What Do You Treasure?

 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

When we use the word treasure today we typically speak of one of two different things: either some form of wealth or a precious belonging (which or may not have much of a monetary value).  In Jesus day it referred to something different.  The Jerusalem Temple had a treasury to which people contributed (remember how Jesus once said a poor widow who put two mites – a couple of pennies – into the treasury box gave more than anyone else because she gave all she had).  These offerings were used to take care of the priests and to purchase ceremonial vestments and all the other appointments of the Temple.  So, in a sense, when Jesus speaks of treasure he is talking about the things we keep in our Sacristy along with the windows and furnishings which make our space sacred.

This helps us to make sense of what Jesus means when he says, “Store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust don’t consume (think polishing the brass) and thieves cannot break in a steal.”  All of these earthly things one day will perish.  Now, obviously we cannot send flower vases and communion chalices to heaven.  So the question about where is your treasure, is, in some ways, asking what is it that you treasure? 

Yvonne Bertovich is a writer and blogger who, in one post, named the ten things she treasures most.  Listen to her list and ponder what might be on yours:

Music

Loved Ones

Food & Nourishment

Shelter

Learning & Education

Natural Spaces

Plants & Animals

Culture & Discovery

Religion & Spirituality

My Health

Your list might look a little different or have a different ordering, but Yvonne helps us to think about what it is exactly that we treasure in life.  Notice she does not mention a 401k or clergy stoles. 

So this is one question: what do you value you?  And the other is in what are you invested?  Jesus tells us what we value either will direct our hearts toward God or it will direct our hearts away from God.  He says it is just this simple.  What do we have to invest?  Well, money of course.  We also have time and how we use it is an investment (ever sat through a bad movie and at the end said, “Well, there are two hours of my life I can never get back?”).  We can invest effort, energy and work into someone or something.  We can invest emotion.  The more we invest of ourselves in people or things, the more we care about them.  Given this, Jesus asks a basic question: Do the things you invest in and the people you invest in draw you closer to or farther from God?

This is a good question for us to consider on Ash Wednesday; on a day we remember our own mortality and recognize we have only one chance to live life and then ponder if we are living it well.  In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes fictional characters who go to heaven only to turn back because it is neither what they want nor expect it to be.  They have spent their entire lives longing for something other than God and, as a result, when they have a chance to be with God, they turn it down because they long for something else. 

Lewis discerns an important truth about life.  We are free to choose, free to desire, free to invest as we will.  The choices we make have eternal consequences in that they shape and form us either to love God or to love something else.  The choices we make become patterns that become habits that become who we are and God honors who we are by allowing us to receive the blessings or the curses of the choices we make.

In a few moments we will pray the Litany of Penitence.  It is a description of some of the choices we make: pride, hypocrisy, impatience, self-indulgent appetites and ways, envy, intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts to name a few.  These are things in which we invest ourselves and, true to our nature, our heart follows.  And once your heart gets settled on something, it becomes you and you become it.

This is a day (and Lent is a season) to make an honest self-assessment.  On what has your heart become settled?  How is it shaping who you are and what you are becoming?  Ponder these questions and doubtless you will discern those ways in which the treasure-heart-self path is leading you toward God and a deeper love of your neighbor and doubtless you will discern ways the path is leading in the other directions, away from love of God and neighbor.

The holy season of Lent invites us to a period of discipline and self-denial so we might die to some of the ways leading us from God and strengthen some of the ways leading us toward God.  I always get a chuckle from learning what people are giving up for Lent, especially if it is rhubarb or marathon running.  I find those who want to use Lent to die to self often don’t talk about the specifics of their Lenten devotion because it is too close and too personal casually to share with others.  This, I think, is what Jesus is talking about when he teaches about practicing your piety in secret.

