Spiritual GPS

"Spiritual GPS"

John 1:29-42
January 20, 2008

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! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man
who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I
came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And
John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on
him. 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.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched
Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 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?” 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. One of the two who heard John
speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother
Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). 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).

To continue a theme from last Sunday, around cars and driving, and skill behind a
wheel, I have to confess that in addition to barely passing my driver’s license test way
back when, I am not a very good navigator. You know, some people have an incredible
intuition when it comes to knowing to how to get from point A to point B, but not me.
One of my friends during my seminary days had this eerie ability to point towards what
direction we wanted to go in the city of Atlanta, and find his way there through all the
back streets, through the neighborhoods around the city, and get us there every time!
It was amazing! It left me speechless, because I once spent 2 hours one night in that
very city trying to get back home to my house from an area that was maybe 15 minutes
away—I was on the verge on tears of frustration by the time I got home. And there is a
reason my mother got me a GPS car navigation for my Christmas and birthday
presents last year—she knows I can’t find my way out of a paper bag! I have no sense
of direction, no sense of north or south—don’t ever tell me to north then turn east if you
don’t want a blank stare from me in return. Mom knows I need a navigator because I
have no sense of direction, and that is probably one of the reasons she is so glad that
Douglas is in my life—he prevents me from getting too lost in this world, something I
appreciate about him as well.

In our passage this Sunday, its sort of the same thing with the disciples, they’re a lot
more like me than any of them would ever want to admit. They find themselves
intrigued and willing to follow after this man from the town of Nazareth, but they’re not
quite sure where they are going, or what they are looking for in their decision to follow
after him. Now, what makes this interesting story even more interesting is the backdrop
to it all, to the possible lives of these would-be disciples of Jesus. Many scholars think
that the background of Jesus’ earliest disciples were a little more complicated than the
traditional picture of them being just simple fishermen or tax collectors—many think that
perhaps his earliest disciples were part of various sects that were heavily invested in
the coming of a Jewish Messiah that would bring about the end of Roman rule, that
would challenge the powers that be, and finally elevate Israel to its rightful place at the
center of the world, if not the universe itself. And so if you consider that possibility, it
makes this moment even more interesting, especially the latter part of our passage
today. Some of John’s disciples become Jesus’ disciples because John witnesses to
Jesus’ uniqueness and points to him as the lamb of God, the one the world has been
waiting for—of course, this is in contrasts to the role of John the Baptist in the other
three Gospels, who functions primarily as a baptizer of Jesus in the river Jordan. Here
John tells his disciples to follow after Jesus, to go after this man Jesus, rather than to
continue with him in work at the Jordan. They are messianic Jews, these men, ready
for the Messiah to come quickly with raw power, but John points them toward a
surprising man from Nazareth, and so two of these disciples follow after him, uninvited
by Jesus, really, if you compare the other call stories of the disciples in the following
verses, where Jesus actually calls the disciples by asking them to “follow me.”

And so the story goes that Jesus turns around to these would-be disciples, and he asks
them a striking and unusual question: “What are you looking for?” Now, obviously,
Jesus can’t just simply think that they’ve lost their way, or perhaps, have that weird,
creepy feeling some of us have when we notice someone we don’t know seemingly
following us for no good reasons, making us a little nervous. It doesn’t seem to be that
kind of moment—he isn’t asking a “why”question of them. He knows why they are
following him—they are hoping that he is going to be the Messiah they want him to be,
a fiery, sword-wielding, sort of leader. No, Jesus is asking them a “what” question—
what are you looking for? And, in reading their reaction, I think this stuns these two
men—I think up to this moment they thought they knew what they were looking for, but
now, when pressed by this Jesus of Nazareth, they weren’t quite sure anymore about
what they were looking for. Maybe it was the turn of the question, or the piercing look
from his eyes, or something else left in the dustbin of time, but something changed the
moment they were asked that question by Jesus, and it left our poor friends stumbling
around, asking about the evening’s hotel reservations. There is a wonderful story
about the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who was in a public
garden poring over a particular plant for a very long time. A police officer, his
suspicions aroused, approached him and demanded: "Who are you?" Schopenhauer
looked the officer in the eye, scratched his chin, and chose his words carefully. "Sir, if
you could only answer that question for me, I'd be eternally grateful." Almost like
Schopenhauer, one second the disciples know who they are and what they want—they
are messianic Jews who want Israel to be the center of all that is—and the next
moment, they have no idea of who they are and what they are looking for, simply
because someone asked them this piercing question.

