John 1:29-41                                                                                       Susan J. Barnes

St. Matthew’s, Austin                                                                          January 16, 2005

This is one of those interesting moments when we see that the gospel accounts diverge.    John gives us a different kind of calling story, very different from all three synoptics--as you will be reminded when you hear Matthew’s next week.    There, Jesus seeks out the disciples.   Jesus finds them at their work.  Jesus calls them--out of their occupations and out of their lives--calls them to follow him.  

In John, it’s the other way around.  Two disciples—one by name, Andrew-- are looking for their master, their Rabbi.   They have been following John, who points Jesus out to them.  He calls Jesus the Lamb of God.  So they decide to follow Jesus, at least for the moment.    They want to know where he is staying.    “Come and see,” is Jesus’ reply.

            Jesus asks the two disciples who are following him: “What are you looking for?”  The question resonates today.  If we tell the truth we’ll admit that like those fishermen in Galilee, we are looking, too.   We are seeking something deep, something important in our lives.  We are seeking meaning, seeking love, among other things.   Most people I know want one or all of the following: acceptance, healing, reconciliation, respect, love.    I certainly did, and though I didn’t know it at the time, those were the desires that underlay my drive for success as an art museum professional.  

Acceptance, healing, reconciliation, respect, love: as it happens, these are the very things that Jesus gave people in his day, and that the risen Christ has given people ever since.   But so many people in our society are like I was: they want those things, but they don’t know where to find them.  And just about the last place they would seek them is here—in the church.    It’s a fact. 

So they search everywhere else, as I did: in professional success, in romance, in status-conscious acquisitions and life-styles.  And when we fail to find what we seek in the places that the culture touts, we may well take refuge from the pain in other things that the culture promotes—alcohol, drugs, or other addictions like pornography, gambling, shopping, eating disorders.   Fortunately, when we come up empty, by the grace of God, some of us will turn to spirituality.

With all of the ills of society, can it be a coincidence that popular spirituality is on the rise?   Spirituality has come into fashion in the last generation.   If you doubt me, just take a look at the mass media, or at the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble.   It is a good thing that people are seeking meaning in the life of the spirit.   But, in keeping with the tragic individualism of our culture, and our maniacal me-ism, many of us think that we have to pursue a personal, individual, spiritual life—rather like that personalized coffee order each of us has at Starbuck’s.    And, in our individual pursuit of spirituality, we isolate ourselves in a quest for meaning.  

            That’s ironic, because isolation is contrary to the most fundamental need that we have—the need for community.   This need trumps food and shelter.  If you don’t believe me, look at how homeless people cluster under bridges in large cities.     We form communities for security and for companionship.   We do so because we need to belong, to be accepted.   In traditional societies the extended family, the clan, satisfy the need.   In our mobile and fractured society there is no natural community.    The clan structure, the extended-family structure, is lost--even the nuclear family is in grave trouble.   That is why gangs arise: young men come together to create a clan, a family, a community.

            Community is the heart of Christian life.   Jesus created a community of followers at the outset of his ministry, and he lived his life between contemplation and community.   Ron Rolheiser--whose book The Holy Longing we’re reading in our Sunday school class—calls community one of the four non-negotiable essentials of Christian spirituality.     Jesus’ death should have brought to an end the community of his followers.    But in Christ’s resurrection, God gave to the disciples and to all of humankind a new kind of community—one that transcends all boundaries of time and space, life and death.   We have different names to express different experiences of this mystical reality.   One name is the communion of saints; another is the Body of Christ.

Until about ten years ago, when I re-entered life in the church, if you had asked me what I thought the Body of Christ was, I would have said it was the bread we receive at communion.     I did not understand the Body of Christ in the way Paul meant it until I got involved in ministry.   Then experience taught me that God brings groups of people together at different times for different purposes.  This is the Body of Christ.  It may be a handful of people for a day’s work at Habitat, or a team of fifty for a week’s medical mission in Honduras, or youth who go on a contemplative retreat, or women like the Daughters of the King who serve for years within a parish.   It may be hundreds of families in a Christian community such as ours—united in our faith, if not in every particular detail of our belief, united in worship, united to serve God’s kingdom, united in our commitment to live in what Rolheiser calls “the muck and the grace of actual church life.”

Two of John’s disciples followed Jesus one day--in their curiosity, and their longing.   Jesus asked them,  “What are you looking for?”   Every one of us knows someone who is looking, who is longing for a spiritual home, a family of faith—a place where they will be accepted and loved as they are, where they can learn, but also can teach, where their gifts will be recognized, appreciated, and used.      They are longing for the very things that—by the grace of God—we have here.     Dear ones, St. Matthew’s church is at a moment of particular blessing and grace.  We are healthy, we are hospitable, we are bathed in God’s love and we are seeking to grow into God’s call to us.   As Merrill said so movingly in his sermon last week, this love, this grace, is God’s gift to us.   It cannot be earned.    But it can—indeed it must—be shared—for God’s sake.   

Grace cannot, grace must not, be hoarded.   God calls each of us to reach out to friends and family and offer to share the grace that is being lavished on us. For the born evangelists among us—like Pat Boon—this reaching out is like breathing.   For the retiring Anglicans, it’s more of a stretch.   Believe me.  I’m one.  But even the shyest, the most reticent, among us can manage three little words of invitation.   I pray you, summon up your courage and join me.  Reach out to the seekers you know with the three words that Jesus used:  “Come and see”.