My Husband, the Preacha!

Dr. James Rogers preaching at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church on Sunday, January 19, 2020

I had the pleasure of welcoming my husband, Dr. James Rogers, to the pulpit this past Sunday. Though he doesn’t preach regularly, he does have a doctorate in Theology and I’ve always been so impressed by the thoughtfulness in which he approaches his faith and articulation of it. So, I invited him to guest preach for us and he did not disappoint. This sermon is especially encouraging for: 1) those who would not describe themselves as Christian in the conventional sense, 2) those who are struggling with believing certain doctrines, 3) those who are searching for…something and don’t know how to express it. You can read the sermon below or watch it here.

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“What are you looking for?”

As most of you probably know, I am Pastor Lydia’s husband. I have actually never formally peached before, never given a sermon to a congregation. So this is a welcome first for me. I have had a lot of time studying theology, but it turns out that that doesn’t quite prepare you for something like this as much as you might think. I’ve never liked the saying “Those who cannot do teach,” but maybe it applies here a little.

When I was in third grade, growing up in New Jersey, a teacher I had once asked a question to the class and then called on a random kid when there was no answer forthcoming. When she was met with the deeply blank stare that only confused children can muster, she told him to say, “Trenton, New Jersey is the state capital.” Since she was trying to teach us about computers, that was definitely the wrong answer. However, her reasoning was that if you had no idea what the answer is, you should just give the right answer to a question that would be likely to be asked of a third grader in New Jersey, even if it wasn’t the question actually asked. It’s better than nothing. And you might get lucky.

Similarly, I have learned that if a pastor asks a question during the sermon, especially the children’s sermon, and you don’t know the answer, just say “Jesus” because you have a pretty good chance of being right. For example, if the question is an innocuous “What did you get for Christmas?” and you say “Jesus,” then, as it turns out, you actually might be right in the end. It’s worth a try, at least.

Some theologians write like that too—if they seem to be asking some rhetorical questions about God, human beings, sin, forgiveness and love, then Jesus is not too far away.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve never particularly liked this approach to theology. First off because Jesus isn’t the answer to every question we have in life. Sometimes you just need to call a therapist or a tow truck. Jesus can help you here, but he isn’t going to Google the numbers for you. Also, I’ve learned that sometimes the answer to our questions, even if the answer truly is “Jesus,” can’t always be found because how and why we are asking the questions shape the kind of answer we might receive. There’s lots of different Jesuses out there, it seems, different ideas of who he was and who he should be for us today. And if we truly want to find that Jesus we are looking for, we have to be open to the idea that not only what we find might not only not quite be what we expected, but also that we do not know what we are seeking.

The Gospel reading for today comes from John 1:29-42. And John wastes no time here. There is no birth narrative. No manger, nor wisemen; no shepherds or guiding star. Christmas, my friends, is over. The Epiphany has already happened as far as the lectionary, our list of prescribed readings in the church calendar, is concerned. The Son of God has appeared. And our task now in the season of Epiphany is to make sense of this. What is the meaning of the Incarnation? What does it mean that God is here, is one of us?

John opens his Gospel in words that are likely familiar to you: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And, a few verses later, John goes on to say, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.” Yet the world did not know him…This introduces a major theme that runs throughout the Gospel—that some do not recognize Jesus. They do not see who he is in spite of what he actually says and does; it seems that no amount of miracles or wise words might change this. But others do see him for who he is.

In the reading, John the Baptist right away identifies Jesus as especially important, as “the Lamb of God.” This causes the two men near him, Andrew and another unnamed disciple, to follow Jesus. When Jesus turns around and sees the two, some translations have him saying, “What do you want?”