And what does Jesus say to their inquiries about what Ramada he will be staying at that
evening? “Come and see, come and see.” Oh, one could spend hours unpacking
those words alone from this passage! But I’m going to stick with something we
discussed in last year’s Gospel of John Bible study we had here at the church, and that
is this: Christ doesn’t give them theological rundown on what they should or shouldn’t
believe, he doesn’t lay out the trinity for them, or an early version of the Apostles
Creed, or the Westminster Catechism, or the UCC Statement of Faith, or any other of
the ways we Christians have attempted to organize and demystified Mystery itself—
Jesus only asks them to come with him on the journey, to come and seen for
themselves. As I’ve said before, most recently in the Extraordinary Relationship
workshop, people don’t come to some sort of truth in their lives because they’ve been
argued into that truth—they come to that truth because they’ve come to experience
that truth for themselves, they have gone and seen that truth for themselves, so to
speak. So it with Christ, I think, in this passage—he knows that truth that becomes
OUR TRUTH comes not from books, though I loath to admit that, or from us preacher
types, and I really loath to admit that, but from our real, lived experience of God in this
world, or any other truth we’re struggling to understand.

And when I say that it’s hard to admit that, well, I’m telling the truth. I remember being
annoyed as a young person when someone would say that they didn’t know the answer
to something I was asking, whether it was a big question or small question. I especially
couldn’t imagine that some of the wise mentors I known over the years didn’t know the
spiritual directions to get to the place I wanted to go to, or didn’t have some inner
spiritual GPS system that would help them arrive at the place I was looking for. It didn’t
exist, they kept telling me, and over the years, I’ve come to realize how wise these folks
really were…especially, when you consider how often the church has made the mistake
of over-relying on creeds and even sacred scriptures, as valuable as they may be in
the spiritual journey.   These wise mentors, these great teachers, in my life could never
tell me what to do, or why to do it—all they could offer me was wisdom about who to
follow, and whose words I might attend to, and whose life is worth studying—just like
Jesus, all they could do was to invite me to come and see, to follow after this One from
Nazareth and come and see for myself what real truth might look like. It was awfully
frustrating to have Ronnie, my youth minister, saying to me, at 16, to hear him say the
words, “I don’t know…you may have to work that one out for yourself.” Wise words, but
scary words, as I imagine the words, “come and see” were for those early disciples
when Jesus said it to them.

Recently, a study was published by a conservative Christian survey company that did
some extensive polling of how young people outside the church view those of us in the
church, and they found three main negative perceptions people ages 16-29 have of
our Christian faith: they found the church to be judgmental, they found to be church to
hypocritical, and they found to the church to be too anti-gay. (http://www.usatoday.
com/news/religion/2007-10-10-christians-young_N.htm)   I must admit that the last
perception stunned me, which just shows you how the world is sometimes changing for
the better. But, you know, it’s the first two perceptions that have haunted the Christian
church since the beginning of its birth, sadly. And I think it’s because we’ve pretended
to know all the answers, and we’ve judged the ones who didn’t do and believe as we did
to be outsiders, whereas we were the insiders. And then when we were found to be
doing the very things we condemned in others, we were called out to be the hypocrites
we actually were. Instead of being truthful about not having all the answers, we
pretended we did, and then they found us out to be the liars that we were, right?
Instead of inviting people to come and see as we follow this Jesus of Nazareth, we’ve
told people go away and shut their eyes in order to not see, in order to not see the
things that might challenge their faith. But the Christ doesn’t want us to go away with
the truth all neatly boxed up and ready to go, he doesn’t want us to close our eyes so
we can avoid the hard and challenging stuff. No, friends, the Christ wants us to come
and see, and to follow after him, to trust that our next resting place will be in the hands
of the one offering us a journey of a lifetime, just as he did with those first disciples
thousands of years ago.

Now, I don’t what you’re looking for, and I suspect that if we were pushed like Christ
pushed those early disciples with that question, we would be hard pressed to actually
be able to name what we were exactly looking for, though perhaps we would know what
it was when we found it. If we’re looking for easy answers, I’m not sure the Christian
journey is the one for us, because the journey of following after Christ may leave us
with more questions than answers. If we’re willing to let go of our expectations of what
truth is supposed to be like, as those early disciples had to, and we’re willing to
following after the way of this One of Nazareth, this way of love, of hope, of openness,
of grace, then maybe we won’t get wrapped up in the hypocrisy and judgmental
attitudes that seem to plague so many of us Christians in the past and certainly in the
present, those traits that have caused so many young people to abandon the church. I
don’t know what you are looking for—boy, I am not sure what I am looking for—but I do
know this: I know whom I follow, and that is more than enough for me. And If we were in
Schopenhauer’s place when that policeman came up to us in that garden in the park,
asking us who we were, I hope we would say this in reply, “I am a disciple of this Jesus,
and yet I do not where he will lay his head this night, but wherever it is, it will be the
place where I too will lay my weary head.” Amen.