Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

8:30 & 11:00 AM Morning Promise Services – 1/20/02

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Texts: John 1:29-42

 

The Sermon:

“We found IT—one afternoon, about four o’clock.”

 

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I’m about to show a clip from the musical Moulin Rouge.  As you watch, I want you to be watching the character that plays the manager of the show.  When we gathered this morning I had you ask each other the question:  What are you looking for?  Ask yourself what the manager of Moulin Rouge is looking for.  What is his drive?  His passion?  Is he misled?

 

[Show clip, DVD: back up from track #27 just slightly to include the whole sequence for “The Show Must Go On”.]

 

Could you hear his drive and the thirst:  for crowds, the lights?  “There’s no other way,” he said to Satine.  “We’re creatures of the underworld.  The show must go on.”  He sings with strength and boldness.  It’s almost exciting, but I think you could hear the emptiness underneath.  It’s an unquenchable drive that leads to emptiness.

I could have used the character, Proximo, from the movie, “Gladiator.”  He’s the trainer of the gladiators who is again caught up in the lust for the show, the crowds, the accolades, and the staged adventure.  And again, it becomes apparent that, when that is the goal, the driving purpose, it is heartbreakingly and tragically empty.  So often in these stories, someone ends up dead in order to break the curse and cycle of these addictive drives.

 

“The Show Must Go On,” he sang.  That is a very appropriate song for him.  It is a song that was written by Freddie Mercury for the musical group called Queen.  It’s appropriate because of how Freddie Mercury himself often felt caught up and addicted to the “show.”  The song actually starts out like this:

 

Empty spaces—what are we living for?

Abandoned places—I guess we know the score.

On and on.  Does anybody know what we are looking for?

 

Does anybody know what we are looking for?

 

That was the question you asked each other at the beginning of the service.  Maybe some of you can share.  —What were some of the answers you either said or heard?  What are you looking for?  [Listen for and repeat a few answers.]  Did anyone say, “I don’t know?”

I realize that most of the time our thoughts and questions don’t run that deep.  We do the next thing simply because it’s the next thing on the list, or it’s what we always do at certain points of the day or week.  I know perfectly well that some, if not most of us, came here today—not really because we were looking for something—but simply because it’s Sunday.  That is a great habit to have, and God has promised to bless us through it.  However, I believe God would have us take the time to dig deeper.

As a pastor, but really as a Christian, I need to constantly ask myself, “Greg, what are you looking for in this?  What’s the deeper significance?  How does it connect you to others, and to God?”  It’s a question all of us should be asking ourselves in our careers, in school, in our circles of peers and friends, when we’re faced with the next major decision, or when someone challenges us, …or tempts us, at the next opportunity we have to advance ahead, or to take another mind-numbing drink, or when we pull out the next cigarette: “Why?  What am I looking for in this?”

But I have to warn you, if you answer that question, for the sake of honesty, you need to drive into a still deeper quest and longing.  What are you looking for?  Career?  Financial success?  Friends?  Notice? 

Why?  What do you hope to find there?  What are you really looking for? A sense of pride or power? Accomplishment or Accolades? (clap, clap, clap.)  Are you looking for a sense of security or safety? …Peace? …Love?  Some of these things are good things, great—commendable—and heroic.  But—not one of them is high enough.

I could point you toward the greatest, wealthiest, most heroic, powerful, adventuresome, famous, popular, smartest, …or even some of the most loved or loving people.  I promise you that, in those very same people, you might also find the depths of loneliness, fears, emptiness and depression.

In spite of it all—in spite of all they have, or everything they might have done—or all the stuff and goals that are put in front of our faces, …all of this it the great show that promises at last: satisfaction…  But none of it can satisfy our deepest longings or our deepest fears.  The show is a fraud.  A misleading fraud.

 

Why do you think it was so frightening, why is it still so frightening for some to imagine this universe being billions, hundreds of billions, and maybe trillions of years older than humankind?

Why is it so frightening for some to think of the expanse of the cosmos and to imagine our little planet in this little solar system, swinging wide on the arm of a swirling galaxy with millions of stars, and millions of other galaxies?

