“What Are You Looking For?”

John 1:29-42

John 1:29-42

²⁹ The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰ This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ³¹ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³² And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³ I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” ³⁵ The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, ³⁶ and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

³⁷ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸ When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” ³⁹ He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. ⁴⁰ One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. ⁴¹ He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). ⁴² He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

The Sermon

I remember the things that made my grandparents’ house the home that it was.

The immaculate parlor; the formal front door hallway; the bird bath out in the garden; the classical records lining a shelf in the living room; the painting above the piano; the den lined with packed bookshelves...

The clear plastic cover on the davenport in the living room, the most formal room I’ve ever seen in a functioning house. By the time the cover came off that couch—that’s what a davenport is, by the way; she’s the only person I ever heard call it that—by the time the cover was removed, the davenport was so dated that you kind of wondered why you hadn’t been able just to sit on the thing when it was still usable.

In the kitchen, a sheet of tin foil it seemed like my grandmother had been re-using since the Truman administration. No matter what the subject was, every single conversation between her and her grandchildren included the words “I hope you kids never see anything like the Great Depression.” That was all the explanation we needed about the foil.

The still life she’d painted on the white kitchen wall above the kitchen table—painted right on the wall—a brown branch with green shoots and pink blossoms. Everybody gawked over it, and she was, over three generations, unselfconsciously proud of it; and when she finally moved out after 50 years, everybody wished we could take it with us, but we all had to leave it behind.

In every house are the things that tell you something about the person who lives there, even when the house is neat and tidy and clean and on its best behavior, all dressed up with no place to go.

The wallpaper.

The pictures.

The kitchen aromas.

The ticking clock.

The bookshelves.

The tableware.

The bath towels.

The bedside table.

The curtains.

The dining room table.

The coffee mugs.

They form a chorus that echoes from room to room—“We are the household of a human being, a couple, a family: a dreamer, a thinker, a laborer, a builder, a saver, a helper, a friend, a sinner;

someone who loves and is loved;

someone who knows solitude, and calls it either peace and quiet or loneliness; who knows the tempo of life, and calls it either invigorating energy or the endless busy fever of life.”

You may not be able to label it right away, but if you know the story, you can see the signs. The way the family photographs are arranged. The things that are placed just so, and the things that get piled up in a corner or on a shelf.

What’s in your house? What do people, including you, see in your house that tells them that this is your home, the place and the space that you inhabit?

When I was first getting into ministry, there was an assumption that the pastor would get around to everybody’s house, and it was his or her responsibility to make sure it happened. By the time I came out of seminary, people didn’t want you dropping in—certainly not unannounced—and for that matter, the place is a mess, and the kids are coming home from school, or my private stuff is out, or the bathroom’s a disaster, and they just don’t want you coming over, thank you.

In Mayberry, they visit each other’s homes; they dress up and go to each other’s homes for dinner—and I don’t know what the big deal is about groundbreaking new sensory technologies; I could always smell Aunt Bea’s cooking perfectly.

These days, not so much, the visiting of one another’s houses; and that’s not a lamentation as much as just an observation. Young generations are more likely to visit each other’s Facebook or Myspace pages than each other’s homes.

But when two of John the Baptist’s disciples—apparently with his tacit approval—started following Jesus like investigators following a guy in a trench coat, he turned around and said, “What are you looking for?”

A hundred possible answers must have flashed into their minds. What am I looking for?

The truth.

Someone to follow.

Answers.

Love.

Dialogue.

Peace.

Security.

Home.

Maybe that last one was what popped into the mind of the first to speak. He was so far down that train of thought, he forgot what the question was, and said, “Teacher, where do you live?”

And Jesus said, “Come and see.”

There are some places in the Bible that you and I get to see, but no one else does.

Only you and I see Jesus at prayer in the garden of Gethsemane; the disciples were asleep and no one else was around. We see inside the workings of the Sanhedrin when no disciples were allowed in.

But there are some places in the Bible that you and I never get to see. From Jesus’ tomb at the moment of his resurrection, as in Lazarus’s tomb at the moment of his, we are absent. No one sees that.

There are some places and some things in this universe that are best shown to us by the power of our own imagination.

I was 11 years old when Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out in movie theaters for the first time. And even then I recognized that at the end of the movie, we didn’t get to go into the spaceship with Richard Dreyfuss. We could only watch him walk into it from the top of that plateau in Wyoming, but if we wanted to see the inside of an alien space craft, we had to use our imaginations. It was frustrating that Steven Spielberg, the director, wouldn’t take us in there and let us see, but it was really the only way to do it.

Years later, they released a “director’s cut” of the movie and this time, I was disappointed that we saw the camera footage of the actor gazing around the inside of the spaceship. Now, our imaginations were irrelevant. I remember it looking a little like the waiting room at my dentist’s office. And I also remember thinking, “Why should I suspend my disbelief for this? Steven Spielberg doesn’t know what the inside of a flying saucer looks like.”

Neither John nor anyone else in the Bible tries to get us to believe something by showing us what they can’t know—in this case, the inside of Jesus’ home. We never get the itemized, descriptive view inside the place where Jesus was staying.

What do you imagine we would see there?

Would there be a place setting, or two, or three, always ready for someone to come in and rest and be fed?

Would he have a corner set aside for fishing gear, or carpentry tools, or extra sandals and a bag, belt and wineskin for walking long distances?

Might there be—tucked away somewhere, or set out unpresumptuously—an ingot of gold, a box of frankincense, a jar of myrrh? Are they set out where he sleeps or eats or reclines, so that he sees them all the time, and is reminded of just how much he means to the people who recognize him for what he is?

However it may have looked, smelled, sounded or felt, those who were interested in who this man was were invited to come and see. That’s how they would get an understanding, deeper than words alone could ever provide. Maybe only then would they understand for themselves what they were looking for.

Maybe that’s still the way it’s supposed to work.

What are you looking for? Something brought you here today.

What is anybody looking for? If they walked into this house—our house, God’s house—or your house at home; or wherever you are staying; or wherever you stand, on the street or on the issues;

Would they see something that would give them an indication of who God is? Would they possibly be able to see, in you or your abode or your church, something that they have been looking for?

My grandparents’ house in Louisville belongs to someone else now, and while my grandmother lingers in a nursing home in another city, we as a family have already, in our own ways, begun to say our goodbyes.

But the memories remain. I know my grandparents even now, because I remember everything about their house.

What will people remember—our children, our guests, our members past, present and future—what will they have found at Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church?

And should the day ever come when we have almost no other memories left, what will you and I remember about what we came and saw when we were invited to Jesus’ house?

The invitation is on the table.

Come and see.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

January 20, 2008