What Are You Looking For?

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany Year A
January 19, 2020
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: John 1:29-42


Last Friday I was writing my sermon as I usually do on Fridays.  Sometime midday I got hungry for lunch and walked up Hope Street with no particular destination in mind.  I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, or even what I was hungry for.  There were the usual suspects – the Bagel shop, Aidan’s, Le Central – but they didn’t really pull me in.  Then I thought I would go to Baba Sushi, but I had met someone there for lunch the day before.  So, up and down Hope Street and Thames Street I walked.  I didn’t want to get in my car to drive somewhere for lunch.  But why couldn’t I just make up my mind?  I finally gave up and went home and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk and it was delicious and exactly what I wanted.  Have you ever found yourself in that situation?  It’s easy to get overwhelmed by choices at the grocery store, the library or even with the clothes in your closet.  It’s the classic situation of someone peering into a closet full of clothes and saying “I don’t have a thing to wear!”

Today we find our friend John the Baptist again, and he keeps running into Jesus after Jesus has been baptized.  What John does when he sees Jesus is essentially testify, he acts as a witness to the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus and God speaking as he was baptized in the river Jordan.  A first inclination is to discount what John is saying, but let’s remember that John was THE BAPTIST.  People came from far and wide to be baptized by him so there was an element of authority that he had.  They were inclined to believe him because the surrounding community had understood John to be holy, meaning set aside by God for God’s purposes, and his was a first-hand experience of Jesus’s baptism.  But what’s interesting is that John didn’t try to persuade any of his disciples.  All he did was point the way to Jesus, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”

And when the disciples approach Jesus, he asks them “What are you looking for?”  And their response in the question of “Rabbi, where are you staying?” is reflective, I think of their not seeing that what they have been looking for all their lives is standing in front of them.  Perhaps it is a sense of utter disbelief. Could he really be our heart’s desire?

I’ve been contemplating this very question as I prepare for St. Michael’s Annual Meeting in February  and our Vestry Retreat in March.  What are we looking for?  What are we looking for as a church, and what are you in the pews looking for in this community we call St. Michael’s?  When a rector arrives at a new church, the first year ought to be spent simply absorbing and observing, and this is true I hope in my case.  I have followed, for the most part, the cadence of life that St. Michael’s has been living since long before I arrived.  I’ve observed how we gather to pray together and worship. I’ve observed how you all live with one another and engage one another with St. Michael’s as the common context for your relationships.  I have heard what you liked about St. Michael’s in the past, and what you didn’t.  Sometimes, your deepest desires for St. Michael’s were whispered, as if saying them too loudly would mean they wouldn’t come true.

The second year of a rector’s tenure involves turning a more critical eye and helping give voice to those deep desires.  That’s when the question of “What are you looking for at St. Michael’s?” starts to really be important.   Too often to face our deepest longings, to acknowledge the emptiness of some of the things we thought had a lot of meaning, to inquire about what is of ultimate importance in shaping and forming our lives, is just not a “feel good” conversation. It can be too scary and too risky. Answering Jesus’s question means getting real, being vulnerable, open and honest.  And because being vulnerable, open and honest is scary, we instead talk about things that really don't matter until something happens that does matter – a tragedy, a failure, the loss of a loved one, a challenge that seems insurmountable.

But this question goes to the heart of our relationship with God and it goes to the heart of what we’re doing here at St. Michael’s.  This is what we, as a community, will take up at the end of this year and the beginning of 2021 when we start to put together a long term plan for our parish.  What are we doing here?  What is this all about for us as a community and for you as a Christian? Why are we here and what are we seeking?

And I’ll be up front with you about what I’m looking for.  I’m looking for God to point me towards the wounded places in our community and the world beyond. Towards the broken and the marginalized.  To bring love, compassion and justice to those who are seeking it in their lives.  I’m looking to share the joy of the Good News of Jesus with those who thought such good news was beyond their reach.  I’m looking to be part of a community that knows that it cannot survive without the help of every individual who makes up that community.  I’m looking for a church that loves unconditionally and practices radical hospitality to everyone, from the most faithful Sunday churchgoer to the stranger who walks off the street.  I want a creative faith community that seeks to move beyond ancestor worship.  Jesus isn’t bound by the past history of St. Michael’s, and we can’t be either if we expect to be here for another 300 years.  And, most important, I long to be part of a faith community where every individual is willing to get up out of their pews and go out into the world to do the work God calls us to do with our hands, our feet, our brains, our resources, our very selves.  This is what I’m looking for.

So today Jesus presents you with an invitation.  What are you looking for? What are your deepest desires in a life with Christ that only Christ can meet? Longings that can’t otherwise be fulfilled by the myriad of choices that life presents us with?  So many choices that we often give up and, in the end, leave Christ a distant second. Given that we voluntarily come gather each Sunday, ask yourselves what are your deepest longings as Christians?  Where in your lives and in the life of our community are we experiencing emptiness? And what does it look like when we allow God to meet these deep longings and fill the emptiness?

Let’s stop looking in the closet and saying to ourselves “I don’t have anything to wear.”  Let’s stop staring into a full refrigerator and moaning “There’s nothing to eat.”  Sometimes what we crave most is right under our noses.  The question Jesus asks is, ultimately, rhetorical, because what John’s disciples were looking for, what they needed most, what they desired deepest, stood before them. They now only had to realize how much their lives and the lives of others could be transformed and changed beyond their wildest imaginations.  The time is ripe for us, for St. Michael’s, to realize the same thing.  Amen.