Why do you think it is so frightening to imagine that we are created with only a few genetic mutations separating us from all the other living creatures on this planet, with similar emotions and a somewhat higher intelligence, yes, and this awareness beyond ourselves?  Unfortunately for us, in many ways it is this higher awareness that causes so many of our human problems, our fears and loneliness.  Ironically, this intelligence that is supposed to separate and lift us above the rest of creation has seemed to do little more for us than to escalate the same old animalistic territorial and aggressive disputes to globally devastating levels.  As a result, we have the ability to entirely wipe out all our real and imagined enemies, entirely, …destroying us and our own souls in the process.

It can be frightening in this big and huge universe.  And here am I, all my life: with my going to bed, sleeping, getting up and starting over again, day after day, but even with all my successes and my very existence.   No matter how big I might make myself in this life, no matter how powerful or loveable, I would be nothing but a microsecond, and an insignificant blip in an unending universe. 

How incredibly frightening and empty that is! …Unless—unless I am connected to something more than me, something even bigger than all of humanity.

 

So then, what are we looking for?  What are we living for?

 

It was the question Jesus suddenly turned and asked the two men who were following him in today’s gospel.  Not, “Why are you following me?”  Or, “Who are you?”  I don’t think Jesus meant it sarcastically, “What are you looking for?”

The two men may have had some surface ideas.  They had been following John the Baptist, and he had pointed to Jesus to say, “Behold, the Lamb.  The one that takes away the sin of the world.” 

They would have had an idea what John was talking about.  In Egypt lambs’ blood was smeared on the doorframes and saved the Israelites during the last plague.  And the prophet Isaiah spoke of a lamb—a suffering servant—that would take on all guilt, die with it.  The servant would pay the price of their sin and separation to bring them back to God, forever, at last.

So, the disciples may have had some ideas, but they had even more questions: “This Man?  The Savior, the Lamb?  What should he look like?  The Messiah?  It sounds powerful, hopeful, …and even scary.  Is this the one we should be looking for?”

Jesus asked: “What are you looking for?”  How should they answer him?  Should they answer, “The overthrow of the Roman Government?” or, “The cleansing of our priests and the religious establishment?” “Peace”?  “Power”?  “Hope”?  …“The great Messiah”?

Instead, they answered him with their own question, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” they asked Jesus.

“Come and see,” he answered.  So, they followed.

They came to the place where Jesus was staying, and St. John remembered it so well, so clearly that he wrote that it was the tenth hour after sunrise, or about four o’clock in the afternoon.  Whenever John got specific about anything in his gospel, he meant, “Listen up!  This was a memorable and important moment!”

Four o’clock that afternoon, they had found it.  …They had found him.  Later on, they would learn that—in that finding—they had found everything that they were looking for.  …Everything that we look for.  They found God.

They were invited into his house…like us.  From that moment on, they were invited into his work and mission…like us.  And the first thing Andrew did, the first thing he wanted to do, was to carry it and share it with another.  “Come and see, Simon!  Come and see!  This might be it; this might be him!”

It started there, and now that invitation belongs to us.  “Come and see, Bill, Mary, Pat, Jim, and Greg!  Come and see, Ole, Lena, Wilhelm, and Olga!  Come and see, Chin, Wang, Otu, Running Deer and Sasha!  Come and see, all of you children yet to be born!  Come and see!  Might this be the one who will save us all?  Have we found the one who gives us value, and a purpose, a goal, and a mission?  Is this the one who guides us to God, or who is the face of God?”

 

I tell you, we have found him, the Messiah!  He’s bigger than they imagined, and bigger than we can imagine.  But, he is here, intimately here among us and in you.  He has promised it.  Here in you, and with you every moment.  He is making sure that you and your soul, and everything you say and do as his disciple will have eternal significance and value.

You and I belong to God.  Suddenly, the universe isn’t scary for us, or melodramatic, anymore.  If a God that big and eternal has turned around to invite you and me along, into his plans, then we have peace and significance.

God, the God of creation and billions of stars, the true God of genetics and evolution, the God of eternity became our “Brother,” so that we could learn to call him and love him as “Father.”

 

The search ends here.  What have we found?  Love: alive and belonging.  He is a Love that is larger than the cosmos.  He is Meaning, more than ourselves.  He is Salvation, strong enough to cleanse the world.  In Christ you and I have found God, and in him we have found Life …Eternal Life.

You have found him.  Now, you have everything.  Stop searching.  Start trusting and believing.  And start inviting others:  “Come and see!”  Come and see.  Amen.

 

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