January 18, 2026
If you are getting to know someone, to be a better conversationalist, it is better to ask open-ended questions so that the other person says more, not less. Are you a California native? No.Where are you from? Indiana, they say. Fine, but it is one-word answers. But then you ask: and what was it like to grow up in Indiana?
Jesus asks a really good question in today’s gospel: “What are you looking for?” It’s the existential question of the ages.
John the Baptist tries to get the attention of his own disciples by pointing to Jesus and saying, “Hey, look, this is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” And it works. They start following Jesus. But then Jesus asks them the really good question, “What are you looking for?”
Reminds me of shopping with a salesperson asking:
“What are you looking for? Can I help you find something?”
Today’s gospel is about seekers — not so different from advertising. In fact, both spirituality and shopping are getting at the question, “what are you looking for?”
Digital marketing gives advertisements that suggest buy this product, and you will have a full life, which sounds like the purpose of spirituality, faith, and religion. Breaking through the noise of everyday life to persuade and motivate!
The thing is, in church, in our spiritual lives, we are trying to go deeper than skin cream or the newest phone. What are you really looking for? What will give your life meaning and purpose? Why are you on this earth?
The refrain of a song by the country group “Alabama” comes to mind: “I’m in a hurry to get things done / Oh, I rush and rush until life’s no fun / All I really gotta do is live and die / But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.”:
Maybe people aren’t looking for a church. But most are hungering for something deeper in our lives. Meaning. Purpose. Community. Love. Justice. A call.
I was asked this week what the phrase “God’s will” means and how to know what God’s will. What is God seeking?? The best answer to God’s will from Christian teaching is that God desires truth, and similarly, the health, reconciliation, wholeness and salvation of all. The verse from 1 Timothy 2:4 reads: “God desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.”
When the disciples ask Jesus where he is staying, he simply says, “Come and see.” It’s an invitation. It means leaving behind our comfortable ways of looking at the world, at other people, at religion, at faith, to experience life from the perspective beyond ourselves.
God is revealed in the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned. It is Jesus who points: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.”
The path to a rich, full life, a spirituality that takes the brokenness of the world. And that’s where the lamb comes in. Look, here is the lamb of God, exclaims John. But what does the “lamb of God” mean to you?
In Jesus’ day, the Passover lamb was a connection to the exodus movement and liberation from enslavement. Jesus is an exodus, not from captivity in Egypt, but from everything and from all forms of oppression that keep us from being who God created us to be. This is the kind of freedom talked about by both Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr.
As we see crucified people of our world today, we get a glimpse of what and who God cares about. Jesus takes away the sin of the world by revealing the sin of the world—by casting a spotlight on the sins of hatred, racism, unjust arrests, human hatred and division. We must tell the truth about the world. The cross tells the truth we must hear of human pain, injustice and suffering. To “come and see,” Jesus shows the disciples the way of the cross, of a depth of human suffering and resilient resurrection.
On this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, we call to mind how racism is a spiritual scourge upon us and King’s movement and leadership of the civil rights movement.
A favorite quote of King’s calls to mind a call for all of us. King wrote: “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
From our first readings, the prophet Isaiah’s clarity of call did not immediately result in contentment with his vocation. He deemed this work irrelevant and ordinary until asked if the task of God is too small a responsibility (49:6). The suffering servant in the text is both the individual and the community. To follow God’s call means that our potential is not economic classism, academic elitism, or personal fitness, but rather the patience of sharing with others whose insecure steps need guiding to the rock; it is how our liberation is bound together with the liberation of our neighbor.
We can make a list of reasons we wouldn’t invite someone to church, to a new perspective, into the depths of our community struggles, towards truth and forgiveness and our vulnerable selves. And yet today’s gospel is a challenge to invite others to a deeper life.
There is another really good question in today’s gospel. “Where are you staying?” they ask Jesus. The question reminds me of African Americans on the south side of Chicago, when asked where they lived, would answer, “I stay at…” This implied their residence in the place was very temporary. The language right out of John’s gospel means, “Where do you abide? Where do you dwell, Jesus? That’s where we want to be.”
“Come and see” is Jesus’ answer to that really good question. Abide in me. Abide in my abundant life, he says to us.
The Sabbath, worship, and prayer are a time tune down the distractions and commercials towards the truth of who we are as God’s beloved children and, in community, to listen for the Spirit call us towards health and salvation.
What are you looking for? Maybe what we are really looking for is more than a size twelve, a green iPhone case. Not just the best restaurant with the best Yelp review. What are you really looking for? What is most essential for you to grow, thrive, and serve?
Come and see! Every Sunday, come, hear the good news, look at the cross, hear the needs of the world, and see Jesus. Remember your baptism. Come, eat, and drink. Be refreshed, heal in living gratitude and praise in all circumstances, and then following Jesus and Moses, Luther and MLK, and go to share in God’s liberation project for our world!