Now, the meaning of this question is all in the enunciation. It’s a bit funny to imagine Jesus seeing them and saying, with a bit of annoyance, “What do you want?” Reading it like this, it’s as if he can’t be bothered since he is a carpenter and he has some doors to hang or something. Of course, that’s not really what’s going on here. It’s more like when you are having a bad day, or maybe a tough month or even year, and someone says, “How are you?” and you can tell, deep in your heart, that they really mean it and want to hear the honest answer in whatever form it comes. They want to hear about your father being sick or that your friend won’t speak to you anymore or that you hate your job and think every day of something better. But, actually, Jesus is trying to get even deeper than that. He asks, “What are you looking for?” Not as if they misplaced their keys or can’t find the bus stop—but something much deeper is implied: What do you seek in life? What is causing pain in your soul? What are you missing such that you are following me around with expectation? What are you looking for?

In all of the Gospels, Jesus asks a lot of questions and gets asked a lot of questions. If you look closely, however, you will see that he often gets few real answers and gives even fewer. So, the disciples respond to his question about what they are seeking with: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” This is obviously not an answer to the question asked. Rather, it is just another question—and kind of a non sequitur one at that. Jesus asks, “What do you want?” and they respond, “Hey, where do you live?” But Jesus just goes with it, invites them to his place and spends the afternoon with them.

That is Jesus’ first real action in John. Perhaps that should tell us something about how, so much of the time, we can best love others like Jesus did—just by being fully present, by giving ourselves in the simplest and most mundane way—no miracles or special spiritual powers required. At the same time, it is clear that something special did happen that afternoon, even though we are not told precisely what by John. It was special enough for Andrew to tell his brother that Jesus is most certainly the Messiah. Jesus asks the question, “What are you looking for?” and, after a further question, a few hours of precious time and a few verses of explanation, we get the answer from Andrew: “We have found the Messiah.”

The disciples were seeking something. Though I get the sense that, at least at first, they did not know what they were looking for. After all, they had never met Jesus. They knew nothing of the miracles they would see or the teachings they would hear. They certainly did not know how these teachings and miracles might overturn their preconceptions about what a Messiah is and does—not a political ruler or a military leader that would spark an armed revolt and the territorial restoration of Israel against the Romans, as many likely expected a Messiah to do, but someone quite different who inaugurated a very different kind of spiritual revolution.

However, in asking their own question, the disciples do call him Rabbi, teacher, suggesting that they were ready to learn from him. Their seeking was nascent, open, perhaps a bit formless, but also generous and expectant. And, as a result, they were able to find what they were looking for, even if they didn’t know what that was at the start. Or, perhaps more precisely, they found who they were looking for. They were ready or at least willing to let their presuppositions be changed—with the result that they and their whole lives would be changed as well.

These two disciples are not the only ones looking for Jesus in the Gospel of John. In fact, the theme of seeking and finding runs throughout the entire text. It turns out that both those who want to become disciples and those who want to deny and destroy Jesus are seeking him.

For example, in John chapter 7, a rather hostile crowd is said to be “looking for” Jesus. So, Jesus asks them, “Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?” Notably, the Greek word for “looking for” here is the same one Jesus used to ask the two disciples “What are you looking for?” But here, the crowd responds with an exclamation and a question that seem to stand in tension with one another: “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?” Similarly, later on, when Jesus is pointed out by Judas and arrested, he asks the guards about to confront him, “Who are you looking for?” They answer, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Indeed, they are very specifically looking for him. But, clearly, they have no interest in truly coming to know who he is. He is not a Rabbi, a teacher, to them and certainly not the Son of God. Rather, he is just a man identified in the most mundane and straightforward way. It is like they are reading it off a driver’s license or a wanted poster: they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. Their seeking is a dead end, a closed loop in which nothing can be learned and no expectations overturned. Their seeking is superficial; they believe they know everything they need to about what and who they are looking for. So they find the object of their seeking quickly and surely. But they cannot be changed in the process precisely because their expectations are so concretely limited.