The goal of Lent is simple.  It is to shift your treasure from one thing to another; to shift how you invest your time, your money, your energy, and your emotion from something leading you away from God to something leading you toward God.  The goal of Lent is to die to certain aspects of yourself so that by Easter you can rise to newness of life with our Resurrected Savior.  May God be with each of us over the next forty days in this time of disciplined dying to our old self in sure and certain hope God will raise us up to something new and holy.

 

Kabod

 

Matthew 17:1-9

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

When my pilgrim friends and I walked the Way of St. Cuthbert, a 62-mile long trail along the Scottish and English border, we experienced one day which featured every kind of weather imaginable.  We began the day walking in sunshine, but conditions changed dramatically.  By the time we reached the highest elevation along Cuthbert’s Way the temperature had dropped and we were completely enveloped in the clouds.  They swirled around us, seeming to come from every direction, even below as we crossed along the summit.  At one point we couldn’t see more than 25 feet in any direction.  It was damp and it was bone-chilling cold, but it was also a very powerful, moving experience.  It was like being caught up inside something which was alive; all at once disorienting and womb-like (if not for the cold… did I mention it was cold?). 

Today’s readings remind me of that day as God is mysteriously present at two different times on two different cloud-shrouded mountains.  One particular Hebrew word dominates each event: kabod.  It is a word which can be translated in two different ways.  One points to weight or strength or power or ability; the other to honor or glory or magnificence or dignity or splendor.  The first sense has something to do with value, like how a precious stone of great weight is worth more a smaller one.  In this sense, kabod raises the question of who or what matters most.  The second sense is used more to refer to a person’s nature or being.  When used in this way in the Old Testament it almost exclusively refers to God and is most often translated as glory.  It asks us to ponder who or what is most deserving of your admiration and allegiance.

God’s kabod is manifested in the cloud which enshrouds Mt. Sinai.  Moses enters it and will pray to God, “Show me your glory.”  God will answer, “I will make all my goodness (some translations say character, others moral beauty) pass before you.  But you cannot look at my face and live.”  So God will direct Moses to stand in a crag between two rocks and to look only briefly as God passes by.  Even then, Moses will only glimpse God’s back.  (33:18-23).  The cloud is necessary to mask the kabod of God because humans cannot glimpse it fully present and survive (think the ending of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark).

At the Transfiguration, Jesus is revealed as God’s Son and he radiates with God’s kabod.  In Jesus, God sends a person who can show forth God’s own goodness, character, and moral beauty.  Years later Peter writes of experience on that cloud-covered mountain:

We have been eyewitnesses of Jesus’ majesty.  For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Did you notice in the Collect of the Day we asked as we behold the light of Jesus’ countenance (his kabod) we might be changed into his likeness?  Just as Moses is forever changed by his experience with God’s kabod, so too are we changed as we encounter Jesus’.  It suggests if even a small ray of the brightness of God shines upon us, we will more purely reflect the goodness and moral beauty we are shown.

It occurs to me no generation in history has gained more knowledge and more understanding of the created order than ours.  And sadly, no generation seems to be less interested in the One who created this order than ours.  We are too caught up in the luster of something else—something less than the glory of God. 

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Weight of Glory, contends each person has a deep desire to be acknowledged, but nothing other than God seems to satisfy this innate longing.  The problem, he says, is our desire is far too weak.  We are content to pursue the vanities of this world while the infinite glory of heaven is offered to us.

Lewis goes on to offer this insight:

We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

I hear in this the spiritual experience of being enveloped by clouds on a mountain top.  This is how Lewis describes the deep longing each of us has to be acknowledged.  It means being caught up in something which is weighty and worthy. 

Every day, Lewis says, we have the possibility to live our lives in two different ways.  The choice is ours.  One way is to be known, appreciated, and delighted in by God who will say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  The other way is to be forgotten, shamed, and dismissed by God who will say to us, “Depart from me.  I never knew you.”

