Sermon 1/19/20: What are you looking for? (Pr. Craig Mueller)
January 19, 2020
Second Sunday after Epiphany
Pr. Craig Mueller
What are you looking for?
I can’t say I like shopping. When I do, I want to have my space and take my time. And the last thing I want is a salesperson hovering over me, watching my every move. Trying to steer me to a certain product and sometimes to their personal profit.
Can I help you? What are you looking for? Can I help you find something?
Oh, I’m just browsing, I will sometimes say, just to get rid of the person. Even though I know I’m there to find a sweater. But the opposite can happen, too, right. You need the assistance of a salesperson, and there’s no one in sight, or they’re all tied up with other customers.
These days people do more shopping online. But if we’re trying to find some information or need assistance with some other task, now we have Siri. And Siri says: What can I help you with? In other words, what are you looking for?
The long-awaited Super Bowl commercials will air in two weeks with candidates Trump and Bloomberg each buying ten-million-dollar spots. And this past week I read of—and watched—an emotional commercial that chronicles the thirty-year romantic relationship of two women. Only in the last five seconds does the viewer find out it is a commercial for the all-new Renault Clio, a French car.
What are you looking for? It’s the question in today’s gospel. It’s the existential question of the ages.
John the Baptist tries to get the attention of his own disciples by pointing to Jesus and saying: “hey, look, this is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” And it works. They start following Jesus. But then Jesus asks them the question, “what are you looking for.”
Like us, they don’t know what to say, so they just blather, “where you staying? Where you are from?”
This text is about seekers. And the process of looking, seeking, and finding. And it’s not so different from advertising. In fact, both spirituality and shopping are getting at the question, “what are you looking for.” But with a very different end in mind.
Digital marketing experts say we are exposed to 4,000 – 5,000 ads a day. One writer suggests that every ad is saying the same thing: buy this product and you will have a full life! We certainly are exposed to a lot more ads and commercials than we are with spiritual inspiration. No wonder we believe that material things will make us happy.
Here’s one definition: “advertising is all about creating messages to persuade and motivate someone to take action. Good advertising is designed to be extremely influential, memorable, and at times, risqué. It breaks through the clutter and noise of everyday life, disrupts the viewer’s attention, and demands their focus.”
Much of that sounds like the purpose spirituality, faith, religion. Breaking through the noise of everyday life to persuade and motivate! Someday should do a study of this!
The thing is, in church, in our spiritual lives, we are trying to go deeper than skin cream or the newest gadget. What are you really looking for? What will give your life meaning and purpose? Why are you on this earth?
These are questions worth pondering. It’s great to inherit a faith from your parents but it can easily become on auto pilot. Sometimes those who seek a new spiritual tradition or those raised with none take such questions seriously. What I am looking for? What do I value? Where do I sense God’s presence? How can my gifts to make a difference in the world? What will form resilience in me when life’s sufferings and setbacks come my way?
I don’t have to tell you that many people are carrying around religious baggage and a growing number of them want nothing to do with church. Yet they still may be open to God. They still likely have spiritual hungers. And many may not know that there are churches—like ours—that not only practice radical hospitality but are open to seekers, doubters, and questioners.
When the disciples ask Jesus where he is staying, he simply says, “come and see.” It’s an invitation. It means leaving our comfortable ways of looking at the world, at other people, at religion, at faith. “Come and see” also means willing to be seen by Jesus, and by a God who looks at us with compassion and mercy.
We can make a list of reasons we wouldn’t invite someone to church. They’ll probably say no. They aren’t religious. They’ll think we’re like all the other wacky Christians they have in their mind. And yet today’s gospel is a challenge to invite others to a deeper life. Come and see. Come and explore what you are looking for even though you may not even know it—the path to a rich, full life, a spirituality that takes seriously the brokenness of the world.
And that’s where the lamb comes in. Look, here is the lamb of God, exclaims John. But what the “lamb of God” mean to you? It’s a part of the liturgy right out of today’s gospel: Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Some folks today get hung up on Jesus as the lamb— the one who is a sin or atonement offering to placate an angry God. Yet in Jesus’ day, the Passover lamb wasn’t about that at all. The lamb is a connection to the exodus and liberation from enslavement. As one writer puts it, Jesus inaugurates a new exodus, not from captivity in Egypt, but from everything and from all forms of oppression that keep us from being who God created us to be. This is the kind of freedom talked about by both Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr.
What are you looking for? Not just size twelve. Not just an iPhone in green. Not just the restaurant with the best Yelp review. What are you really looking for? What is most essential for you to grow and thrive and serve?
What a gift that we can take a few moments on a Sunday morning to turn off the distractions and turn off the commercials and listen for God. And hear again the invitation: Come and see! Come, hear the good news. Come, remember your baptism. Come, eat, and drink. Come, be refreshed, and then depart to share in God’s liberation project for our world!
