Seeing is Believing, a sermon for Epiphany 2A

John 1:29-42

John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

“What are you looking for?” This is Jesus’s first line in John’s Gospel. To the apostle who wrote the book of John, these were the first words of Jesus worth writing down: What are you looking for?

In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples, and sees Jesus walking by. John says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God” — and the disciples immediately say “ta-ta, Johnny” to John the Baptist and start following Jesus. 

If I were watching this whole exchange from the sidelines, I’d think that these disciples couldn’t possibly have been all that devoted to John’s message, if they just up and abandoned him at the first sight of something new. This suggests that they’re kinda flighty, maybe a little naïve or just lost souls searching for something, anything, to grasp on to.

So Jesus asks them the million-shekel question: “What are you looking for?” The subtext is clear: Why are you here? Why are you following me? What are you thinking you’re going to get out of this? Is it because John said “hey, that guy is pretty cool too,” so you just up and follow me around?

And their answer is… well, not really much of an answer, is it?

“Rabbi, where are you staying?”

Our clunky English kinda makes it look like they just want to know where he’s laying his head tonight: are you staying at the Hampton Inn or the Courtyard by Marriott? Do they have free breakfast? What’s the wi-fi like there?

But the Greek verb used there, meno, carries a bit more meaning: abide, remain, endure, continue, dwell, in the sense of permanence or stability. The two disciples aren’t asking for an address. They want to know what is the permanent, enduring dwelling place for the Lamb of God. Where can we always find him? Where is true north, so we can calibrate our compasses?

And because Jesus is the master of simple yet elusive responses, he answers “Come and see.” 

In the Zulu language of South Africa, the standard word for greeting is “sawubona.” It functions like their hello, but the literal translation of sawubona is “I see you.”

I see you, I acknowledge your existence, I invite you to see me too. And after one afternoon encountering Jesus, Andrew is excited enough to run back to his brother Simon (who, spoiler alert, will become a pretty important figure in the story later on) and tell him “we’ve found the Messiah!” And Andrew brings Simon to see Jesus, who gives him the name of Cephas (or, as we know him better, Peter), and the story proceeds from there.

There are a few things I want us to take out of this Gospel narrative today.

First, let’s go back to Jesus’s first line: “What are you looking for?” In the Gospel story that’s directed at John the Baptist’s two disciples, but it’s also directed at us: What are you looking for?

Are you looking for a confirmation of what you already know or hope to be true? Are you looking for a reminder of what the church taught you in your formative years? Are you looking to scratch a little deeper on a mystery that’s tickled you? There are countless things people are looking for when they come through the doors of any church and few of them are simple.

Or maybe you just don’t know what you’re looking for, or don’t know if you’re looking for the right thing at all. Maybe the next step for you isn’t to get all the answers, but just to start asking the right questions. That’s okay too.

But it’s important to ask the question, really sit and wrestle with it: “What are you looking for?”

Second, let’s take note of the importance of the encounter with Jesus in answering that question. Sure, the disciples start following Jesus because John the Baptist told them “look, there goes the Lamb of God,” but if he hadn’t been all that impressive, they probably wouldn’t have stuck around. Whatever the disciples may have thought they were looking for, whatever they thought the question was, it became pretty clear to them in just one afternoon spent in the presence of Jesus that there was something here. 

Or, as Audrey West puts it after Jesus says “come and see”:

“Indeed, this answer captures a primary message of John’s Gospel: If you want to know the word made flesh, come and see Jesus. If you want to know what love is like, come and see Jesus. If you want to experience God’s glory, to be filled with bread that never perishes, to quench your thirst with living water, to be born again, to abide in love, to behold the light of the world, to experience the way, the truth, and the life, to enter into life everlasting, . . . if you want to know God, come and see Jesus.”

We may not be able to have the same kind of face-to-face encounter with Jesus as the disciples did, but we also have multiple ways to encounter Jesus and come into his presence: in prayer, in fellowship with one another, in reading the Scriptures, and particularly in what we’re about to take part in, the sacrament of the Eucharist.

This is our chance to experience God’s glory, to feed our souls with living bread and quench our thirst with living water. It’s easy to go through the motions every week, but please take some time today during our Eucharistic prayer to really sit with the enormity of what we’re doing, the sacred and earthly aspects of the millennia-old ritual we’re taking part in. It’s an encounter with the living, eternal Christ.

And third, let’s take note of the disciples’ response to spending an afternoon with Jesus. They don’t just stick around in their own small assembly; they go back to their own community, to their family and friends, to tell them about what they’ve found. Andrew hurries back to his brother Simon to tell him that he’s found the Messiah!

And if not for Andrew running back to his brother Simon and bringing him into the fold — Simon, who would become Peter, the first leader in the early church and the one who held the Jesus Movement together after Christ’s ascension — our church wouldn’t be the same. God was just waiting for Peter, having anointed him like Isaiah since long before he was born, to fulfill God’s purposes for the church.

And the thing is that I doubt any of that was going through Andrew’s mind when he ran back home to tell his brother about meeting Jesus. Andrew probably wasn’t thinking, “My brother is just waiting to be a great spiritual leader and one of the most important people in history, and finally here’s his chance!” 

Simon Peter’s leadership probably came as a surprise to his brother. Heck, Simon Peter’s leadership probably came as a surprise to Simon Peter.

All of this is to say: when we invite more people into the fold, when we get excited about what Jesus is doing in our community and widen the circle to include others, who knows what kinds of blessings and gifts God is waiting to unlock? How many of us know someone who, when they came into the right circumstance or the right community, just blossomed into a completely different person? The more we expand our circle and our community, the more chances we’re giving God to do new and incredible things in our own lives, in our community, and in our world.

What are we looking for? What can we come and see in this community? Like Jesus, I’m not able to stand up here and give you easy, digestible answers. But I can journey with you. Let’s see together. After all, seeing is believing.