Beyond, what the prayer book calls “the changes and chances of this mortal life” – after all, each of us is affected by the ebbs and flows of daily existence (we all have our good days and bad ones) – I suspect our awareness and acknowledgement of God’s kabod is seminal in how we will live our lives and conduct ourselves.  Who or what matters most?  Who or what is most deserving of your admiration and allegiance? 

 

Your Choice

 

Matthew 5:21-37

Epiphany 6 / Year A

It happened without warning on Thursday afternoon.  I was driving my car and glanced down at the dashboard only to see the check engine warning light was on.  Ugh!  The car felt fine.  The engine was humming along.  It was not making a funny sound.  There was no strange odor.  What to do?

Every automobile comes with an Owner’s Manual.  It spells out in exacting detail how to operate and maintain your vehicle in order to get optimum performance and long life out of it.  Now, if you want, you can ignore some of the advice.  You can put off having the oil changed.  You can fail to properly inflate the tires.  And, in my case, you can wait to see if the check engine light will disappear – which it did yesterday – or deal with it once smoke starts wafting out from under the hood. 

Or, instead of being negligent, you can be downright rebellious.  You can put oil in the gas tank, gas in washer fluid container, and washer fluid in the oil case.  No one is stopping you.  After all, it is your car!  However, these decisions will have consequences; consequences which will affect your car’s performance and longevity.  It is up to you.  You get to choose.

In today’s first reading from Scripture we hear a portion of what is known as “Moses’ farewell speech.”  The Hebrew people are about to cross the Jordon River and enter the Promised Land after wandering forty years in the wilderness.  Moses himself will not go with them, so these are his final words as he reminds them of God’s commandments.  And just as the directions in your Owner’s Manual are far from arbitrary, so too God’s commands are not just directives selected willy-nilly by the All-Mighty.  They set out what to do and how to do it in order for human life and society to flourish.    

And just as you can choose to adhere to the Owner’s Manual or not, Moses says you can choose what to do with God’s commands.  What you choose, he says, has consequences.  One leads to life, the other to death.  And the death comes not because an angry, vengeful God is going to punish you for being disobedient.  It comes because you have ignored or rejected the principles which God has conveyed to optimize life.

Our reading from the Gospel of Matthew is another portion of Jesus’ teaching known as “The Sermon on the Mount.”  In it he offers a critique of the commandments revealed through Moses.  Jesus has already said he has not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.  So, something about the life Moses offers is incomplete.  Jesus does not want to eliminate these laws.  He desires to deepen them.

Consider the commandment, “Thou shall not kill.”  It places a restraint on behavior, but not on thought.  You may be angry with your boss, you neighbor, or a family member, but if you don’t take their life then you have kept the commandment.  But Jesus says anger itself is a problem.  It is not enough simply to suppress your temper, your temper itself is a destructive force at work in your life.  If you seethe with hatred and bitterness you are not living at an optimum level.  In order to let go of your inner rage you must have a spiritual transformation of the heart.

St. Paul writes the Old Testament laws function something like a set of shackles.  They prevent you from doing things you may want to do, but shouldn’t.  Those who are in Christ, he says, are free from the law and have no need for it because, in their hearts, they live it to the fullest intention.  It is like the difference between my dog and my neighbor’s.  I have a fenced in backyard because without this restraint my dog would run off.  My neighbor’s dog sits on the front porch with no leash or gate.  It is free to roam off the property if it wants, but doesn’t.  It knows what its owners want it to do and not to do and complies willingly.  Paul says those who are in Christ are like this.  Even more, we know why Christ desires this for us.  We have a heart for the Lord.

I have invested, so far, more than six hours writing a memorial resolution for diocesan council for the Hon. Rev. Dr. Canon Joe Green who died in early January.  He truly was a remarkable person who combined faith with love of the church and leadership in the community.  He served for thirty years as Rector of Grace Church in Norfolk.  He was appointed to the Norfolk School Board and then elected to city council, the first person of color on it since Reconstruction.  For ten of his twenty years on the council, he served as Vice Mayor.

