One line of our gospel today jumped off the page and grabbed me when I read it. Jesus is preaching and teaching, healing and casting out demons – all the good stuff we expect Jesus to do. The disciples wake up the next morning, and Jesus doesn’t come down for breakfast. They don’t know he got up before sunrise when everybody was sleeping and went off to a quiet place to pray. They go up to his room, but he isn’t there. They look out in the yard, but no Jesus. Peter, the late sleeper, strolls into the room yawning and scratching, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Where’s Jesus?” he asks. The other disciples bark like a chorus: “We don’t know!” “He’s not in his room! “We can’t find him!” “He didn’t come to breakfast!” And so on. Peter says, “Well, let’s go find him!” And he organizes a search. They go to the synagogue, they go the market, they go to the work corner, they go to the hospital, they go to the prison, and finally they’re standing in the town square on the verge of panic when Bartholomew squints down the shore road and spots a lonely figure at a distance sitting in that little grove by the lake where families like to picnic. They run down the road like a stampede of donkeys, come chugging up to Jesus huffing and puffing. And that’s when they drop that line that grabbed hold of me. They say, “Everyone is searching for you!” (Mark 1:37).

“Everyone is searching for you!” I think that’s true. Of course, not everyone is searching very hard. Some people feel fine about their situation in life. They may be searching for some good stock tips or a faster way to lose weight or the best price on a new Volvo, but they aren’t consciously searching for God. But even with those satiated, satisfied folks, I think there are moments of restless emptiness, of gnawing uncertainty and doubt when it occurs to them maybe something’s missing from their lives, like a purpose, like a point. Long ago Augustine suggested there is a God-shaped vacuum in every human soul. “You have made us for yourself,” he confessed to God, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Or, as the psalmist put it, “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psa 63:1).

“Everyone is searching for you!” they say, but most people don’t really know what they are searching for. They try to fill the void with the junk food of the soul. The latest fashions. The newest gizmos. The best cuisine. But they never feel satisfied. They try numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs. Creates more problems, and still doesn’t fill the void. They seek excitement in sports, but that doesn’t satisfy either for long. I mean, even when your team wins the national championship, that’s last year already and who knows what will happen next season? So they try books or television or any number of hobbies, but it’s all just numbing after a while. Social Critic Neil Postman derided “… the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.” He said, “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” Some people choose better pursuits, lose themselves into a career or their family, but even they get to the end of their lives and find themselves resonating with that old Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?”

“Everyone is searching for you!” they say, though some are not searching energetically, and many do not even realize who the object of their search is. Yet many, many do understand they are searching for God, only they do not know how or where to find God. I have heard as much in recent days, and even – dare I say it? – wondered this myself. Where is God? 2005 was a tough year for a lot of people. The war in Iraq continued with such violent resistance from the insurgents, our nation was so polarized politically, and people still felt so frightened about terrorism that some were asking, “Where is God?” Hurricane Katrina wreaked its devastation and then there was Rita and so many storms we ran out of names and had to use Greek letters, and naturally it made people wonder, “What’s going on? Where is God?” Things got worse for people living on the ragged edge of poverty trying to cope with limited skills in a stingy economy that I heard some of them asking, “Where is God?” I walked with some friends through some difficult health crises and hard losses, and once in a while somebody in their pain and sorrow was honest enough and trusted me enough to ask me, “Pastor, where is God?” And – I’m going to be honest with you now (not that I’m not always honest, but I know you don’t need your preacher always airing his struggles and doubts - we’re not here to take care of me! – but you need to know about me what I know about most every one of you) – sometimes when I pray long and hard and don’t get the answers I want, and nothing is changing and I’m feeling worried about my friends or anxious about our church or weary with this mean old world, I find myself asking right out loud, where is God?

Where is God? Do you know how to resolve that question? I don’t mean in the theological, philosophical, academic mode. I’ve been to school for that. I’ve still got the books! I mean in the practical, down-to-earth, we-need-some-help-here way of answering that question. Have you seen God lately? Where is God? We need some answers!

That’s another way this gospel story today grabbed me. I like Simon Peter’s solution to the problem. Where is Jseus? Even sleepy-headed, early-in-the-morning, yawny, scratchy Peter can solve this dilemma: let’s form a search party! Come on! We’ll join forces and look for God together. Maybe all of us can do what one of us alone cannot. Maybe all of us together will have eyes to see and ears to hear the secret ways of the Lord. Maybe a thoughtful, persistent, organized search will lead us to a sure conclusion. We’ll form a search party; that’s what we’ll do! I think we haven’t found God as often as we might like because we really haven’t been looking all that hard. We give up too easily and go back to amusing ourselves. I remember, one of the Hasidic rabbis, I think it was Rebbe Baruch of Medzebozh, said God plays hide and seek with us so we will seek God, but God is distressed because we have quit searching.

