What do you want from church today? I guess there are almost as many answers to that question as there are members of congregation and choir. I can guess some of them: I want to pray; I want to feel a better person; I love the worship; I want to be together with other Christians and worship God; I want to sing; I feel I should be here – and many more.
But it's a key question for life as well as church: what do you really want? Or in the terms of this morning's reading from John's gospel chapter 1: what are you looking for? There's a classic song of spiritual yearning by the Christian-influenced pop group U2 which it recalls: 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for'. The song came out in 1987: I hear it as relevant to me now, and maybe you, as I did 23 years ago: what are we looking for? What do we really long for? And how will we know when we've found it?
People have always been like this: looking for something, feeling incomplete, wanting more in life: it's one of the main things that keeps us alive and interesting. And in the first chapter of John's gospel there's a quest going on, a searching for something, for God, for reality, for the point of it all. Here, in five short phrases of conversation that happen one after the other, short and abrupt (verses 36-41), one quest ends and a deeper quest begins.
There are apparently two people here who are looking for something – we're told that one of them is called Andrew, but not who the other is: maybe it's the writer of the gospel, maybe it's Andrew's wife, maybe it's someone who was never heard of again. These two people have been following John the Baptist because they recognise something true and important in him. But they also know there's something more – not least because of the way that John has been talking to them.
'Look here is the Lamb of God' says John in v.36 as Jesus walks by, summing up everything he's said in verses 29-34. There's a lot in what John says, looking into things deeply as John the gospel writer does. There's just one thing which is at the heart of it, in v.31. 'I myself didn't know him' says the Baptist, 'but I came to baptise with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.'
There was an old Jewish belief that the Messiah, God's chosen person, would remain hidden until Elijah returned to present him to the people of Israel. This is the season of epiphany in the church's year, the old Greek word for revealing: and John reveals Jesus to the Jewish people through the baptising he did. John's baptisms weren't stand-alone; he baptised people to get them ready for the one who would come and put people in touch with God, and put them right with God for always. John the Baptist came as a witness to the light, says John ch.1.7-8: and here we read about John doing exactly that. I was saying evening prayer in the Cathedral on my own during Christmas week, and I heard the door go at the back – I thought someone had maybe come in to pray, so I carried on saying the psalm. Steps got nearer and nearer up the side aisle until a man stuck his head round the corner and said loudly, 'Can you help us?' So I had to set my prayers aside and find out what he and his companion wanted: which was to know where the Light Church was, with the Inn Churches Project. They were a bit far gone shall we say to take in any directions: so still carrying my prayer book I led them out of the Cathedral and along the road and up to where they could find what they were looking for – a bed for the night.
John the Baptist was a bit like that: a signpost so that people could find what they were looking for. Andrew and his companion listen to John, and follow what he says, in a short three-phrase interchange with Jesus: – what are you looking for – where are you staying – come and see.
It can't have been easy for Andrew and his companion: they follow Jesus because John the Baptist thought it was a good idea, and then have no idea what to say when Jesus asks them what they want. So they do what we often do when we meet someone new: Oh, and where do you live? Jesus doesn't tell them his history: he simply tells them to Come and see; to spend time with him and check him out. I've always loved that phrase as a signpost to God: 'What are you looking for?... Come and see'. Try me out, says Jesus: come and have a look. See if who I am is the answer to the desire of your heart. And it's the experience of being with Jesus that makes Andrew go and say to his brother: We have found the Messiah, the one who has come to bring us to God.
Look here is the Lamb of God – what are you looking for – where are you staying – come and see – we have found the Messiah. The first chapter of John's gospel shows how the light of God comes into the world and begins to draw people to himself, with the help of John the Baptist. And like fire, that light is catching: it sets Andrew alight, and he then touches the life of Simon Peter – like when we pass a light around a hundred candles at a Christmas carol service. And that light has come to touch us too.
'I still haven't found what I'm looking for'. Today Jesus asks us to be aware of what we look for, and then to come and see: what we look for, not just today, but in our life, however young or old we are; and to come and pray, to spend time with him, to gather round his table: to welcome the light of Jesus into our lives, and light up the lives of others. Wwhat are you looking for - come and see – we have found the Messiah.
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