Sermon preached by The Rev. Lance Wallace
2nd Sunday after Epiphany
John the Baptizer had been preaching and we are told in the Scriptures that all Judea and Jerusalem came out to see him. The Baptizer’s message was one of repentance. Stop doing the bad things you are doing. The judgment of God is coming soon. I baptize with water but the Christ who coming right after me will baptize with fire. I am not even worthy to untie his sandal straps. So we have a picture of a rather fearsome Christ on the way. Then after the baptism of Jesus we hear John say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Lambs were meant for sacrifice; they are helpless little creatures to be tied down and killed. How can a lamb and a baptizer with fire be the same person?
Perhaps these were the kind of questions swirling around in the minds of the two disciples that are in today’s gospel reading. After they hear John refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God, they leave John and start following Jesus. Jesus is aware of them following him and turns and asks them, “What do you seek?” Other translations say it, “What do you want?” Now imagine with me a moment, these two disciples for the first time meet and hear Jesus talk to them directly. Can you imagine what being in his presence would have been like? He was God in the flesh. And He said to them, “What do you want?”
What do you want? Or what do you seek? It is a good question. Frankly it cuts to the heart of the issue doesn’t it? What do we want; what do we seek?
One of the world’s largest retailers is Amazon dot com. November 29th 2010 was Amazon’s peak holiday shopping day with customers buying the Kindle (that’s an electronic book reader) and other items online for a record-breaking 158 items sold per second or 9,480 items a minute. Amazon says it has sold more than 5 million Kindles. Customers also bought enough copies of the movie Eclipse for someone to watch the movie 1,000 times a day for 109 years!
In one week of last month most people who watched television saw 1,754 ads promising happiness. So did you get what you wanted for Christmas; did you get happiness? Did you get or want ‘Eclipse’ on DVD? Did you get or ask for a Kindle? Or did you get one of the hot new video games or game consoles—where you are the controller? Not into that? Did you get clothes or jewelry? Did you get an iPod, or iPad or iPhone? Did you get what you wanted?
Somehow, I don’t think that when Jesus turned and asked those two men what they wanted, I don’t think He was asking what type of things they wanted. Things wear out, break, go out of date, or become boring after a while don’t they? No, when Jesus asks, “What do you want?” He is asking about serious things, things that last.
C.S. Lewis once said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” What Lewis was communicating is the often overlooked fact that as human beings our bodies clothe our souls and our souls are the essence of who we are. Our bodies age and wear out. God made our souls to be eternal. So when Jesus asks about what do we want; what do we seek? We instinctively know that He is talking about what our souls desire, what our souls seek. What is it that our souls want that they seek?
Certainly our souls desire peace. Simply look at the enormous amount of sales of tranquilizers in the U.S. and Western Europe and it is clear that people want peace. Our consciences bother us because of what we have done and make it difficult to live with ourselves. Our relationships bother us, and we find it difficult to live with others. Sometimes the issue that takes away my peace is not within me or with people around me, but it is the situation around me that is so stressful. So our souls need peace.
Our souls seek contentment. Madison Avenue has capitalized on this lack in our souls by promising us that if we just buy this item or have that item, then we will be content. In last week’s Time magazine there is an ad by Goldman Sachs that shows a young woman behind a desk with a new job. She is smiling and obviously very content. Then there is the picture with Sean Connery relaxing on a dock, a sandy beach in the background with a Louis Vuitton man bag and looking very manly and content—so obviously, if I had a Louis Vuitton man bag, I would probably be content too and who knows, I might be able to pull off the looking manly. Sally Field looks content now that she has stopped her bone loss with Boniva. The people in the ads we watch on television may be driving in their new car or now that they use a certain perfume or deodorant they are holding hands with their new boyfriend or girlfriend. They may be kissing since they are now chewing a certain type of gum or using a particular mouthwash. They all look pretty content. But the simple fact that we are constantly urged to keep buying is a pretty clear indication that whatever we buy will not keep us satisfied.
Joseph Ratzinger, (also known as Pope Benedict) in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, asks the question. “If Jesus did not bring world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world, what has he brought?” During the morning men’s Bible study on Friday one of the men asked a similar question, “What did the coming of Jesus accomplish? There are still so many problems here on earth. There is still so much suffering.” The answer is simple says the Pope—God. Jesus brought us God. Jesus came so that we now have access to God through his being the Lamb of God. All these desires we have been talking about are things that find their fulfillment in our relationship with God. Remember in Luke chapter eleven when Jesus talked about prayer? Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Jesus points out that even as bad as we are, we give good things to our children. Jesus then said, “How much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those ask.” In other words, in the times we go to God asking and seeking, and knocking, God gives us Himself. You see, that is what we really need and want; that is what we ache for; we want God. It is just as St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their peace in Thee, Oh Lord.”
When those two disciples first came in contact with Jesus here and began following him, Jesus turned and asked them, “What do you want?” Notice again the conversation—notice what they didn’t say. They did not ask, “What did John mean about you being a Lamb and then baptizing with fire?” No, after being in his presence for just that moment, what they said was, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” In other words, Jesus, where you are, that’s where we want to be. And Jesus said, “Come and see” in other words, “Come and hang out with me for a while.” May God give us the grace to be like the first disciples and experience his presence when we hang out with Him.