Homily
John was in Bethany, across the Jordan with two of his disciples. As he watched Jesus walk by, he said, "Look, there is the lamb of God." The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. When Jesus turned around and noticed them following him, he asked them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi"--which means teacher--"Where do you stay?" "Come and see," he answered. So they went to see where he was lodged and stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon. One of the two who had followed him after hearing John was Simon Peter's brother Andrew. The first thing he did was to seek out his brother Simon, "We have found the Messiah" (which means the anointed). He brought him to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon, Son of John. Your name shall be Cephas (which is rendered "Peter").(John 1:35-42)Whenever I am in Seattle there is a particular art gallery where I go to view whatever they have on display. Several years ago I went and there was an exhibit of recent paintings of Shimamora, a Japanese-American, and his paintings were in the style of the medieval or Renaissance Japanese block prints: kind of a flat surface, as though you had carved into a piece of wood, and then used various dyes to put it on paper. If you've seen it, maybe you don't realize that they are Japanese block prints. And as I was looking around the various paintings, I would say about twenty of them, I noticed there was a great luxuriousness. The vegetation was over-rich, overabundant, over-thick. The colors were absolutely vibrant, sort of psychedelic colors. They just came out to you. I kept looking and looking, and finally I turned to the art dealer and I said, "John, there's something menacing in these paintings. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I have the impression that all of a sudden we should see a snake coming out from underneath or behind that rich foliage. There's something about these that kind of disturbs me. And I don't know why it disturbs me." And the more I kept looking, the more I kept seeing these horizontal lines going across each painting. Beginning at a certain height, and working down to the bottom of the painting. And as I looked more closely still, I noticed that the lines were actually wire, they were barbed wire. And I thought, "John, has Simamura ever been in the concentration camps that we had in this country for the American Japanese?" And John said, "I don't think so. He's not old enough." And I kept looking, and kept looking, and all of a sudden I said, "Do you have anything about this artist?" And eventually he handed me a little blurb that the artist had written, and what the paintings were, they put into graphic form the experiences or little vignettes that appeared in his grandmother's diary, the diary composed when she was in one of those camps in the '40s. Some of you might be too young to remember that. Some of you probably didn't live on the West Coast. But I had lived among the Japanese Americans, and I remembered very vividly.
You wonder, why do I bring that up? Because it's what we call a motif, or a theme that can run through a piece of work, a piece of art, a piece of literature. It's a theme or motif that constantly recurs, again and again, like the refrain of a song, it just keeps coming back. We have such a theme, such a motif in the Gospel of John. The motif or the main theme of the Gospel of John is the theme of witness. Witnesses are always coming to attest to something; depositions are always being taken; evidence is always being sifted, either accepted or rejected, until finally there comes the great witness, or the great trial in the Gospel, the trial of Jesus himself. And always the witnesses, the depositions, are given about Jesus. Who is he? Where does he come from? What does he do? Who does he claim to be? Who has sent him? Where has he gotten the authority he has? Why does he do the things that he does? And behind all of this witnessing to people about Jesus, there is of course a greater theme, Jesus himself is a witness. He is a witness to what he has heard, to what he has seen from the Father. And he comes, as he says, "The works that I do are not my works. The words that I speak are not my words. They are the words and the works of the Father in Heaven."
So there's constantly this back-and-forth play; it's a kind of cycle, and it runs in cycles in the Gospel. And of course we have it here in this morning's Gospel. John attesting, witnessing to Jesus. John pointing out, even to some of his own disciples, "There is the lamb of God." And they leave. But there's something unique about this attestation to Jesus in this morning's Gospel. We come for the first time in John's gospel to the first words of Jesus. He notices that someone is following him. If you ever have a poor person who doesn't quite know how to follow someone, you can always tell that someone is following you, and Jesus turns around and his first words are, "What are you looking for?" Amazing words, an amazing question. "What are you looking for?" It's a question not just addressed to the two disciples of John that are following Jesus, shadowing Jesus, trailing him. It's really a question addressed to you and to me. What are you looking for?
Another way to answer the question is, "Why do you come to God? What do you expect to find from God? What are you looking for in God? What's the motive for which you come to God? What's the motive for which you pray? What's the motive for which you acknowledge God? I suppose some of us only come to God when times get difficult. We certainly have enough evidence of that in Scripture, that when the going got rough, the Hebrews seemed to remember that there is such a thing as God, there is such a power, there is such a person. Perhaps some of us only come to God or acknowledge God when we want something--health, position, security, husband, children--whatever it is, then we remember God. Then we turn to God. Some of us I suppose turn to God only when we come to realize that we have offended God, that we have sinned, or that we have not lived the life that we should be living. Perhaps it's not a real contrition, a real penitence, perhaps it's because we are ashamed. Perhaps it's like the prodigal son: he's hungry, he goes back to his father's house because he knows that there the servants eat even better than he himself is eating. He feels sorry for himself. It isn't that he's seeking the father for the father's sake. He's seeking the father for his own sake. The security of food. OR perhaps it is that we are seeking God because we have become to realize our condition in life, that we are creatures, that we are created things, that there is a power above, beyond, greater than ours, greater than we, and we simply must acknowledge that power, that we cannot live without that power.
