As Geoff mentioned in the welcome and many of you already know, this has been quite a week since we were last in this room. I’m grateful for so many within our congregation for the ways you have enabled us to open our spaces to our friends from Beth Israel this weekend. As many of us have said over the past two days, while we of course grieve the event that has caused Beth Israel to be displaced, we are honored that they are here with us and look forward to the ways our common life will unfold in the coming months.
I’d been talking with the other pastors and even some committee chairs about how I wanted our unofficial theme for this year, as a church, to be Throw more parties. For us to look for reasons to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company and the gift of being alive together in this moment. I had no idea the first party we would have a chance to help throw would be a bat mitzvah!
I.
All of this has been a remarkable turn in this season of Epiphany, when we are reminded to keep our eyes open for the ways Christ is revealed around us. It has also been a powerful backdrop to hear, again, this story from the Gospel of John about the call of the first disciples, which is meant to be a kind of model of discipleship itself.
The way the other Gospels tell of this call, Jesus is the one in pursuit. In the story from Matthew we will encounter next week, Jesus approaches fishermen in their boats, apparently out of the blue. They are busy tending to other things when he interjects himself into their lives and makes them an offer: Follow me, and you will fish for people. Follow me, and your life will take on new meaning, new purpose.
But here, it is the disciples who are in pursuit of Jesus. They’ve been preparing for this day, having received the baptism of John and heard his teachings about the ways God is about to move in the world through the sending of a Messiah. Now this day for which they’ve been preparing has come. Jesus is pointed out to them, and they begin their pursuit, though in secret. They’ve not dropped everything and followed after him just yet. That will come, but for now, they just want a look. As they begin following him in stealth, Jesus sees them, looks them in the eye, and says his first words in John that will set his trajectory through the rest of the Gospel: What are you looking for?
It’s not an offer like the other stories tell it: Follow me, and this is what you’ll find. The call to discipleship, here, begins with a question: What are you looking for? What is that you seek? What is it that you want, more than any other thing in the world? In other words, before you go a step further, know that the journey ahead, should you take it, will be a journey into the heart of things, which can be accessed only by journeying into your own heart.
II.
Jesus knows what we all know, some place deep within us, which is that we’re all looking for something. And the challenge is that we’re not always aware of what it is. Often, we’ll sense there’s an engine somewhere within us, something that’s driving us, that can push us in good and productive ways, and at other times in ways we regret or that confuse us. And we wonder, What’s behind all this?
Theologian Jamie Smith writes,
You are what you seek. You are what you’re looking for, what you desire, because this is where your heart is, or where your heart is pointing you. We imagine ourselves to be rational creatures, driven by sound arguments and fact-based reasoning. But we are, in fact, emotional creatures, driven by our longings, chasing our desires. So much depends on being clear about what we’re seeking. That’s why Jesus says elsewhere, Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else will fall into place. Or why, centuries before, God said through the prophet Jeremiah, You will find me when you seek me with your whole heart. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, wrote that if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.2 We are what we seek.
But it’s not often that we think about just what this is, that we seek; what’s driving us. It’s much easier to focus on lesser things, or more likely, not to focus much at all”and Lord knows we get no help from the world around us. We live, of course, in a culture of distraction and move in an economy of attention. Someone much wiser than me told me years ago, when we were all first signing up for social media accounts and intoxicated on the new IV drip of images, friends, and all the rest of it”he said, remember, if the service you’re using is free, then you are the product. Your attention is what’s being bought and sold”which is to say your time, which of course is to say, your life. I heard it pointed out recently that 40% of the S&P’s market value is held by about 10 companies, each with god-like algorithms and AI technologies, whose profit motive is to keep us glued to our screens as much as possible, and they know that outrage and division are the most effective adhesives. This should concern us, I think. The eye, Jesus says elsewhere, is the lamp of the body, and if we’re not careful, if we’re not intentional, and vigilant, we may never get around to asking the holy question of what we’re looking for, and instead passively accept whatever it is we happen to be looking at.
III.
Thrown off guard by his initial question, I suspect, the would-be disciples ask Jesus where he is staying, and his response is just as open to interpretation as his initial question: Come and see.
