"Seek and Find"

 

John 1:29-42

January 18, 2026

 

The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

³⁵The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, ³⁶and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ ³⁷The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ ³⁹He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. ⁴⁰One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. ⁴¹He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). ⁴²He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).

 

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            John’s gospel tells us that as Jesus walked by, two disciples of John the Baptist, Andrew and another whom he doesn’t name, heard him say,

“‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” [John 1:36-39]

What were they looking for?  They didn’t tell Jesus, or if they did, the gospel doesn’t tell us.  The closest we get to an answer is what happened the next day when Andrew went and found his brother and announced,

“We have found the Messiah!” [John 1:41]

That discovery would and did change the lives of those two disciples, and Andrew’s brother (whom Jesus nicknamed Peter, Greek for “the Rock”).  In the long run, maybe what matters most isn’t really what we’re looking for, but whom we find.

            C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian writers of the twentieth century, wrote a spiritual autobiography he called “Surprised by Joy”.  He wrote it for himself as much as for anybody else, trying to figure out why he even believed in God, let alone the God of Christianity, when he had spent so much of his life as an atheist and someone who had seen the horrors of World War I from the trenches in France.  He spends chapters outlining his reasoning for belief or non-belief, but in the end he traces everything back to one moment in his childhood when he was about six and his older brother showed him a little nature diorama that he had built out of a cookie tin with some moss and stones and twigs.  That awoke a strange kind of admiration and happiness and wonder in him for some reason, but that flash of pure joy was so strong that when it disappeared it left behind a desire for its return, and then a desire for the desire, like an echo of an echo, and so on.  The term he eventually gave it was “an inconsolable longing”.  It would lead him to become a student and teacher of literature, which is how he met one of his best friends, J.R.R. Tolkien, who was forward enough to suggest that what he was feeling was what St. Augustine said to God: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

            Jesus’ question to Andrew and his friend:”What are you looking for?” is one that is worth posing over and over again, because there may be steps and stages before people can fully answer that for themselves, as they must.  They met Jesus, the Messiah, but if they understood his mission, as most of their neighbors would have understood the role of the Messiah at the time, as a political or military leader who would establish Israel as the premier power in all the earth (or at least push the Romans out of the country), then they would be totally disappointed.  Many were.

            If they understood Jesus’ mission simply as one of supplying bread and changing water into wine and healing the sick – all of which he did – then they must have been disappointed when there were times he turned the crowds away or slipped off in the night so that he could pray for awhile instead.  And there were also times when the Bible tells us that he couldn’t perform a miracle because the person asking it had no faith, no real trust.

            Their first teacher, John, had spoken true words when he spoke of Jesus,

“and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” [John 1:29]

but that is hard to hear when a lamb is a sacrificial animal that is slaughtered, and a Messiah is a national savior who conquers and triumphs over his enemies, the nation’s enemies, the enemies of God.  Try putting that kind of Messiah together with what Jesus would tell them:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” [Matthew 5:43-45]

Jesus might even say that is what his followers are supposed to do for somebody who directly repudiates Jesus’ own words.  That is not such a simple thing to do.  Just try it.

Yet now, as then, people go looking to find whatever kind of savior they think they need or think they understand, and find Jesus waiting for them, challenging the false Messiahs and the false paths that they point to, saying instead,

         “Come and see,” [John 1:39]

or as he would say to others,

                     “Follow me,”  [John 1:43]

and in the following there is the finding.

There’s a poem by George MacDonald called “What Christ Said”:

I said, “Let me walk in the fields.”
He said, “No; walk in the town.”
I said, “There are no flowers there.”
He said, “No flowers, but a crown.”

I said, “But the skies are black,
There is nothing but noise and din;”
And he wept as he sent me back;
“There is more,” he said, “there is sin.”

I said, “But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.”
He answered, “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone.”

I said, “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say.”
He answered, “Choose tonight
If I am to miss you, or they.”

I pleaded for time to be given.
He said, “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in Heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.”

I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said, “My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”

Then into his hand went mine;
And into my heart came he;
And I walk in a light divine,
The path I had feared to see.