Sermon

What Are You Looking For?

Doug Nave

page 1 - 2

They say that the average young adult thinks about sex at least once every five minutes.

It’s true.  Researchers interviewed 4,420 people, at various times of day, and asked if they had thought about sex in the last five minutes.  Roughly half of all people between the ages of 14 and 25 said yes.  Think about it:  That’s not even enough time for a high schooler to finish a simple algebra formula.  No wonder my math scores were so low.

I don’t know what the research shows about older adults.  But do me a favor:  Glance at your neighbor from time to time, and if that person is smiling too much, please give them a nudge and tell them to get their mind back on the sermon.

Something that’s that important to people – that people in their most formative years think about every five minutes – is obviously something that the church needs to think deeply about as well.  And no one can accuse the Presbyterian Church of shirking in this regard.  We’ve spent at least the last 30 years thinking, debating, obsessing about sex.

But sometimes it’s good to return to first principles.  We need to remember what we’re really about.  The culture may be obsessed with sex, but we in the church are about infinitely more.

Our text this evening is from the Gospel of John.  John, that master of the declarative sentence, who opens his book with the magisterial statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.”  This was someone who didn’t mince words.  He said clearly and forcefully what he believed.  Isn’t it interesting, then, that when John tells us what Jesus said, he chooses as the first word and the last word . . . not statements, not grand declarations, but questions.

The very first time Jesus appears on-stage as a speaker in John’s gospel, we hear John the Baptist proclaim, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”  John’s disciples follow after Jesus, wanting to know more.  And then Jesus asks them a question:  “What are you looking for?” 

It’s a curious opener for the star of the show.  It’s a moment when one would think that Jesus would acknowledge his importance, give a speech.  But he deflects all the attention back to the people who trail after him:  “What are you looking for?” 

Well, if the opening line isn’t dynamite, we certainly expect that the closing line will be.  Jesus will come through with something really big now!  But remarkably, John’s Gospel – in fact, the entire Biblical record of Jesus’ life – ends with another question, a request for someone else’s point of view. 

From the little the story tells us, it sounds like there’s some politicking going on, like Peter and John are informal rivals jostling for position, at least from Peter’s point of view.  Peter finally asks Jesus point blank, “Lord, what about him?”  Where does he fit in the scheme of things?  And Jesus responds with a question:  “Peter, if I have something special in mind for John, if John has a role to play here, what is that to you?”

And those are the last words that Jesus speaks in the Gospels.

I believe that John deliberately began and ended his account with these two questions for a reason.  In some sense, they point directly to Jesus – in each case, the question is closely joined with an instruction to “Follow me.”  But for John, the questions seem to take pre-eminence. 

What are you looking for?  What is that to you?  The answers seem obvious from the stories.  The disciples of John the Baptist, in response to Jesus’ question, surely said “We’re looking for the Saviour!”  When Jesus asked Peter “What is that to you?” Peter almost certainly thought, “Why, it’s the future of the church!”  But the questions call us to reflect, to go beyond easy answers and unchallenged assumptions.  They call us to examine ourselves, to think about what it really means to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

We will be thinking together over the next several days about what it means to be disciples in community.  “Disciples” and “community” are loaded words these days in the Presbyterian Church.  We find ourselves divided into opposing camps, each of which seems to question whether folks in the other camp are really true “disciples” at all.  And we obviously are concerned about how to build and maintain a sense of community that seems to be sorely lacking today.  We heard and shared deep pain in our conversation this afternoon, pain that has lasted so long it’s hard to remember when the church filled us with joy.  Yet we know that it did, once, and that it will again someday.

Much of what has brought us to this place is sex (it’s been five minutes, I can mention it again).  We continue to be almost evenly divided about whether persons in same-sex relationships may offer ordained service to the church.  Our Constitution currently contains a very controversial provision, Amendment B, that effectively bars many from serving.  In fact, it’s interesting to think why we have Amendment B.  The only time that provision has any relevance at all is when someone feels called to serve, and a congregation believes its life in Christ will be enriched by that person’s ministry.  Then we step in with Amendment B, and say that that person, and that congregation, are wrong.

Many claim that Amendment B simply acknowledges the truth, that Scripture condemns all same-sex relationships.  As a gay man with a same-sex partner eight years and counting, for whom I thank God every day, the falsity of that seems self-evidently clear to me.  But in any event, if Amendment B really were motivated by a concern for Truth, it should bar ordained service not only by partnered GLBT people, but also by the many heterosexual Christians who are working to make the church more inclusive than it is.  That would include, for example, roughly half of the Bible faculty in our seminaries.  Clearly, such people aren’t excluded from office.  So it seems that Amendment B is not motivated by a concern to uphold an essential belief.