Back in the mid-sixties, Joe and his cousin enrolled at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Suwannee, TN.  There, as with much of his life, he encountered unimaginable racism in the era of Jim Crow.  Once, after all the white people had left, Joe and his cousin went for a swim in a pool.  The next day it was closed “for repairs” and never reopened the rest of the semester.  It makes me angry just to read about this episode and I’m sure it made Joe angry too.  I first met him in 2007.  Every time I was Joe he had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.  He knew the secret to optimum performance and longevity.  Joe had Jesus and Jesus’ love deep in his heart.  This gave him the ability to endure and even to thrive in the midst of every indignity, every slight, every injustice, every slur, every insult.  It is possible only when you know Jesus’ love for you and for every human being is absolute and unfailing.

It is a secret I hope you know and it is a secret I hope you share. 

Salt and Light for...

 

Matthew 5:13-20

Epiphany 5 / Year A

I have heard many preachers and teachers contend Christianity is a verb, not a noun.  It is not merely a label one wears.  It involves action.  When Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world,” he is not offering a description of who we are.  Rather, he is putting forth metaphors for what we do.  Each statement is in the plural emphatic tense… “All of you are salt and light” 

Like “the good Samaritan”, “salt of the earth” is one of those biblical phrases which has made its way into our common vernacular.  Interestingly, we typically reserved for men and use it – positively – to describe a particular type of person: “He is the salt of the earth.”  Who do you know you would describe as being “the salt of the earth?” and what personality traits do you associate with this saying?     

And while there is nothing particularly wrong with the entomological changes of this phrase over time, given Jesus uses it to describe an action, not a way of being, for this morning’s purposes we need to hear it in a way which takes it back to its origin, to its roots.  In order to do this, let’s translate Jesus’ words this way: “You are salt for the world”, “You are light for the world.” 

The image of light is pretty straightforward.  Salt is a little trickier.  In Jesus’ day salt was used primarily as a preservative.  It kept food from spoiling, thus making it possible for people to do more each day than scavenge for food.  It paved the way for civilization by freeing up human activity to rise above a sustenance existence.  It was quite a valuable commodity and Romans soldiers were paid with it by the pound.  Our word ‘salary’ is actually a derivative of the Latin word for ‘salt.’

A colleague of mine noted this week that if, as followers of Christ, our impact on the world can be compared to light and salt then this means the world is a place of darkness and decay.  And you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of each.  The murder of Tyre Nichols is the most recent manifestation of the darkness.  The infighting and petty squabbles on Capitol Hill provide vivid examples of the decay.

What are we as salt and light supposed to do in order preserve what is good and illuminate what is right?  Our first reading gives us an answer.

The prophet Isaiah carries out his ministry some 500 years before the birth of Jesus.  The people of his day can’t understand why all their pious actions neither garner God’s attention nor secure God’s support.  The Lord tells Isaiah what is lacking:

Is not this the fast I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

This is what it looks like to be salt and light.  This is what it looks like to convert your faith from a noun to a verb:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.

Being salt and light for the world blesses the lives of those we touch and transforms how we live and move and have our being in it.

Today we hear Jesus teach our righteous must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees if we want to experience what life can be like in the Kingdom of Heaven.  God’s word to Isaiah describes, in part, what this looks like.  We are to advocate for public policies which support God’s vision.  Our parish is called discern ways we can meet the needs of our community.  As individuals we are directed to give of our time, our talent, and our treasure as we encounter poverty, hunger, and injustice.

In meditating on today’s gospel reading it did not escape my attention while it is positive and uplifting when Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world”, after each he offers a cautionary tale.  “If the salt has lost its saltiness what is it good for?”  “Why would you light a lamp and hid it under a basket?”  

