"WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?"

Homily for Jan. 14th, 2018: Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. John 1:35-42.

AIM:  To challenge the hearers to deeper conversion.

                                   

          “What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the two disciples of John in the gospel reading we have just heard. This question is Jesus’ first recorded utterance in John’s gospel. Andrew and his friend are not really certain what they are looking for. They may have followed Jesus out of mere curiosity. Asked who they are looking for, they answer with a question of their own: “Where do you stay?”  Jesus’ response is hardly less challenging than his original question: “Come and see.”

          Though Andrew and his friend do not realize it, in accepting Jesus’ invitation they pass from curiosity to discipleship. “Disciple” means a follower or a learner. The gospel writer tells us that the two “stayed with [Jesus] that day.” The added information, that it was “about four in the afternoon,” is significant. In Jewish time reckoning the day begins not at midnight or at dawn, but in the late afternoon. The Church reckons time in the same way – one of the many ways in which we remain linked to Jesus’ people, the Jews, our elder brothers in faith.  That is why we can have the first Sunday Mass late Saturday afternoon. For the Church that is when Sunday begins.

          Many scripture scholars believe that when John tells us, “It was about four in the afternoon,” he is telling us it was a Friday. Four o’clock on Friday afternoon was the beginning of the Sabbath, when all unnecessary work and travel were forbidden. This would mean that, when they accepted Jesus’ invitation to “come and see” where he stayed, Andrew and his friend would have had to stay with Jesus overnight, and all the next day as well, since that was the Sabbath.

          What they said on that Sabbath, and what they did, we do not know. It is clear, however, that those twenty-four hours in Jesus’ company changed the lives of Andrew and his friend. For as soon as the Sabbath restrictions are past, Andrew hurries to find his brother Simon and give him momentous, almost unbelievable news: “We have found the Messiah!”

          To encounter the Messiah, the anointed servant of the Lord, foretold by all the prophets, was the hope of every devout Jew. Few really expected the fulfillment of this hope, however. That seemed about as likely as our chances of winning the lottery.

          We have already noted that in accepting Jesus’ invitation to “come and see,”  Andrew and his friend passed from curiosity to discipleship. In carrying the unbelievable news of his new Master’s true identity to his brother Simon, Andrew moves from disciple to apostle. For “apostle” means “one who is sent”: a messenger, even an ambassador.

          It is not difficult to imagine the excitement with which Andrew imparted his momentous message to his brother Simon. I have compared it with the excitement one of us would feel at winning the lottery. Jesus would use a similar comparison.  The kingdom of heaven, he said once, was like a man finding buried treasure in a field; or like a merchant discovering a pearl so perfect that he was glad to sell all he had to possess it.  (See Mt. 13:44-46.)

          Into this deceptively simple incident the gospel writer has compressed a process which, for most people, takes far longer than the twenty-four hours recorded here. It is the process of moving from curiosity about Jesus Christ to discipleship; to becoming his apostle, or messenger, to others.

          The process began, for Andrew and his friend, with Jesus’ challenging question, “What are you looking for?” Jesus is asking each of us this question, right now. What are you looking for? Why have you come here today? Is it simply to fulfill a legal obligation? to get your card punched? What are you looking for in your life? Is it “the good life” advertised in glorious technicolor on our TV screens and in the magazines? Have you found the pursuit of that life satisfying, and fulfilling? Or is it your experience that the good life, as defined by our contemporary hucksters, is not really all that good? Is there still an emptiness inside you that you cannot fill, and longings that remain unsatisfied, try as you may?

          So what are you looking for? You may not know it, but at bottom you are looking for love. You want a love that will not let you go, that will not let you down. You yearn for a love that will not cheat or deceive or frustrate you; a love that will fulfill the deepest longings of your heart, your mind, your soul. That is what you are looking for. That is what I am looking for – and what every one of us is looking for.

          Perhaps you have grown weary with looking and think the search is hopeless. You are wrong. There is someone who can satisfy your deepest longings.   His name is Jesus Christ. Now, in this hour, he is challenging you with the same question he put to Andrew and his friend: “What are you looking for?” He is inviting you to come and stay with him. Accepting that invitation is the first step in becoming Jesus’ disciple – his follower and his friend.   

          That is wonderful – and beautiful. But it is only the beginning. Jesus Christ wants you to become his friend, his disciple, his follower, so that he can make you his apostle: his messenger to carry the all-consuming love which he offers you here to those to whom he sends you: his sisters and brothers – yes, and yours too.