Or perhaps we come to realize that we seek God, we desire God, because only he gives meaning to life, only he gives purpose to life. Only he can give a direction in life. But you see the question, as I say, is asked of you and it's asked of me: What are you looking for? What do you seek? It's a question that we could ask each day: why do I pray, why am I here this morning at mass? Simply to fulfill an obligation, to make an impression on the people around me, that in somewhat difficult weather I came to church--where are the others? What do you seek, what are you looking for?
It is amazing, too, the answer that the two disciples give to Jesus. And what always amazes me is that it's not an answer; it's another question: Where do you abide? Where do you live? Where do you have your being? Where do you repose? Where's your house. They come in the process of the whole Gospel to find where Jesus truly abides. In Chapter 14 Jesus tells them in the Last Supper, in those beautiful last Supper discourses, "If I do not return to the Father, then the Father and I cannot come back, we cannot abide within you. The abode of God is ourselves. The abode of God is our bodies, our souls, our being. The great St. Theresa, St. Theresa of Avila, said in her autobiography that for fourteen years she was always looking for Jesus in this place or that place, in this action or that action, in this person or that person. And she said there was always a kind of restlessness about her in looking for Jesus; she didn't know where to find him. And one day in choir she was kneeling there, asking, "Where are you? Where are you?" And suddenly she heard a very quiet voice within her which said, "Theresa, don't look any place except in your heart, because that's where I am." So where do you abide, Lord? To come to realize that God abides within us, among us, to come to realize as St. Paul realized that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and therefore we are the Temple of the Trinity. Because you can't have one person of the Trinity without the other persons of the Trinity. You cannot separate the Spirit from the Father and the Son. And so we carry around with us the Spirit within us, we carry around the Trinity within us, as long as we are without sin, as long as we recognize what it is that we are seeking. What are you looking for?
That's why St. Paul also says in our second reading, "Know you not that your bodies are members of Christ?" That is why we cannot give ourselves up to immorality. To have God abide in us, we cannot have sin. If we have sin, we cannot have God. They are what philosophy calls two mutually excluding entities. You cannot have darkness if you have light, and you cannot have light if you have darkness. And if Jesus who is the light abides in our hearts, then we cannot have the darkness of sin in our hearts. It's also interesting to see what Jesus' answer is to their question, "Where do you abide?" "Come and see. Follow me." ("Follow me" is, I believe, a better translation of the Greek.) Both mean, "Believe in me. Have confidence in me. Trust in me." Both mean to walk in the same way that Jesus himself is walking. And where is Jesus walking. We learn that also in the Last Supper discourses. Jesus is walking to the Father. And so he would have us walk along with him to the Father. That's the end, that's the purpose of life, and that's what Jesus tells us is the purpose. Not so much by instructing us but by showing us. And again that question: What is it that you are looking for? If each of us asked himself or herself I think eventually we would say that we are really looking for the Father, and again we have to take the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are looking for that peace, that serenity, that fulcrum of our existence that only God can give.
But over all of this there is one disposition that is absolutely necessary. It's what we can call, if you don't mind the Latin phrase, the "sine qua non" of our life--the "condition without which." We all must be like Samuel. "Speak, Lord, your servant listens." That passage means a great deal to me personally from Samuel. It was the first reading of the mass at my first profession, almost 45 years ago. It was the subject of the homily by Father Beede at my first profession, September 8, 1952. To listen, to be open, to be quiet, to be responsive, to be receptive to the Word God. Jesus can never tell us where he abides, can never invite us to come and see, to follow him, unless we are receptive, unless we are quiet, unless we want to listen. It always amazes me in the Gospels the power that Jesus has. But it equally amazes me the power that either he does not have or at least will not exercise. He has power over nature, he can calm storms, he has power over sickness, he can cure people, and does cure people. He has power over Satan, he drives him out of people. But the one power that Jesus stops short of exercising, he will never coerce the human heart. He will never force himself upon us. But he does ask that we listen: "Speak, Lord, your servant listens." We cannot hear the question of Jesus, "What are you looking for?" Nor can we hear his invitation, "Come, follow me. Come and see. Have faith"--unless we are calm, unless we are open, unless we are receptive. And in that sense each one of us has to be a Samuel. Each one of us has to simply sit, be quiet, and wait upon the Lord, to wait for him to speak, to wait for him to show us the way to the Father. And the way to the Father is to look in our hearts, because that's where God abides.