As I ponder our faith community, I recognize we are not perfect… and wow, who other than a trained religious expert (i.e. Pharisee or scribe) would be able to recognize our numerous flaws!  But, as I pondered who we are and all we do, I was overwhelmed by how we live our communal life as verbs; in our common life, in our community, in the wider church, and in our world.   We are being salt for the earth.  We are being light for the world.

The Beatitudes

 

Mathew 5:1-12

Epiphany 4 / Year A

The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut once noted wryly, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes.  But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings.  And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.  ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom?  ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon?” he asks and then responds, “Give me a break!”

Tony Campolo, an evangelical pastor, says if you want to establish a religion which is the polar opposite of what Jesus teaches in the Beatitudes it would look a lot like the ‘pop Christianity’ which has taken over the airwaves.  There is something radically counter-cultural about the Beatitudes, calling into question everything we know and value and they may make us uncomfortable because, for the most part, we like our culture as it is.

Blessed are the poor (Matthew adds ‘poor in spirit’, whereas Luke retains what is most likely the original, shorter form of the saying).  Blessed are the poor?  This may be what Jesus taught, but in our world we act as if blessed are those who win the lottery.  We live in a country where the wealthiest 1% control 40% of the wealth; where the six heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have more money than the bottom 30% on the economic ladder.  James Harlan, our diocesan Canon for Evangelism, was the rector of the Episcopal Church in Palm Beach before coming here.  He has fascinating stories about his time there, including when President Trump visited at Christmas and Easter.  In describing the culture and affluence of that community, he simply and succinctly says, “I can be very seductive.” 

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.  I mourn the proliferation of gun violence in our society and find little comfort anywhere.  I mourn what human activity has done to our planet and do find some comfort.  Our air is cleaner than when I was a child.  So is our water.  Growing up along the Cuyahoga River, it was little more than an open sewer system and famously once caught fire.  It is now safe for recreational use and is being stocked with fish.  A stretch of the river is now a beautiful national park.  Someday in the near future a dam will be taken down and the Cuyahoga falls will be restored; a possibility I find very comforting. 

Blessed our the meek?  Charles Barkley, in his hay day, was a fearsome physical presence on the basketball court.  He was featured in a memorable magazine ad for Nike in which he had a mean scowl on his face as he clutched a basketball.  The caption read, “The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll never get a rebound.”  That pretty much sums up what our culture thinks about meekness.  If you what it, you have to take it for yourself.

Hungering for righteousness?  I want what is right for me.  I saw a cartoon of an adult teaching a bible study whose instruction was this: “If you don’t hunger for righteousness just say, ‘that is not my calling!’”  Being merciful?  We live in a world which is all about getting even.  Making peace?  Well, we are into peace keeping, which involves using force and power to suppress resistance, but making peace is something entirely different and much more difficult.

All of my ranting is to say it is easy to see why no one is clamoring to have the Beatitudes posted in public places or taught in schools.  Simply put, they are too revolutionary.  They teach that the marginalized are blessed and the satisfied are missing out.   The Anglican bishop and scholar N.T. Wright says the Beatitudes are the way God’s kingdom, heaven’s rule, begins to appear on earth.  They are not about how to behave so God will do something nice for you.  They describe the ways in which Jesus wants to rule the world. 

In Jesus’ reign there are no haves and have nots.  There are just those who are meek and merciful and those who aren’t.  There are those hunger for righteousness and peace and those who don’t.  There are those who suffer for doing what is right and those who prosper by doing what is wrong.  There are those who find this teaching comforting and those who find it uncomfortable or perhaps incomprehensible.

If Jesus handed out report card and graded us based on our adherence to the Beatitudes, mine would have a lot check marks in the boxes which say “Needs Improving.”  I suspect I am not alone.  Maybe when this lesson comes up again at the end of January 2026 most of my marks will be in the “Is Improving” box and the person doing the grading will write a note saying, “Keith has worked very hard to incorporate these teachings into his life.”  How about you?  What would your report card look like?

