Looking
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
January 19, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Most of us are familiar with the name Garrison Keillor. His radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, was surprisingly popular in a world where visual story-telling through film and television has reigned for decades. Several years ago, in one of his books, he said,
I tell stories on the radio about Lake Wobegon and its God-fearing, egalitarian inhabitants, and though I find a grandeur in this, I feel that, at 61, I am still in search of what I was looking for when I was 18. What I really want is a long conversation with Grandpa and Grandma Denham who came over from Glasgow in 1906 with their six kids . . . and settled in a big frame house on Longfellow Avenue. Grandpa was a railroad clerk who wore black high-top shoes and white shirts with silk armbands and spoke with a Scottish burr, so “girls” came out “gettles.” He never drove a car or attended a movie or read a novel. I want to know why they came here, what they were looking for—the truth, not a children’s fable—and if I have found it, maybe I can stop looking.[1]
Keillor was probably so successful in the world of radio because his stories were so descriptive of ordinary human life. One week, the narrative might have included examples of someone trying to break a world record and outdo everyone else as well as people pitching together for the common good, of someone learning to dance and someone else refusing to try. He told stories that almost everyone could connect with. Don’t we also connect with the idea that we are looking for something -- something important, something foundational, something that explains our lives and grounds us and helps us find purpose and meaning. It is our search at age 18 and 61 and beyond.
Jesus seems to understand that Andrew and the other disciple are on that same search. After John the Baptist identifies Jesus, they follow him. Jesus turns to them and says “what do you want?”
"What do you want?" It seems like a straightforward question, but this is John’s gospel. We have to remember that this gospel is written with multiple layers of meaning. Jesus' question works at one level to start the conversation going, -- “What do you want?” means “how can I help you?” But at another level, Jesus is asking them, "What do you want to get out of life? What are you really looking for?"
They answer him with another question – “where are you staying?” At one level, they're just asking Jesus what motel he's using while he's in town. At another level, they're asking how he lives, what gives his life meaning, what makes him feel alive. The Greek word translated staying can also mean: dwelling, lodging, resting, settling, enduring, persevering, being steadfast, continuing and abiding.
Suddenly, we see this is a conversation about relationship. Jesus is inviting them to settle in with him, to persevere, to be steadfast with him. On their last night together, he will say “Abide in me as I abide in you”.
But they don’t know any of that yet. All they know right now is that they are being drawn to Jesus. He invites them to come and see and they do.
That’s how it began. The disciples accepted Jesus’ invitation, but of course they did not know that it would become a 3-year journey with him. They did not know that it would change the things they saw and they way they saw them for the rest of their lives.
True story: When Michael May was three years old, he lost his sight in a chemical explosion. He lost one eye entirely and the other was completely blind. But then, 40 years later, with advances in medical technology, he agreed to an experimental procedure to try to restore sight to his remaining eye. It worked. He could see the color of flowers. He could see the mountains where he had learned to ski without using his eyes. But what he couldn’t do was recognize complex shapes and objects, like the faces of his children, his wife and friends. He described a cube as a square with extra lines. He could not translate a picture on paper into an object with 3-dimensions.
The neuroscientists that treated him concluded that vision is something that has to be learned. Vision is more than sight, because what is seen has to be interpreted before it makes sense. Discussing his own amazing recovery, Michael May said, “I will never be fluent visually, but I get better the more I work at it.” [2]
I suggest that when Jesus invited people to “come and see”, he was inviting them to learn visual fluency. The journey they shared was one in which he taught them to interpret through his eyes. For example, there was a time when they saw children as a bother, a nuisance, to be shooed away from the important and busy Jesus. But Jesus welcomed them and saw them as the entry to the kingdom of God. Or the time when they jumped to the conclusion that the blind man on the road from Jericho should be quiet, but Jesus saw his yelling as evidence of his strong faith. Their cultural lens taught them that women were second class, but again and again, Jesus helped them see women as leaders, women as theologians, women as fellow travelers on this journey. Jesus kept calling them to visual fluency, to practice interpreting and re-interpreting what they saw in the way that he would see it.