Come and see, he says. This is the invitation to discipleship.
Come and see where I’m staying, but more than that, Come and see where I am going. Come and see; you may find what you’re looking for.
Or maybe”and we can’t know for sure”Come and see what I’m looking for. Come and see what I want more than anything in the world. Come and see what I’m willing to do for it. After all, this is the meaning of discipleship: not simply to go where Jesus goes, but to want what Jesus wants. To seek what Jesus seeks, to love what Jesus loves. To love who Christ loves.3
The call to discipleship, here in John, is a call to curiosity. It is an invitation to imagination. It is not a guarantee of just what we will do or find. It is simply a holy invitation to look in a deeper, truer way. To walk through this world with our eyes fully open to wonder and to surprise. To unexpected opportunities to love and care and be moved. To carry little so that our arms may be free”to lend a hand, to share a burden.
It is a call to risk, something big for something good, as the benediction goes, for we have seen how precious simple goodness is in this world.
How needed. Kindness, decency, restraint, respect. And all of this, now, amounts to a certain measure of courage. It is to move against the grain to commit oneself to this kind of seeing, this kind of pursuit of what is true and right and of value. To stand open and ready to receive what might come, trusting that God is both great and good, and that we have never to receive any of it alone.
IV.
I really can’t describe to you how special it was to open our sanctuary to the Beth Israel Congregation this weekend for their Shabbat services.
It was a joy to walk through this room with them last week, so holy to us, and imagine together how it might become holy to them. To work through the details and determine what would be needed as they began taking inventory of all that was lost to fire and smoke. To find a home for the Torah scroll and to clear our communion table so it could hold the Shabbat candles and the kiddush”a loaf of bread paired with a cup of wine or grape juice, which is blessed and shared. Does that sound familiar?!
There was joy, there was relief, there was expectation. There was grief for what had been lost, but more than anything, there was resolve. Despite the violence that had been committed against them, their lives together as a congregation continued uninterrupted, in the presence of friends, and with the support of their community.
Part of that life together this weekend was the bat mitzvah for a woman within their congregation, known to many within ours, Tamar Sharp. Tamar had been planning for this day for months. She is not a typical bat mitzvah, which usually happens around age 12, but instead has grown children of her own and came to this milestone later in life. She helped to lead the service on Friday night, and on Saturday read an extended passage from the Torah in Hebrew and gave some commentary on it, what we might call a sermon, but in Hebrew is a d’var Torah. The Torah portion read was the passage from Exodus in which God promises Moses to free him and God’s people from bondage in Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land.
Near the end of her wonderful commentary, Tamar said that when she originally wrote her words some weeks ago, she described how special it was to be in one of her favorite places with all of her favorite people. So much has happened since then that made it impossible to be in the place she and everyone else would have wanted.
But she continued to say, as she stood there, having experienced the kindnesses of so many and the welcome she and the congregation had received, how special it was to be in this place with all the many people around her and their congregation from Northminster and the wider community. And it reminded her of this prayer that their congregation often recites in worship,
Standing on the parted shores of history, we still believe what we are taught: that before we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt; that there is a better place, a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness. That there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.
We cannot know the road ahead. We do not know what we will see, who we will meet along the way, or even what will be asked of us. We are only asked to be clear and bold and resolute in what we are looking for: that Land promised to Moses and God’s people in Egypt so long ago, that the prophets expanded upon and imagined for all people, and to which Jesus gave new voice, though harmonizing with that same, anicent voice, and that, we can say this weekend, Dr. King dreamed of for us in our moment, and that so many others of faith and goodwill have spoken through the generations. That place, which is really more a people, a beloved community, committed to the way of wholeness and goodness; of generosity and compassion; of justice and mercy; of hope and peace; of love and deep, deep, unexpected joy.
V’heveti etkhem el ha’aretz.
I will bring you to that Land, God says to Moses.
Come and see, Christ says to us.
One voice, one God. Amen.
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1 Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, 8
2 Found in James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, 11
3 James K. A. Smith, again.