The Annual Meeting

 

Matthew 4:12-23

Epiphany 4 / Year A

It strikes me today’s reading from the gospel of Matthew is particularly appropriate for us on this Sunday when we hold our annual Congregational Meeting (the first in-person gathering in three years).  Jesus’ call to Simon, Andrew, James, and John is his call to us: “Follow me.”  And just as these four dropped their nets and left their boats in order to respond faithfully, we too sacrifice much for the work Jesus calls us to do.  And just as Jesus brought a great light to a region which dwelled in darkness, so we too are called to bring the light of Christ to our to our world.

Reflecting back over our church life in 2022 it is clear much has changed since the onset of the pandemic and yet much has remained the same.  What hasn’t changed?  Well, we are still God’s people with the same values we have always had: love of God, care for one another, and concern for our community.  What has changed is how we express and live out our values.

We worship now at one service held at 9:30.  We have an intergenerational approach to Christian Formation which takes place after the service.  We take communion kits to parishioners who cannot be physically present with us, but who participate by watching the service through a live-stream.  While our Food Pantry is no longer operational, we support financially the feeding ministry of the Suffolk Christian Fellowship Church just a few blocks away.  We are partnering with For Kids to serve dinners and we generously donate to their back-to-school, Thanksgiving meals, and Christmas gift drives.  We made a significant contribution to support Ukrainian Refugee Resettlement. 

We are blessed with a wonderful, dedicated staff.  Cindy Cowan continues to function at a high level and warmly serves every parishioner who contacts her.  Thom Robertson has brought his considerable talents to our worship life and formation events and has instituted a very popular noon-time organ concert series.  Wanda Rector brings creativity, skill, and dedication to her work as our Christian Formation Director.  Janice Roberts continues to keep our finances straight and our reporting accurate and timely.  We have contracted with a cleaning service that seems to be working very effectively.  We also employ Macey Olenjack to fill in the gaps during the week and she has proven to be worth every penny and then some.  Kimber-Lee Defreeuw and Lisa White serve as our nursery attendants.  The staffing is in place for our parish ministries to thrive.

And our membership is doing its part.  From the Altar Guild to the Kitchen Queens, from bible studies to the Chancel Choir, from Vestry leadership to office volunteers, you all give of your time and talent in so many different ways and without these gifts our common life would be impossible.  And you give of your treasure.  We began the year with a projected deficit of over $40,000.  We ended the year with a small surplus.  In our diocese, financially speaking, we are the exception, not the rule.

Perhaps the most obvious change in our common life is attendance at Sunday worship.  If you want some good news, our average attendance at the 9:30 service rose by 25% in 2022 and that is fantastic!  If you are a realist you will note we went from 40 to 51 and 51 is still a far cry from where we were before the pandemic.  Our church is typical of what Bishop Susan is seeing throughout our diocese.  She refers to the pandemic as a time of pruning.  A significant number of people have not returned, but those who are here are more committed than ever.  She says now that we have been pruned we are ready to grow and bear more fruit.  She has a hopeful and encouraging perspective.    

And speaking of pruning, the single thing that keeps me awake at night is a concern about leadership development.  In spite of our best efforts, we are able to identify only two people to come onto vestry this year.  In addition, one member – Terry Mottley – lives in town only part time and another – Beau Holland – will be moving to Wilmington sometime later this year.  

When you look at the membership statistics in the Annual Report, you will note some significant changes.  There are 479 people associated with our parish.  These are folks we might expect to reach out to us if they need the services of a church. 

The significant shift is our reporting of Confirmed Communicants in Good Standing (members confirmed who received communion at least three times during the year and made a financial contribution of record).  In 2021 we reported this number to be 166.  Last year it was adjusted to 75.  Some of this dramatic change has to do with how the figure is calculated (or perhaps miscalculated in the past).  As I look around, 75 feels like the right number and it begins to explain why we struggle to fill twelve spots on the Vestry.  It also highlights the challenge we face to muster the human resources to we need to do all the things we did and how we did them prior to the pandemic. 

