RCL
Epiphany 2A
19 January
2014
Saint
Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
Focus text: John 1.29-42
What are we looking for?
When I was growing up, my mother was
a member of the Transatlantic Brides and Parents Association, an organization
of British women and their parents dedicated to maintaining links between the
‘new world’ of North America and the ‘old world’ of Britain and Ireland. Among the benefits of the TBPA were charter
flights and other travel concessions that united families separated by the
Atlantic Ocean. But another of the
benefits was a network of contacts, especially for the children of
‘trans-Atlantic’ brides.
So in the summer of 1972 I became
the beneficiary of this network. Earlier
in 1972, J. C. Penney, then one of the United States premier department store
chains, opened a flagship store in the first shopping mall ever built in
Colorado Springs, the town where I grew up.
The personnel manager was a member of the TBPA and a friend of my mother’s. When my mother mentioned that I would be
looking for a summer job after my first year in university, this friend told
her to send me to Penney’s and she would find me a job. She was true to her word and I worked at
Penney’s during the summers of 1972, 1973 and 1974. After graduation in 1975 I worked at Penney’s
for a full year when I could not find a job teaching.
Working in retail is not an easy
job. Customers may treat you as a person
or as an extension of the cash register.
Employees fall into the same trap and we have all had negative
experiences of a retail sales person treating us indifferently. J. C. Penney, in those days, called its staff
‘associates’, one of the first retail sales corporations to use this
designation. We had regular training and
were taught the importance of trying to find out what the customer was looking
for. This training meant that it was
often possible for an associate working in one department to direct a customer
quickly to another department and to another associate to obtain the service or
product the customer wanted.
Our guiding questions were ones that
we are all familiar with: “How may I
help you?” or “Have you found what you were looking for?” But the key question was always, “What are you
looking for?” Sometimes customers could
not tell us and there followed a question-and-answer game of short or longer
duration as we tried to ferret out the customer’s need or desire.
So you can imagine how my ears
perked up when I first read today’s gospel:
“When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are
you looking for?’” (John 1.38) In one
short sentence Jesus sums up the entire religious enterprise that has fuelled
human questing from the earliest conscious days of our existence: What are we looking for?
Destination
From a Christian perspective the
short answer to the question, ‘What are we looking for?’ is ‘the kingdom of
God’ or ‘God’s reign of justice and peace’ or, to use a Hebrew term, ‘shalom’,
a word that means ‘wholeness, fulfillment, peace’. Some Christians see this destination as
coming in some distant and mysterious future, coming as the direct result of
God’s final intervention in the affairs of creation. But other Christians, the evangelist John
among them, understand the kingdom of God to be both a future promise and a
present possibility. Some Christians
might even go so far as to say that we are ‘co-workers’ with God in making this
promised shalom come into being.
Even though all Christians agree on
the destination, we have to be honest:
Finding our way to this ‘kingdom of God’, this shalom, is not always an
easy task. We need a map.
Map
Let me suggest to you that Jesus of
Nazareth, in his life, death and resurrection, provides us with a living map to
the ‘kingdom of God’ both in its future promise and present possibility. Our map is not a static document but a living
person in whom we see the way to the kingdom.
I still find it a source of reflection that the earliest name for the
Jews and Gentiles who believed in Jesus as Messiah was not ‘Christians’ but
‘Followers of the Way’.
One of the great teachers of the
early Christian movement was Irenaeus, bishop of the southern French city of
Lyons, then a Roman colony. He
summarized his teaching by saying that ‘the glory of God is a human being fully
alive’ and that Jesus of Nazareth is the model, the living example of a human
being fully alive.
If you want to arrive at the
kingdom, then follow Jesus. Some of the
most notable followers of this map, this way, included non-Christians such as
Mahatma Gandhi who was a keen student of the gospels. They recognized that the only way to live an
authentic human life in the here and now was to follow the Way shown to us in
Jesus. But even the most faithful
traveller may find it necessary to have a guide to point out the best route to
the destination.
Guide
For some years now I have been the
Coordinator of Diaconal Formation for the Diocese of New Westminster. This has meant travelling with Archdeacon
John Struthers, the Director of Deacons, to visit congregations who are
considering having a deacon. A few years
ago John purchased a GPS device to guide us on our trips. A quiet voice would say, ‘After one kilometre
turn right.’ or ‘At the next light turn left.’
Well, I can tell you that it was a rare trip that did not include an
argument between John, the GPS and me. I
remember vividly one trip when John, a life-long Vancouver resident, the GPS, a
digital device with no driving experience, and me, at that time a regular
visitor to many parishes, had a shouting match in a Tim Horton’s parking
lot. We knew where we were going; we had
a map, but we needed a dependable guide.
Just as John, the GPS and I all
sought to guide the journey, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in disagreement,
so too do we Christians have three guides:
the Scriptures, the tradition, the contemporary experience of the
Christian communities throughout the world.
We all know where we are going:
the kingdom of God. We all have a
common map: Jesus of Nazareth. But we are faced with the continuing
challenge of discerning how the Scriptures, the tradition and contemporary
Christian experience help us find the best route to our destination given
several alternatives.
It is the search for the best route
to the kingdom that leads us to read the Scriptures, both in worship and in
study, in the company of others, whether those in the pews next to us or those
who speak to us through the printed word.
It is the search for the best route to God’s reign of justice and peace
that leads us to know our traditions and how they have shaped us and, from time
to time, misshaped us. It is the search
for the best route to God’s shalom that we meet to pray and study with other
Christians, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in disharmony, to learn their
insights on how best to follow the Way.
On the Way
When I first began travelling as
priest and professor with national and international obligations as well as
local ones, I tolerated travel. I was
always more interested in the destination and did not pay attention to the
journey itself. Over the years this has
changed significantly; I now enjoy travelling, for the most part, and I am very
happy to arrive at an airport early to watch all the comings and goings. Don’t get me wrong; I look forward to
arriving at my destination, but there is so much to learn from observing other
travellers, from passing through new way-stations.
In our baptism God set us upon a
journey towards wholeness, a pilgrimage to a promised future where all of God’s
creatures shall be free to be the creature God intends them to be and to be in
right relationship with each other. But
in the meantime we should not lose sight of the possibilities of experiencing
that future in the present. When we
follow the Way of Jesus in the company of the Scriptures, the tradition and
other Christians, even other persons of faith, then we will be prepared to
pause from time to time to rejoice when the promise becomes reality: when justice is done to those who have long
been denied justice; when the hungry are fed and the naked clothed; when
enemies make peace; when ancient disputes are settled and reconciliation
occurs. In those moments we have ‘arrived’,
if even briefly. It is those moments
that give us the strength to ‘keep calm and carry on’.
My friends, we know where we are
going. We have a Map and several
Guides. May our journey be filled with
joy and may we have the grace to experience the promised future in the
present. Amen.