At Wednesday’s Bible study, our illustrious leader Marilyn posed a question that made me stop and wonder. She asked, “What words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?”
That’s a very good question. I encourage you to think about it too -- what words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?
Eventually I came up with two answers. The one that came easily was music. Music helps me stay connected. This answer I shared in Bible study. The previous day I had been discouraged. I had seen too many stories too close together about human suffering and injustice. Compassion fatigue was setting in. I was feeling overwhelmed. I found a song on YouTube. I don’t remember what it was right now, but it was a song I know that usually makes me feel better. But then, when that song ended, YouTube immediately served up another song. The second song is one I also know, but hadn’t heard in a while. The second song is called Ella’s Song, sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock.[3] It is named for Ella Baker. Ella Baker was an important human rights activist whose career spanned five decades. She did many things, but she is well known for mentoring young leaders through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. One of her mentees was a young woman named Rosa Parks. The lyrics to Ella’s Song are quotations from her teachings, and the chorus says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” And there it was, music helping me stay connected to my call. I’m pretty sure a lot of you would say that as well. Music, of all different kinds, is the language of our souls.
I kept mulling over that question “What words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?” A few days later, I realized a second answer. This one took a little longer. It starts with a sermon that I preached last April. In that sermon, I shared with you what I was hearing about Homestead, Florida. I talked about Joshua Rubin and some people who were going there from all over the country to bear witness and protest. I told that same story to some pastor friends in our weekly Bible study. And one of those pastors said, “so, when are you going to Homestead?” I didn’t have any plans to go until she asked me that. And then suddenly, I did.
It happened again last month. Some people in the Border Watch group had been talking about going to Brownsville/Matamoros. I had heard their conversations, but I told myself that this was not my trip. I have been to Mexico twice in the last 4 years, and I went to Homestead and I did not need to go this time. But then, the subject came up again and someone turned to me and said “Are you going?” I kind of stammered my way through a non-answer, but now it appears that I’ll be on my way to Texas in March.
So, my second answer is that one habit which helps me stay connected to my call is listening to questions, questions that haven’t occurred to me and questions that I think I’ve already answered.
Before I came to Emmanuel, I had the sad privilege of helping a church close out its ministry. For almost all of its 160 years, this church had lived in the country. But at about year 145, they had the vision to buy 10 acres closer to town. They held church picnics on the property, but never developed it. Until they got very brave and took out a loan to build a new church building. By this time, the city had grown out and that 10 acres was in a growing neighborhood, with houses still being built and new people moving in. The new church sat directly across from the grade school with the most diversity in town. My daughter went to that school. So did all of the children of the international graduate students at the university. At least forty different languages were spoken in the homes of those students.
The possibilities for ministry in that neighborhood were amazing. The church members were good, faithful people. They wanted to grow. They wanted to be good neighbors. They had taken the risk of moving away from the location and building that had nurtured their ministry for so long. But they could not manage the visual fluency they needed. They could see the new location, but only in the ways they had seen the old one. Their words and habits and actions did not help them stay connected to this new call from God. Instead, they chose to cling to their old patterns. As a result, they pushed away the new folks who came to check out the new church in the neighborhood. After three years in the new building, they could no longer pay the bills and they closed.
That’s a hard story, but I tell it because it underscores the importance of that question –what words, actions or habits help you and me stay connected to our call? I hope you will take some time to answer that for yourself and share your thoughts with each other.
This is the kind of question the visioning committee is going to consider as we work together in the next year. We have sensed a call to something new. Our reading from Isaiah today reflects a call to something bigger than God’s servant had imagined. The servant had to adjust his thinking, to refocus his vision, to change his mind and make room for God’s big idea. I suggest that we are standing in a very similar place, that’s God’s next idea for us is big and will require some change of heart and mind and habits. And we will need to support each other to get through that together.
Because we who believe in freedom,
we who believe in justice,
we who believe in the powerful love of God incarnate in the person of Jesus,
we who believe in freedom, cannot rest,
cannot rest until it comes. Amen.
[1] Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America (New York: Penguin Group, 2004), p. 203