 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
January 20, 2008
What are You Looking For?
John 1:29-42; Isaiah 49:1-7
One day, a reporter came to Sigmund Freud with a simple question: “What do people need to be happy?” Now the reporter probably expected to hear about how we need to strip away our phobias and uncover our primal urges through psychotherapy. He probably expected a treatise on Freudian psychoanalysis long enough to fill his column for the week. Instead, Freud listened to the question, paused, thought a while and then slowly and softly said, “to love and to work.” 1 That's what fulfillment and happiness is all about...the integration of our energies and our aspirations into one vocation for your life.
In the Academia Museum in Florence, Italy, a visitor is allowed to stand in awe at the foot of Michelangelo's gigantic statue of “David” which is carved from one piece of marble, which tradition tells us had apparently been abandoned by another sculptor who gave up on his now unknown project before he ever began the work. As you enter the area where the magnificent sculpture is located, there is another set of masterpieces, less well known, perhaps, called the “slaves.” They are all unfinished figures, also by the Master, which had been intended for a monumental tomb. Each of the figures however is more or less identifiable, and in the case of each sculpture, you are able to see the human form which is emerging from the stone, as if it had already pre-existed. Michelangelo, it is said, thought of his artistic gift as being the ability to free from the stone the figure that was already there.
Epiphany is the season of recalling how God initiates manifestations or revelations of the divine self in moments or interactions that provide human beings an opportunity to grow in their understanding of who God is. So it was that John the Baptist looked up and said, “Behold, there goes the Lamb of God.” Isaiah, in this morning's other reading, writes of a servant whom God called from the womb, called to a mission before the servant was even born. God had a job, an occupation, a task selected for this servant even before birth. Epiphany is also a season of invitation to vocation...an invitation to free that self who is already there within each of us.
God makes contact, not in the cloisters or on the temple mount or in the midst of worship, alone , but in the streets among the people whom God loves. Isaiah's first notion of his calling was to be a special envoy only to those within the close circle of the chosen...but as the passage from the prophet's words, which we read this morning says, “it is too light a thing to be limited to that narrow calling...your calling is to bring word of transformation to all the world.”
In the Gospel lesson this morning two future disciples are looking for a teacher and hearing John's assertion that Jesus is the “Lamb of God,” they decide to follow him. “What are you looking for?” Jesus asks them. These fans want a Rabbi...someone at whose feet they may sit. “Where are you staying?” they wonder, where is your school? His reply to them, “Come and See!” and the story which we call the Gospel begins.
This is an unusual sequence of remarks – “What are you looking for?” “Where are you staying?” “Come and see…” Author Kathleen Norris notes, “…if we stay with the strangeness for a while, we find in this peculiar exchange a key to understanding what faith entails. It is not so much a matter of thinking as doing – and not doing so much as being and witnessing. Just come and see, and we might realize that Jesus came to make us more holy and more fully human.” 2
What he shows them, as the Gospel narrative unfolds, is not a place, not a Schule or a Synagogue, it is a road, a journey. It is a path which will take them among the least and lost and the loneliest. It is way which will be hard and yet, will be provide relationships with all kinds of people, a way which will mean growth and maybe radical changes in understanding of the world...it is the way which leads to life. The way is to be a life's work, a vocation... anything less is too light a thing .
“Where are you going?” Discipleship asks us to look up and look around and see God in our midst, in the streets, in the events, the conflicts and the human interactions which are part of each of our lives. Look for God in the expressions of courage and faithfulness of those whom God has called. More than that, we are called to enter in ourselves, to bring our own particular talents and gifts to bear.
God calls the simple and the ordinary person to great things. This sounds both predictable for a story and quite idealistic as a glimpse of true reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday was last week and will be remembered by the nation tomorrow, was more than a mere dreamer, although his dream was life-forming for a generation, he was also a doer. He challenged his young hearers once, “Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.”
As we witness in the rough and tumble – this week up, next week maybe down – rhythm of the Presidential primaries and caucuses, we see that a sense of call, a feeling of being commissioned to undertake a task or to witness to an ideal is not enough to guarantee that things will run smoothly. Too often, to be called to a particular occupation or task is not just exhilarating, it also becomes discouraging. Responsibility is not only empowering; it can also be overwhelming. Teachers have days of frustration when nothing seems to get through to the students. And students too for that matter can't quite seem to grasp what the teacher is saying. There are days that salespeople can't give their products away or managers cannot seem to get the response they need from their team. Workers work and farmers farm and all along the world's problems beyond our control are closing in on us...and we can feel overwhelmed. At those times it can be hard to see our work as a calling so much as something we have to do while we hope for something better to come along.
Certainly the scripture gives testimony to the discouragement which can overtake even the most committed. Jeremiah wrote five laments, each more bitter than the one before, finally crying aloud that he wished he had never been born. The servant, who is called in the Isaiah passage we read this morning, knows these feelings too. We hear the despair in his cries: “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength, but have accomplished nothing!” That pain is real, and it too is a part of our lives. The feeling that nothing works in our jobs spills over into the rest of our lives as well. It easy to question not just our work, but also the meaning and direction of life.
Martin Luther King, Jr., in his own hand describes the fact that his struggle was not only with the hated institutions of segregation it was also with his own conscience. The preponderance of his colleagues in the Christian Church were telling him to slow down, the traditions of Christianity in America had kept a lid on the problem for 150 years, even the Bible could be used by some to justify institutional racism. And in his personal life, calls were coming at all times of the day and night threatening his safety. What was of more concern to him, was that they also threatening the safety of his family often naming his wife or his children. One night, after having received a particularly vicious threat over the phone he hit bottom -- he relates the story in his book, Where Do We Go From Here? In anguish, at a turning point, one long dark night of the soul, he sat up at his kitchen table and he prayed... all night long...he prayed.
In one way or another, most of us have experienced similar moments or passages when we were at our wit's end. We don't even know how or why it happens, but somehow in the act of taking that long journey into our fears and our doubts, somewhere on that way, we find the help we need.
It is now what we say that matters, it is the process, the honest self appraisal, the tearing away of defenses, that leads us to a point of finding ourselves and finding the help we need from beyond ourselves. We can only imagine the content of his prayers, but perhaps they reflected the words of his favorite hymn… “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am weak, I am tired, I am worn...” When morning came, King wrote, he had come to understand what he must do...what course he must take. What he did has become a part of all of our histories. He accepted his vocation.
As the nation remembers him, King is often placed up high on a pedestal. Yet, as his wife, Coretta Scott King and others who were close to him and who knew how much he struggled, have often said, Martin Luther King Day is not a day just to remember what Martin did. It is a day to struggle with our own understanding of what God is asking each one of us to do. It is an occasion to ask ourselves, “What are you looking for?” and to ponder in the words of Isaiah if... is it too light a thing?
If love and work are, as Freud said, the key to a fulfilled life, then it is the Gospel which offers a promise of that fulfillment. Jesus offers us the union of love and work in his call to the vocation of discipleship. Are we in it for the long haul – or are is our commitment just partial…is it “too light a thing?” Perhaps daunting to contemplate...it is also good news. Because Jesus says, “come and see....” and in the process take up your own dream – your vocation – and follow me. Amen.
1 From a story told by David Schleicher, at Mayflower Congregational Church, January 17, 1993, from the Internet.Go Back
2 Kathleen Norris, “Living by the Word” Christian Century , Jan 15, 2008, page 22 Go Back
| Return to Sermon List |
First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
Copyright © 2003-2007 First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids. All rights reserved.