I am now in my 16^th year of serving as your rector.  The building is still standing, barely.  I continue to be grateful for all the ways you love, support, encourage, and tolerate me.  I will turn 64 this fall and recognize I most likely will retire from here sometime after I turn 67.  I am still energized by the work God is giving us to do.  I am still open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  I still hear Jesus calling me to follow and to shine his light.  I invite you to drop your nets and join me.

 

What Do You Seek?

 

John 1:29-42

Epiphany 2 / Year A

John begins his gospel with soaring Christological theology: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…”  And even though the rest of his gospel will focus on the person who is the Word made flesh, most of the first chapter belongs to John the Baptist.  Initially he responds to questions about who he is and why he does what he does – baptize.  Then he gives testimony about what happened when he baptized Jesus.  And finally, he who works rigorously to get his followers to follow Jesus. 

Eventually two of John’s disciples trail behind Jesus.  It is at this point Jesus speaks his first words in this gospel.  He turns to the two and asks them a question, “What do you seek?”

It may seem like a simple question on the surface, but in the bible seeking is deeply significant and central to what we are all about as human beings.  “The one who seeks finds… (Mt 7:8).  “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’  My heart says to you, ‘Your face Lord do I seek (Ps 27:8).  “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is… (Col. 3:1).  “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Lk 19:10).  

Each of you here this morning and those who are watching this service from your home homes has made a significant investment to be here today.  You have gotten up and gotten dressed.  You have given up a much of your morning.  And like the two disciples following after Jesus, you have gotten his attention.  Imagine he turns to you at this moment and asks, “What do you seek?”   How do you answer?

Perhaps you are here this morning to find some measure of peace.  Maybe you come seeking spiritual nourishment through word and sacrament.  It could be you are here to sing God’s praise.  It is possible you come to gather with friends.  Some of you might be here because you want to be a faithful member of this parish.  What do you seek today?

The two folks following Jesus seem not to be ready for this question, still there two-fold response is very telling.  First, they address Jesus as “Rabbi”.  Even though they were baptized by John as a sign of repentance and even though John identifies Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, they think of him first and foremost as a teacher.  They will have a lot to learn.

Then they answer his question with a question, “Where are you staying?”  It is not that they lacked overnight accommodations.  They seek to be with Jesus and enthusiastically respond to his invitation, “Come and see.”  And after spending the entire day with him, one of the followers – Andrew – is so impressed he goes and fetches his brother Simon who, apparently, is also a seeker.

Think about the things we say people seek after.  We seek love.  We seek attention.  We seek to be left alone.  We seek fame.  We seek fortune.  We seek knowledge.  We seek understanding.  We seek respect.  We seek recognition.  We seek approval.  We seek adventure.  We seek happiness.  I am convinced every person is seeking something, both in the short term as well as the long term.  In the short term you may be seeking a little bit of rest and relaxation.  In the long term, you may be seeking purpose and direction for your life.

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”  St. Augustine famously wrote, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in God.”  Restlessness and seeking seem to go hand-in-hand.  Jesus knows our hearts will be restless until we determine the primary pursuit in our life is a relationship with God in Christ. 

What we need most in our lives is spiritual.  It is a void only God can fill.  It is a hunger only God can feed.  It is a thirst only God can quench.  Now, we can try to meet this need by seeking after any number of different things, but in the end we won’t be satisfied.  I suspect the opposite of restlessness is peace and, according to Jesus, we will find it only through the pursuit of God.  

I have any number of colleagues who came to the ordained ministry as a second career.  Some of them, when telling their story, say there was always something nagging at them but they didn’t know what it was.  Finally, through one means or another, they came to understand their restless was actually God’s call.  Once they discerned this and responded everything in their lives began to fall into place.  Now, I am not saying every person who feels restless should get ordained.  That may not be your call.  Still, God is calling you to something.  Seek after it.