The other claim one frequently hears from proponents of Amendment B is that it affirms the life-changing power of Jesus Christ.   In fact, the claim is usually made in more provocative terms:  that the GLBT “lifestyle” reflects an implicit denial of Christ’s transforming grace.  The argument simply sidesteps the crux of our disagreement, that many see the workings of Christ and grace in same-sex relationships.  But there is a more fundamental problem here – a problem of discipleship.

Scripture tells us that when Jesus called the first disciples, he had a very simple ordination exam.  He applied one test of fitness for those he called to build the church:  Whether those he called would immediately rise up, leave their other involvements, and follow him.  That was the test.

Things are not quite so simple today.  But still it seems to me that the church is left with a fundamental choice.  Does it follow Christ, rejoicing whenever anyone leaves their current preoccupations to rise up and serve?  Or does it adopt a controversial, culturally conditioned belief – the prejudice of an overwhelmingly hetero-centric society – and apply its own standards of suitability?  I believe that Jesus Christ is asking the Presbyterian Church today, “What are you looking for?”  The Christ whom you can follow . . . or a supposed sinner whom you can judge?”  And if someone whom the Spirit calls to service lives differently than you do, “what is that to you?”

This kind of controversy isn’t new.  In Apostolic times, many Christians were fairly orthodox Jews who believed that Jesus was the risen Messiah.  They remained in Jerusalem, under the leadership of Peter and James, and they held to the traditional Jewish laws regarding circumcision, food restrictions, and purity. 

But they were a community on edge, challenged and unhappy with the apostasy they saw in a man named Paul.  Paul taught that the Christian was justified by grace in Jesus Christ, that it was unnecessary – in fact, undesirable – for Gentiles to comply with the legalisms of the Torah.  To many in the church at Jerusalem, Paul was undermining the faith.  He was leading people astray with his sordid example and false teachings, an enemy of the true faith.

There were several high-level meetings in Jerusalem to iron the matter out.  Compromise and political jockeying led to different outcomes from one meeting to the next.  (Sounds a bit like our General Assemblies!)  It appears that eventually some agreement was reached – probably that the Jewish Christians would continue to treat the Torah as binding on themselves, but would not try to force it on the Gentile Christians. 

It was a difficult resolution for some to accept, then as now.  Tensions ran high.  In his letters, Paul sometimes refers to the other side as “dogs” and “evildoers,” and it seems likely that Peter and James harbored similar views about Paul.

But Paul also recognized the need for unity despite disagreement.  The New Testament tells us that he embarked on a major project to collect money for the Christians in Jerusalem.  These were his adversaries, but at the same time he wanted to build them up, to develop community with them. 

The plan seems to have ended badly.  While the New Testament writers treat the matter with some tact, we can deduce what probably happened.  Paul arrived in Jerusalem with his gifts, and was greeted by the religious leaders with a stern rebuke for his failure to follow traditional religious rules.  A short time later a mob tried to kill Paul, and he was subjected to a lengthy legal ordeal.  There is little evidence that the Christians in Jerusalem made any effort to intervene on his behalf. 

Most importantly, Scripture makes little mention of the collection that Paul had worked so hard to put together and bring to Jerusalem.  Scholars suggest that this is probably because the Christian leaders in Jerusalem ultimately rejected Paul’s gifts.  To accept them would have been at least implicitly to approve of Paul and his ministry.  Can you imagine the heartbreak and humiliation that Paul felt, after so many years of effort.  (I have to imagine that this sounds familiar to those who have offered their gifts of ministry to the Presbyterian Church, and been refused.)  The rift between Peter and Paul was in all likelihood a deep and bitter one, grounded in bedrock convictions on both sides that the other’s view of the faith was wrong.

Well, what did Paul discern from all this?  I believe he discerned the critical importance of nurturing his own faith and allowing others to do likewise – even if they took different views about how they should conduct themselves under the law.  In the words of Paul, “Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them.”

This was not simply taking the easy way out.  Paul tells us that the Christian is governed by a standard, established by God in each individual’s conscience, that is higher than what any temporal community might impose:  “The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. . . .  Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

This should have a familiar ring.  In our Protestant parlance, we would say that Paul taught the early Christians to look first and foremost to Jesus Christ, and to show each other mutual forbearance in matters of conscience.  “Christ,” he says, “is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” 

You know, sometimes I think that for all of our sophistication, we never really progress beyond the lessons we learned as children.  I think of the third-grade Sunday School teacher who asked her class, “What do we need to be to have eternal life?”  The class was silent, so she prodded a bit:  “What do we need to be – honest, loving, obedient?”  Finally, a little boy raised his hand and the teacher said, “Yes, Billy, what do we need to be to have eternal life?” And Billy said, “We need to be dead.”

Sometimes that’s about how we look at things, isn’t it?  We turn away from the Living Water, the life and witness of Jesus Christ, and embrace dead duties and legalisms. 

-continued-

page 1 - 2