"Nicodemus"

 

John 3:1-17

March 1, 2026

 

¹Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ ³Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ ⁴Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?’ ⁵Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ ⁹Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ ¹⁰Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

¹⁷‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

 

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            Jesus and Nicodemus!  What an encounter!  The meeting drew from Jesus some of his most profound declarations of his mission.

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  [John 3:16-17]

What a meeting!  Nicodemus, coming to Jesus with a weariness he attributes to his age, thinking that he is too old to experience the newness of life that is part of the kingdom of God, reducing Jesus’ call to be born from above, to be born again, to a physical impossibility that echoes the spiritual impossibilities that he’s feeling.  Jesus says to Nicodemus,

“‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ ⁴Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?’”  [John 3:3-5]

Jesus offers him life in its fullness.  Nicodemus says he’s too old, too tired.  Jesus isn’t having any of it.  He tells him that the Spirit is the source of life, and it doesn’t matter how many scrapes are on the chassis if the engine is still good. 

In fact, it’s because Nicodemus has a few miles on the odometer that he should understand that.

“Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’” [John 3:9-10]

A teacher of Israel, after all, is someone who should know the most basic stories of his people.  A teacher steeped in the scriptures should remember what they tell us:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’  So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” [Genesis 12:1-4] 

Not everybody is up to that type of adventure (though when you think of it, a lot of people do pick up and move around that age), but not everything God calls us to involves physical strength.  Sometimes it is the know-how and the resourcefulness that comes from experience.

            What lay in front of Nicodemus were moments of courage that would not have been available to someone younger.  In John 7, the temple authorities consider arresting Jesus based on suspicion and because Nicodemus is part of the ruling council he is right there to speak up.

“Our law does not judge people without giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” [John 7:51]

Imagine a judge who insists on due process.  That was Nicodemus.  He was also old enough to have had some savings.  When Jesus had been arrested, condemned, and executed, another older member of the council named Joseph of Arimathea used his connections to have Jesus’ body removed from the cross.  (Normally it would have been left up as a warning, to be eaten by vultures or to rot.)  Instead, he and Nicodemus were able to do one last service, and

“Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.  They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.” [John 19:39-40]

Nicodemus outlived Jesus.  I doubt that he expected that when he first went to see him under cover of night. Perhaps he felt his age all the more when he helped Joseph lay the corpse into a borrowed tomb, unaware that he was preparing it for life to return shortly.  Yet he was, in a way, returning the favor that Jesus had shown when he had prepared Nicodemus for his own rebirth and resurrection, opening the way for him (and for us) through death.

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” [John 3:16]

The gift of those words might have fallen on deaf ears if the ears they fell on had not started to go a little deaf.

            Psalm 92:12-15 says,

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord;

they flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit;

they are always green and full of sap,

showing that the Lord is upright;

he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

 

Just ask the people who knew Jimmy Carter in his later years, or ask someone about Minnie Thacker, or June MacDade, or Jim Pearson, or Helen Vaughn, or Jan Ayres – and don’t forget Nicodemus or Abraham and Sarah.

 

"Fasting"

 

Matthew 4:1-11

February 22, 2026

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

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            Fasting is a spiritual practice found many places in the Bible but not in very much favor in our own day.  Richard Foster writes about fasting as one of many aids to prayer (although it can also be a distraction in some circumstances).  He also warns that it is not for everyone, either physically or psychologically.  (For my part I would mention that I knew someone who misused the practice as a cover for anorexia.)  Nevertheless, Jesus himself fasted and taught his disciples about fasting, and we have the witness of the gospels that he began his public ministry only after a prolonged time of prayer and fasting during which he confronted the temptations of the devil.

            Foster says,

“More than any other single Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. …We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. …How easily we begin to allow nonessentials to take precedence in our lives.  How quickly we crave things we do not need until we are enslaved by them. …Our human cravings and desires are like a river that tends to overflow its banks; fasting helps keep them in their proper channel.”[1]

I would add that although fasting generally refers to abstinence from food for a short period (usually a day, and not skipping water during that time), people may also fast from things like speech or screentime or caffeine or alcohol.  The other thing is that fasting differs from dieting because it is meant to focus on God, not on physical appearance.

