Last week I spent some time on
John’s use of questions, specifically the question “What is truth?” Today, we
get another completely loaded question—this was kind of John’s thing—and that
question is “What are you looking for?”
Isn’t
this a question we could ask any one of us? What are we looking for? We all
have expectations about what we’re getting when we go to church. Maybe we come
to be spiritually fed; maybe we come out of a sense of duty; maybe we come
because our parents make us; and maybe we come because it’s 30 degrees below
zero and it seems like a warm place to be. I suppose there are probably as many
reasons why we come as there are people in the church. All of us are looking
for something slightly different.
But
there are even more people not here—people who have other things happening on
Sunday mornings, people with work, who have busy lives, people who want nothing
to do with organized religion; or, on days like today, people who have a little
more sense than most of you. What are they looking for?
Each
of us is looking for something in our lives, whether we consider ourselves a
spiritual person or not. This is a difficult question in this crazy big world, because
there are so many potential options for things to give our lives meaning that
it’s very difficult to hang on to any one in particular. There are literally
thousands of world religions and countless political worldviews. There are as
many opinions as there are people in the world; in fact, since there are
Lutherans in the world we know that there are more opinions than there are people, because if you get two
Lutherans in a room you have three opinions about something should be done. For
all of these reasons it’s very difficult to answer the question “What are you
looking for?”
By
most standards this area of the country is a pretty insular, tight-knit area. A
lot of people don’t get out much. So, one would think that if anywhere was
immune to all of those competing influences for meaning it would be Kittson County, but even here it’s sometimes
difficult to come together with a clear sense of direction and purpose. It
becomes a real challenge to work together and learn from each other when we
have these different ideas of purpose. Most of us have had the experience of
working with somebody who has a completely different understanding of life than
us. This is what happens in a world of seven billion people, all struggling to
make sense of things much bigger than themselves. It’s also what happens with
our neighbor down the street, or even our family member who just thinks
differently than us.
I
hear very often that such and such group of people just need to be more like
us—if they only understood this one thing they would clearly come to see that
our way of living, our way of worshiping, or our concept of right and wrong is
the absolute best of all possible answers. It’s tempting to want others to
become more like us, but, since we’re all still looking for something, we
should probably also acknowledge that this searching can be done faithfully in
many different ways. If we had all the answers we wouldn’t be looking for
anything at all. It’s a tough thing in this world of so many viewpoints to
distinguish what it is that makes what we believe especially true. When it
comes down to it, it’s so often just a gut instinct born out of being brought
up to live this way. We can no more change that than we can change our parents;
we simply are who we are.
And
I think that might be the only faithful place to start. We are who we are because
of countless forces outside of our control. Some of us were given a head start
with a loving family and a strong faith given to us by our parents and
grandparents; some of us had none of those things but struggled just to get by
and never had anybody to mentor us through those difficult questions. Each of
us has the ability to rise above our circumstances, but those circumstances
will always influence us for good and for bad; always both.
And
that background will forever frame our answer to the question “What are you
looking for?”
The
claim we can make as Christians is that, even though all of us are looking for
very different things, the thing at the heart of all our desires is Jesus. We
might not even realize it; in fact, it may be in our nature to fight against
that. Even more than that, we will often not know what that means. It may be in
our instinct to search out Jesus through radical shows of obedience, even while
Jesus comes offering us salvation as a free gift. It might also be in our
nature to run away from that grace and spend every Sunday fishing, or at sporting
events, or sleeping in. None of that changes what we are looking for. It just
means we have decided, for one reason or another, that church may not the best
place to find it.
For
those of us who are here, that can be disappointing, but, frankly, it can also
be uplifting, because the only way this community comes together is to wrestle
with meaning, and the only way we wrestle with meaning is to disagree from time
to time and to have some people who believe more strongly than others. God
gives faith in sufficient quantities not to individuals but to communities. So,
some of us are always going to be lacking, even while some of us are feeling
particularly certain about what we believe. We have to fight the inclination to
isolate some who appear less worthy as “bad church members” or, worse yet, “bad
Christians.” In fact, they are a necessary part of the whole church.
All
of us are looking for something. The reason we gather on Sunday mornings is not
to talk about how we have it all figured out but to lift up those of us who
really don’t—which is all of us. We’re stronger when we have the sick in our
midst; wiser when we have doubters. It is the essential paradox of the
Christian faith: whatever appears weak to the world tends to be strength when
we come before God. Turning the other cheek, bowing our heads, deciding not to
retort to the hateful comment, loving the enemy—these are signs of weakness to
the world out there but signs of strength to the Christian; they are signs that we are not
as interested in our pride as we are in following Jesus.
Jesus’
response to the disciples’ questions is simple: Come and see. Come and see what
he’s got coming; come and see the ministry to people in bondage; come and see
the road to the cross; come and see the resurrection. But stay for the whole
ride. You can’t catch a snippet and understand the whole picture; you need the
whole horse: life, death, resurrection. That’s what all of us are looking for,
and it’s the danger of missing out on any part of this Jesus. Whether we
consider ourselves Christian, or Muslim, or Atheist, or Buddhist, or whatever,
we are all looking for life, death, and resurrection. We might not frame it
that way; we might even believe the exact opposite. But all of us look at the
world around us and think, “Geez, this has its moments but it’s really not
quite enough.” Things die. All things—both good and bad—come to an end, and
something inside of us says that it’s just not enough. We need something
better. Something that trumps death. And the only thing that trumps the death
is a Savior who has been there and risen.
That’s the one
promise unique to the Christian faith. It’s the one claim we have to the
universality of Christ’s message. It’s not that Jesus was any wiser than
Mohammed or Moses or Buddha; it’s that Christ lived, died, and was resurrected.
“Come and see,” he says. Then, you will find what you’re looking for.
Amen.
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