging off bumpers, lights and bells.  How sad to conceive of our existence as nothing but a cosmic joke or a fluke, with no spiritual dimension at all.  Many of us may conceive our deepest need as a compelling connection to something bigger than ourselves, a role in God's creative work in the world.

Jesus Christ was a man of the Spirit who provided (and continues to provide) a bridge between the human and divine.  His teaching centered on the Kingdom of God being among humans.   He went about enlisting partners in the work of embodying God's realm in the here and now.  He stood for inclusion, for non-violence, for justice, for generosity.  He flattened social barriers to true community wherever he went.  He challenged people to live up to their true potential.  He modeled what it means to pour out ones life unstintingly for the love of God.  If what you are looking for is a savior from a futile and hollow existence, follow Jesus into a creative partnership with the Creator of all. 

I believe Christ is enough for us, for our deepest needs.  God does not, however, give us in Christ everything we want.  If we're looking for comfort and ease all of our days, that's not Jesus.  If we're looking for someone to protect us from every loss and sorrow, that's not Jesus.  If we're looking for someone to give the holy stamp of approval to all our opinions, that's not Jesus.     If we're looking for someone to confirm our prejudices concerning who God hates, that's not Jesus.  If we're looking for a God-Man to confirm all our cultural values, that's not Jesus.  If we're looking for someone to whisper the winning lottery numbers in our ears, that's not Jesus.  If we're looking for someone to leave us alone without stirring us to go higher or deeper into the life of the Spirit, that's not Jesus.

But if we're looking for a Messiah, a savior, a teacher, a companion on the way…Come and see.  What are you looking for?