What Do You Seek?

2 Epiphany A 2008
(Isaiah 49: 1-7; Ps 40: 1-12; 1 Cor 1: 1-9; John 1: 29-42)

"Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory..."

I look forward to this Collect each year during the Epiphany season. "Illumination" has always been a rich word to me, especially since I discovered that the early Church referred to Baptism as "illumination." Light, suffusing, transforming, shining through our lives...I remember that we kids used to like to shine strong flashlights through our hands, as it seemed magical and scary and unearthly all at once for the light to pierce our skin and flesh and glow through them, showing delicate bones in faint outline. I remember that each 2 Epiphany, and imagine the Christ-light glowing through flesh and bone as well as through mind and heart and everything that makes up who we are.

For us here, the flashlight is the faith-life we lead together, the Word and Sacraments that we share week to week, day to day, Baptism and Eucharist and Bible. There may well be other ways for Christ to shine in lives--it would be arrogant to say "no" to that--but this is our way, the ancient and ever-new way of the Church. It's a privilege to show up and to allow Word and Sacrament to be the means that Christ shines in us and through us and transforms us through light.

Today it feels odd to be getting ready to go to Church once more as yesterday we celebrated the funeral of Chuck Reese, longtime beloved member here and a man, if there was any, whose constant presence and faith-filled "showing up" illustrated what it means for a life to be "illumined by Word and Sacraments" and to be "filled with the radiance of Christ's glory." Most of us felt after the funeral that we had "been to church" for the weekend, had celebrated Christ's saving power and love in the context of the life and death of one of Christ's faithful servants, and now to go back Sunday morning is a matter of faith and will! But go we shall, and show up on this morning in gratitude for the fact that Jesus Christ shows up every morning, every moment of our lives.

And today we speak in the Gospel of two ways, the way of John the Baptist and the way of Jesus.

One Celtic theologian says that the church year hinges on the lives of Jesus and John the Baptist. The Nativity or Birth of John the Baptist is celebrated on June 24, at the summer solstice, when the sun is at its height but the light of the sun begins its long slow fade to winter. The Birth of Jesus is celebrated on December 25 at the winter solstice, when in the depths of darkness the light of the sun begins to grow again. Their lives are both complimentary and contrasting. Today in John's Gospel we hear of how they are complimentary.

The Way of John the Baptist is a counter-cultural spiritual praxis--stepping aside. Last time I was in New York, my cousin told me that the most recent manifestation of aggressive New York driving habits is that many people no longer use their turn signals to indicate they wish to turn--"They say that's the same thing as asking permission to turn, and they say they don't need anyone's permission!" I laughed a little uneasily at the mulish angry pride in that, thinking that such pride will prove to be expensive and dangerous. But rarely does our culture teach us that there is something good about giving way, making space, allowing the other to go ahead, to increase, to take center stage. But that is just what John the Baptist is shown as doing for Jesus. "After me comes he who is before me..." Elsewhere he says "He must increase, I must decrease." This "way" may sound like a self-degrading stance, but it is actually fulfilling and life-giving. Anyone who has been involved with a young person, as a parent or coach or in any other role, knows how fulfilling it is to allow the young life to burst forth and grow and change while you smile and simply watch as they cut loose and come into their own. Any teacher knows that--the best compliment to a teacher is that the student exceed the teacher. And anyone in ministry needs to be very clear that it is about God, it is about Jesus Christ, and NOT about their own ego-fulfillment. That fulfillment will come, but in the joy and satisfaction of watching individual lives or the life of a congregation grow in faith and generosity and confidence and independence.

The Way of Jesus in today's Gospel is not a contrast of Jesus thumping his breast and beaming and saying, "That's right, I'm the one." It is instead an invitation.

The Gospel of John is full of intricate, delicate personal encounters. This is one of the most tender yet most challenging. Two pilgrims come to the newly-appeared Rabbi. They don't even have their questions clearly outlined, they don't have a script. They seem to stutter when Jesus turns and asks them, "What do you seek?" They don't ask for the Secret Words, for a one-liner of doctrine, for the shortcut sure-fire ticket to everlasting Salvation. "Where do you live?" Jesus doesn't answer with anything more profound than "Come and see."

Yet what could be more profound? Come and see my life the way it really is. Come and see where I sleep and eat and relax. Come and be with me. Share my life as it is. And that will be what you seek. Because we seek a life lived, we seek illumination and transformation, we seek to share the very life of God.

What do you seek?

Come and see. Come share. Come be illumined by Word and Sacrament. Come shine with the radiance of Christ's glory.