So let’s form a search party. If we all look together, we’re bound to find God sooner or later. Where shall we start? This gospel story gives us some clues. It says Jesus rose before the rest of them and found a deserted place to pray. In fact, the gospels have several stories where Jesus went looking for God in the quiet of a garden or on the top of a mountain, out in the wilderness or alone in a room, early in the morning or in the middle of the night, away from the crowds, away from the noise, even apart from his family and friends. Jesus would spend long hours seeking God and speaking to God, through prayer and meditation. Most of us don’t do that. If we pray at all, it’s a few quick words before a meal or maybe a few fleeting thoughts thrown God’s way in a moment of crisis. Could it be we have a hard time finding God because as much as we speak about God, we aren’t really on speaking terms? As religious as we are, God is still a stranger to us? As busy as we are doing stuff for God, we don’t take time to be with God? We’re like the guy I counseled in New York whose marriage was about to end. He had put everything into his career, worked long hours and weekends for his family so he could provide everything they could possibly want. And he succeeded in getting rich, but he didn’t understand what they always wanted more than the money was him. By the time he had time to give to his family, his children were grown and his wife was a stranger. We don’t want to that with God. So I think prayer might be the place to begin our search, giving God more time, giving God more attention. If we want to find God, we should go deeper within.

But now look at the story again. The disciples find Jesus praying. They say “Everyone is searching for you.” And Jesus says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” You won’t be with Jesus long if you just stand still. Just about the time you think you have hold of him, he’s moving someplace else. He’s going out to tell the good news. He’s reaching out to the hungry, the stranger, the outcast, the forgotten, to people struggling with their demons, to the sick, the dying, to the despised and rejected. You want to find Jesus, you have to seek out the people he seeks out to bring God’s love to them. I think sometimes we miss the presence of God because we’re too focused on ourselves and our own troubles. You can’t see God if you’re always only looking at yourself. But when you start looking after the people around you, reach outside yourself to help people who need it, you forget about your own troubles – they don’t even seem so big after all – and you find God. We lost a great saint, Coretta Scott King, this week. She said, “I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood. Those who can attune themselves to these forces - to God's purpose - can become special instruments of his will.” So if we want to find God, we should go farther beyond.

Now you might be thinking today: Pastor – some of you call me that! - Pastor, you’re talking in circles today, contradicting yourself: “we need to go deeper within” – “we need to go farther beyond.” But that’s not a contradiction; it’s an interaction! If you don’t stay connected to the Christ deep within you, all your labor for the Lord will soon feel empty and incomplete. You will run out of energy for it. You will burn out. You will begin to go through the motions but without any love for the people you are helping. And if you connect with the Christ deep within you but do not reach out to care for others beyond your own, you are not truly connecting with Christ at all but your imaginations of Christ, for Christ always turns you beyond yourself to love beyond yourself.

In our church, if we do not have those people who love praying, worshipping, studying, reflecting, we will lose the spirit and reason for our existence. If we do not have those people who find fulfillment in feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the sick, casting out demons, we will become another stained glass museum or modern entertainment center like so many other churches of our day. Beloved, it’s not either/or; it’s both/and. We cannot find Christ if we separate the spiritual from the social within our own individual souls or among ourselves as a congregation. Instead, let us honor each other. Let us rely on each other. Let us learn from one another. Let us love one another, and in so doing we will find Christ, for that is how he told us to love him best.

Michelangelo’s biographer, Giorgio Vasari tells the story of two other great Florentine contemporaries, Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (Donatello) and his friend and mentor Filippo Brunelleschi. Donatello carved a wooden crucifix for the church of Santa Croce in Florence, and asked Brunelleschi his opinion. Brunelleschi said it seemed to him Donatello had put on the cross the body of a peasant, while he imagined the body of Jesus Christ to be the most delicate and perfect human form ever created. Donatello replied, “If it was as easy to make something as it is to criticize, my Christ would really look to you like Christ. So you get some wood and try to make one yourself.” Without another word, Brunelleschi went home and secretly began work on a crucifix. When after several months it was completed, he invited Donatello to dinner. On their way to his house, they passed through the Old Market, where Brunelleschi bought several items. He gave them to Donatello and told him to go ahead to the house, where he would join him shortly. Writes Vasari:

So Donatello went on ahead into the house, and going into the hall he saw, placed in a good light, Filippo’s crucifix. He paused to study it and found it so perfect that he was completely overwhelmed and dropped his hands in astonishment; whereupon his apron fell and the eggs, the cheeses and the rest of the shopping fell to the floor and everything was broken into pieces. He was still standing there in amazement, looking as if he had lost his wits, when Filippo came up and said laughingly, “What are you up to Donatello? What are we going to eat now?” “Nothing for me, thanks,” replied Donatello. “You take what you want. But no more of this, please: I see that your job is making Christs and mine is making peasants!”

Beloved, the church is a search party. We are always looking for God. We do not hold Christ in captivity. We do not control God’s presence here. Like every other human, we must seek God continually, too. Like every other church, we must we seek to embody the Christ in our midst. Some of us are good at making the peasant Christ and others the idealized Christ. But they are both Christ, for Christ is in both the beautiful people and also in the most distressed human forms. And before both at times we find ourselves so suddenly in the presence of such beauty, such holiness, our hands drop, our mouths open, and we are struck by awe. Turns out, God is not so hard to find, if you will only keep looking, keep looking, keep looking, ask, seek, knock.. So, join the search party. I think you’ll like what we find. Amen? May we pray?

O Lord, we hunger for you. Our souls thirst for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. We seek you. Let us find you in each other. Let us find you in your beloved community. Let us find you in those we love as you love. Let us find you that we might follow you into life. Amen.