            That said, Jesus’ time in the desert was time where he faced down and overcame temptation to turn his attention away from God and toward himself.  The first temptation was to turn stones into bread, when the whole point of what he was there for was to do without.  In fact, it wasn’t simply that he had left the settled area for the desert but that he had left heaven itself to come to this world for the sake of humanity.  Jesus, as Paul would later say,

“though he was in the form of God,

did not count equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself.” [Philippians 2:6]

 

Jesus’ time of fasting in the desert was a time of preparation for enduring the cross.  The temptation to use his power to spare himself from hunger was the same temptation to spare himself from suffering that would be placed before him, right up to the end.  Again and again Jesus must have prayed (as he did in Gethsemane)

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” [Matthew 27:39]

Right up to the moment when he was dying on the cross, the voice of the tempter echoed in the people mocking him:

“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” [Matthew 27:40]

and

“He saved others; he cannot save himself.  He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.” [Matthew 27:42]

The temptation to turn his back on God’s will, to save himself instead of others, would never fully disappear, but he never gave in. 

We are unlike him in that.  We do give in.  But not always and not inevitably.  One thing that Jesus’ temptation teaches us is that the voice of the tempter is subtle and if that voice came to Jesus, it will surely come to us.  Don’t take what is offered at face value.  Treat it like an online ad – which (if you think about it) is meant to entice you into buying or buying into something. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Use your common sense and trust what God may be saying to you quietly or maybe loudly.

Then whenever, as sometimes does happen, temptation announces itself without any disguise, don’t be afraid to answer it as bluntly as Jesus did.

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” [Matthew 4:6]

His answer,

“Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” [Matthew 4:7]

could easily have also been, “Why exactly would I want to do that?” or, “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”  The same goes for bowing down to the devil in return for the world.  (There’s a whole sermon series in that discussion.)

            In whatever way we learn to understand our own selves and our own concerns into perspective, whatever way we come to see the world in a much larger perspective than we become used to, there is a greater sense that it is all God’s.  Peter Marty recently wrote a column where he says,

“To be spiritually alive involves placing our dependence on God, not just rolling in the ocean of the self. It’s exalting others, not celebrating personal grandeur. It’s enjoying a life that pulsates with the whole human family breathing through us in all kinds of ways.”[2]

Or, as Jesus put it:

“Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  [Matthew 16:25]

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[1] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 48-49.

[2] Peter Marty, “Morality Requires Other People” in The Christian Century (vol.143 no. 3: March, 2026), 3.

"Only God Needs to See It"

 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday

February 18, 2026

 

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

²‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ³But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

⁵‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

…

¹⁶‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

¹⁹‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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Sometime during Lent I usually try to make time to listen to “Jesus Christ, Superstar”.  It’s one of the things that I do that makes me think about how much was going on during the week leading up to Jesus’ death and every so often a phrase or two from the show gets into my head.  This week it came from a song toward the beginning, when Judas sees Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus and acts appalled that Jesus is letting “someone like her” (as he puts it) even touch him.  Judas is scared of what people will think, and even more scared of the Temple authorities and the Romans.  He says to Jesus, “It doesn’t help us if you’re inconsistent.  They only need a little thing to put us all away.” 

Inconsistency, if we’re honest, is a problem sometimes if you read through the Sermon on the Mount just quickly.  Two Sundays ago, we were hearing Matthew 5:16 –

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Today we hear Matthew 6 where Jesus says things like

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” [6:1] and

“When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret” [6:3-4] and

“Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door”. [6:6]

Sure, some of it has to do with motivation.  Are you really praying if you are doing it just to be seen or heard by anybody other than God?  Is it really prayer if it’s a matter of performance?

I knew a woman who was part of a charismatic Catholic prayer group.  She had cancer and was coming to the end here, and she told me that when the time came, before the casket was closed, she wanted the group to gather around it and pray in tongues.  So when the viewing was about to move on to the service, I stood there with them and we all held hands and bowed our heads, then they began to make sounds that were their way of praying.  It began and ended in a very orderly way.  To this day, though, I cannot help but wonder how much was the Spirit speaking with their spirits and how much was meeting the expectations of their friend, out of love. 

That friendship, that love, and the faith that was part of it makes me feel more charitable than when I see someone on television get swept up into a swirling cloud of oratory until the sweat runs down the back of their neck or the tears leave trails of mascara down their cheeks.

So, taking these teachings of Jesus together as a whole, it seems to me that what he really asks of us is to be genuine in bringing our lives before God in prayer and bringing God’s ways into our lives.  We don’t have to point at ourselves, but people will see both what we get right and where we fail – and they’ll also know when we try to do better.  We are not as consistent ourselves as we should be, but to be aware of the potential hypocrisies and to wrestle with them is actually a part of repentance.  Isaiah knew it as well as Jesus, when he told the people of his own day,

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,

and oppress all your workers.

 Look, you fast only to fight

and to strike with a wicked fist. …

 

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?” [Isaiah 58:3-4, 6]

 

The good works that really shine out are the ones that happen when somebody is not trying to score points, but when they are doing what is just the right thing to do.