Others in the Gospel of John, however, are also seeking Jesus. In one sense, they are seeking the same thing as the soldiers or the hostile crowd I just mentioned: they are looking for Jesus. But their approach is different. They are more like the disciples who spend the afternoon with Jesus. They are more open—even to the point of not really knowing what they are seeking until it has been found. So, in John chapter 7, Jesus feeds the 5000, multiplying the loaves and fishes, and the next day the expectant crowd “went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.” And when they find him, he says, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” This crowd sought and recognized Jesus because they experienced his presence, his very being; he is the bread of life and they have eaten of it. They have been given a taste and desire more. Jesus seems to be giving a warning here: maybe you are looking for me because of the miracles, but if that’s the case, then perhaps you don’t know what you are really looking for.

And, finally, at the end of John’s Gospel, when Mary Magdalene goes into Jesus’ tomb and finds it empty, she cries in grief, thinking his body has been taken by someone. The resurrected Jesus, standing nearby, asks her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener and asks him where Jesus’ body has been taken. Mary here, at some level, does not know what she is really seeking. She is looking for a lifeless body, totally unaware that there is a miraculously-alive human being standing right next to her. But her expectations are overturned quickly. When Jesus says her name, “Mary!” she recognizes his call, finds him again, exclaiming, “Rabbouni!” addressing him with the same title as a spiritual teacher that the two disciples did in our main reading today.

There is an important symmetry here. At the beginning of John, our reading today has Jesus entering the scene as others are seeking him. At the end, as he prepares to leave the world, he finds another seeker. In each case, both the disciples and Mary were looking for someone. And all of them did find this person, but he was not what they expected. But their surprise at what they actually did find seems to have convicted them all the more that what or who they sought had indeed been found.

More than a decade ago, when I entered seminary, I was looking for something. I wanted answers. I had wanted answers to questions I had for quite some time. Despite having gone to church every Sunday almost my entire life, I didn’t consider myself Christian. I could not get past the fact that I was not finding the answers—at least not ones that made enough sense to me—to the rather basic questions I was seeking. How does Jesus’ death somehow absolve us of our sins? What mechanism is at work here? What did Jesus actually say and do and how can we really know this? And, more broadly, who actually was Jesus? If he is God, how does that work? How can a human being be God? How does that make any sense? God is beyond time and space, out there (so to speak) and not here with us; God can do anything and knows everything, so I was told. How can a human being be God, then?

After a year or so, I became somewhat disillusioned by what I was hearing even though my teachers were among the best. I felt that I was just hearing the same old church language being recirculated in evermore elaborate forms. It seemed like everything was “Christianese” and we all should know what the words already meant. It seemed that everyone was preaching to the choir…and I was still in the parking lot waiting to come inside.

So, like any good graduate student, I read. I read a lot. But nothing spoke to me. I was looking for something, but found only what I already had. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that maybe my expectations were too narrow. I had almost given up my seeking because I didn’t know what I was truly looking for: something unexpected, something that didn’t fully conform to the categories and ideas I had inherited. I learned that there were many more different and modern and beautiful understandings of Jesus than I could have anticipated. I became convinced that some of the traditional ideas I grew up with and held on to for so long were preventing me from any real progress. They never really made sense to me, and I didn’t have to try and force them to anymore. I discovered Jesus for myself, a Jesus that would permit me to call myself a Christian, only when I was able to see that it wasn’t quite the Jesus I had been looking for.

What I found was more compassionate, more accepting and less about rules and doctrines and the threat of punishment. I had been looking for better answers to the questions I already had, not for the questions I had so far left unasked. I did not know what I was looking for and I didn’t know that until I found him. I also learned that there is no end to this questioning and re-questioning of ourselves and our theological inheritance. As I am sure many of you have found in your own spiritual journeys or simply learning about any topic over a long period of time in work or school that the more you learn, the more acutely you become aware of how much more there is to learn…and sometimes also how much there is that we do not or cannot know. God is the great unknown of human life, the mystery in which we live and move and have our being. May you find what you are truly looking for. Amen.