What Are You Looking For?

What are you looking for? It’s a question I didn’t know I was even asking when I first stumbled across its answer as a teenager. It came about when I found myself at a Christian camp in Canada. A worship space where it was not uncommon to see kids my age fall to their knees with tears trickling down their cheeks. And, although the theology was questionable, it was a church that understood the power of God’s presence – not as cerebral exercise but a bodily longing waiting to be embraced. For this is what kept me coming back to this camp and similar churches since. It wasn’t because of a sense of guilt, it wasn’t prompted by an intellectual curiosity, nor even my care for social justice, but the desire to come out of hiding, to be fully in God’s presence so that I might be fully seen myself. It makes me wonder if Moses felt a similar kind of longing quell when he met God on Mount Sinai – where God’s gaze upon him was so intense that he had to turn his back to it. Or the quiet permanence that Elijah felt on the same mountain years later when he was running for his life, in the midst of depression – a silent permanence that met Elijah exactly where he was at in his fear and in his hiding. Or maybe in the ecstasy that Mary felt, as she sang her Magnificat of justice and peace as her Son not only abided in her womb but would soon abide with the whole world. Because for me, it was only when the scales fell from my eyes and I beheld the closeness of God that I caught a glimpse of what the point of this whole religion was about. It wasn’t about rules, it wasn’t about being a good person – rather, it was about being seen, not for who I thought I was, not for who I thought I needed to be, but for who I really was. And this kind of ‘being seen’ didn’t just comfort me, it freed me into who I was becoming, and, long story short, it’s why I find myself here in this weird occupation in a country on the other side of the world today. In other words, be careful what you look for. And it’s a question at the heart of our scripture today. A way of seeing that has nothing to do with our actual eyes or our rational minds, but a way of seeing that, rather, opens the eyes of our hearts. We’ve had a few stories of John during Advent, with last week’s text showing him baptizing Jesus and the hordes of people in the wilderness. But in the Gospel of John, we don’t have a baptism of water to signal this season of Epiphany – a season that explores the ramifications of God made flesh. Instead, we are given a baptism of words. Prior to our scripture John introduces himself as the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. He identifies himself not as John the Baptist but rather as a cry. And then, the next day, as John sees Jesus walking towards him, he becomes the cry he says he is: a litany of revelations, it seems, John can barely hold within himself, cries which pour out faster than his eyes can grasp. And it’s in these pronouncements where, the next day, his disciples hear his revelation, turn their heads, leave rank and follow Jesus. A kind of following that prompts Jesus to ask them, ‘what are you looking for?’ And they respond by asking, ‘where are you staying?’ But the word the Gospel-writer uses here is not simply ‘staying’, the Greek word meno means to abide. A question not of Jesus’ actual living quarters, but a question that captures their deepest longing to abide with him. At which point Jesus invites them to come and see. And they end up spending the day with him. We don’t know what this day entails but at the end of it, Simon is given a new name: Cephas or Peter, meaning ‘rock’, foreshadowing how Peter will become the rock on which Christ will build his church. And this is not because Peter will be an exemplary disciple – indeed, he’s quite the opposite as we’ll find out – but rather because, despite his failings, despite his unbelief, and despite how he will deny Christ not once but three times, what Peter does manage to keep doing is abiding in Christ. What are you looking for? And this question lingers with us still. It is what philosophers have wrestled with for centuries and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the question that prompted the start of every religion. A recognition that there is something we are longing for, something we keep looking for. But I wonder if this question has been quietly subdued in our Western and Modern world, where our eyes are continuously manipulated in every which direction, where the average Australian sees at least 650 ads a day, in an economic system that sets our sights on having just a little bit more, and where algorithms show us exactly what we want to see. In other words, we are shown what to look for before the question can formulate in our own minds, and the danger of this cannot be understated. We grew up hearing, you are what you eat, but perhaps the truer and more pressing proverb for our age is this: you are what you see. Because what we give our eyes to slowly begins to tell us who we are and who we are meant to be in this world. And so this might be the first time, or the first time in a long time, that we have the opportunity to sit with the question ourselves: what are you looking for? A question not solved with quick answers, but a question meant to make our bodies linger long enough for the scales to fall from our eyes and to see the answer staring right back at us. And my hunch is that it’s a question the disciples sat with too, because I wonder if the day that the disciples spent with Jesus was silent in the text because it was silent, if they simply sat in Jesus’ presence without Jesus explaining why John gives him a hundred names and without any kind of distraction or disguise. What if they just simply abided in his presence like they were asking for? And what if they were there long enough to see how God chooses to be seen by them – not as an idea, not as a distant entity, not as perfection or purity, but as love made flesh. A kind of seeing that changes something in them, not by distance but by closeness, not by abstraction but by relationship, not by looking away from their humanity, but by experiencing the God who chooses to enter fully into it. A kind of change that mirrors back to them their own flesh as held and beheld. A kind of beholding that didn’t warrant any kind of declaration of forgiveness, no pronouncement of belief, no Master’s degree, no ordination or priesthood, a kind of beholding that might just get at the heart of what the disciples were truly looking for. It reminds me of a story the late Celtic Christian John O’Donohue tells in his book, Anam Cara, about a journalist he once knew. The journalist had travelled a long way to meet an old Indian chief, determined to get an interview, determined to ask the right questions and come back with the right words. The chief agreed to meet him, but only on the condition that they spend some time together first. The journalist assumed this meant a polite conversation, maybe some tea, a gentle warm-up before the real work began. Instead, the chief took him aside and simply looked at him, in silence. At first, this terrified the journalist. He felt exposed, unsure where to put his eyes, unsure what was being asked of him, embarrassed, afraid and vulnerable, as though he was in a hostage situation with nowhere to hide. But then, as the minutes passed, the journalist began to soften his own gaze. He stopped trying to perform, stopped trying to impress, stopped struggling against himself, and the two of them simply remained there, looking at one another, in silence, for over two hours. After that time, the journalist said it felt as though they had known each other all their lives, and he left no longer needing the interview because he had learned everything there was to know about the chief and consequently felt as though he was truly known himself – not through questions, not through answers, but through presence. And I wonder if it was this kind of seeing Jesus and the disciples engage in together, a kind of seeing that not only reveals who God is as they add to John’s litanies of revelations by also naming him Rabbi and Messiah, but a kind of seeing that reveals who they are. A revelation that gave John his unusual name and a revelation that prompts Jesus to give Simon a new name, freeing him to carry that same love back into the world, to become the rock on which Christ will build his church, not because he’s become a different person but because he can now see the person who he has always been. A kind of seeing we are invited into as well, a kind of seeing that sometimes occurs at Christian camps, holy mountains and miracles in wombs, but a kind of seeing that is meant to guide us even, if not especially, in the ordinary of our lives. Because we need more of this in our world, not just in the exceptional but in our everyday-ness, a world where we are continually being shown images of division, dissonance, dehumanization and destruction, images that slowly but steadily strip away the sense that this earth is anything but held and beheld. Because when we allow our gaze to linger in these places too long, something more important begins to fade from our sight: the capacity to seek what we are truly looking for. And though this kind of gazing doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to the horrors of our world, it does mean we see the world through a different lens. For this is the power of this season of Epiphany. It’s not only that we’re invited to see God made flesh in our time and our space, but that in our looking for this Rabbi, this Messiah, this Lamb of God, this Chosen one, that maybe for the first time we might be known ourselves. So be careful what you look for, because it might just show you who you are and who you are meant to be in this world.