There’s a quotation from Mother Teresa that says, “Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love.”  The group “The Potter’s Gate” turned that into a song.

“In the garden of our Savior

no flower grows unseen.

His kindness rains like water

on every humble seed.

No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye

For there is One who sees   me-

His hand is over mine

 

In the kingdom of the heavens

no suffering is unknown.

Each tear that falls is holy,

each breaking heart a throne.

There is a song of beauty in every weeping eye,

For there is One who knows me-

His heart, it breaks with mine.

 

O the deeds forgotten, O the works unseen.

Every drink of water flowing graciously,

every tender mercy You're making glorious.

This You have asked of us:

Do little things with great love,

little things with great

 love.”

 

That would be my prayer for all of us this season.

 

Wise Weakness

 

I Corinthians 2:1-12

February 8, 2026        

 

¹When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. ³And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. ⁴My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

⁶Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. ⁷But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹But, as it is written,

‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the human heart conceived,

what God has prepared for those who love him’—

¹⁰these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God. ¹²Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 

*************************************************

 

            When I was doing a student ministry internship at Duke there was a great group of people who worked together, sharing offices in the basement of the chapel, borrowing each other’s books and staplers, making fun of each other’s theology and making deals on whose group would get which room on which day.  One of those people was Frank, the campus rabbi.  He really worked out of Hillel House, but the chapel basement was more centrally located.  About halfway into one semester, he announced to the whole religious life staff that his wife had just been diagnosed with an inoperable, at that time untreatable cancer.  He was resigning effective the next week.  They had booked a cruise and were going to spend as much time together as they could, while they could.  If things went quickly, we would see him again in a few months or a year.  When he did return the following year, it was strange because it was good to see someone whom everyone liked and admired but we also knew that he was back only because he had completed a time of great love that was also a time of great loss, and we were seeing them both linger.

There is a deep holiness in that mixture, which is in one way or another part of being fully human.  It was especially holy in the way that they chose to draw closer to one another and to affirm the centrality of their love when the going became hardest, consciously setting everything else aside to focus on their shared life while it was still shareable and good, preparing for the time that they would share a goodbye.

Paul, another rabbi from a time long before this, one who had been a Pharisee studying at the feet of the best biblical scholars of his day, would have differed from Frank in many, many ways, chiefly with respect to Paul’s belief that Jesus had been the Messiah and all the implications that carries.  Paul spoke of human love and marriage as being a major example for understanding God’s even deeper love, and on that they would have agreed, and that the greatest love is ready to stand up even to death.

Love cannot be explained.  Sure, it has its biological side, and its social aspects.  Matches have been made and broken for political and economic reasons.  But why is it that some of the most loving marriages seem the oddest?  Have you never heard someone mutter under their breath, “What could she possibly see in him”?  Somehow, though, nobody can picture one without the other.  The writers of All in the Family dealt with that when they had to figure out what to do with Archie Bunker when Edith died.  In their story, he stayed numb for weeks until he found one of her slippers under the bed, then began talking to her.

"It wasn't s'posed to be like this, y'know; I was s'posed to be the first one to go. I know I always used to kid ya about you going first; you know I never meant none of that. And that morning when ya was layin' there, I was shakin' you an' yellin' at you to go down and fix my breakfast, I didn't know. Ya had no right to leave me that way, Edith, without givin' me just one more chance to say I love you..."[1]

            Why would God love people who, though made in his own image, are so unlike him?  Why has he not just written the world off?  The book of Genesis asks that. 

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” 

That’s Genesis 6:5-7.  Genesis 6:8, however, says,

“But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.”

So things go on.

            The love of God is as mysterious – more mysterious – than ours.  So, with wisdom, Paul doesn’t seek for words to explain it or express it beyond what it takes to point out the one moment in all eternity where everything comes into focus, and things maybe don’t have to make sense in the organized, philosophical way that insulates us from the inexplicability of his love that we call “grace”.

“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.  My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” [I Corinthians 2:1-5]

Where we see the power of love is in the moments of shared weakness.  Where we see the ultimate power of the ultimate love is when God not only watches our troubles and feels the pain that arises from our sin and suffers for the victimized but goes to the furthest limit and truly shares our human weakness and our human death:

“Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” [I Corinthians 2:2] 

The love of God is mysterious but real.  The forgiveness of God is inexplicable but true.  Thankfully, it isn’t up to us to unravel the mystery or to explain the Lord’s ways.  Our part is simply to accept his infinite love for what it is, and to love him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. 

Just like he does.

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[1] Edith Bunker - Wikipedia

"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.