"What are you looking for?" Jesus asks. I don't know if this question would be as interesting in everyone's surroundings as it certainly is in mine. Actually, it is the one who ASKS the question that is so interesting, rather than the question itself. In your house, who is it who finds things? Who is it who asks, "What are you looking for?" In my house, it is the mom who asks. It is the mom who knows where things are. Now, this gets trickier when the mom lives in another house, much less another state, five days out of the week . . . But I have found that nothing much moves while I am gone, at least nothing moves out of sight. So, when I came back after having been in Seattle for two weeks and our son was rummaging through drawers and I asked, "What are you looking for?" and he answered, "the nail clippers", I remembered having seen them beside the stove - not at all where they belong - and sent him there. He came back with nail clippers and he laughed and said, "How do you do that?!"

And then there is the ketchup bottle. When I come home, I clean house, including the kitchen, which includes putting the ketchup away; while I am gone, it lives on the countertop. Then, I leave town again. There is no one to ask, "What are you looking for?" By the time I come back, the ketchup is again on the countertop. When I put it away, I find that we now have two, open, huge ketchup bottles. Well, they couldn't FIND the ketchup, assumed that we were out, and bought more!

So, you see, the first problem that I have with this passage is imagining that Jesus would even ask this question. "What are you looking for?" But when I put my biases away, I see this picture of Jesus with kind of a twinkle in his eye and a slight smile on his face as he sees some of those who are following him, probably at a bit of a distance. Think, after all, of the things that have happened in a very short while: even if we just use the account in John and ignore what you heard last week from Matthew, hear what John the Baptist tells those who are following him. "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" he says. "This is the one I told you about, the one I didn't know but the one for whom I baptized, that he might be revealed," he says. This is the one on whom John says he saw the Spirit of God light like a dove. This is the one about whom John says, "this is the Son of God." So some had begun to follow Jesus, and Jesus does a very Jesus thing: he turns around and speaks to them. He doesn't wait until they have enough nerve to approach him; he turns around, perhaps a bit amused at their reticence and asks the big question: "What are you looking for?" Their response was a bit odd, I think; they asked where he was staying. Well, what WOULD one ask Jesus just right off the bat? Jesus wanted to encourage conversation, so he invited them to come along with him. They spent the day, we are told; they finished about 4:00 o'clock, we are told. With so much detail, William Barclay suggests that John who wrote the gospel may well have been one of the two. Jesus probably showed them around, let the woman of the house know that there would be a few extras for lunch, and then settled in for a chat.

How long do you suppose it was before Jesus put the question again: "What are you looking for?" My guess is: not so long. They all probably had a little something to eat, got to know each other better as they ate, and then: "What are you looking for?" It could have been that those who followed Jesus were of the scribes or Pharisees. Perhaps all they were looking for was a chance to trip up the Lamb of God. Or, maybe they were Sadducees or those like them: ambitious for themselves, and anxious to align themselves with a new power base. Were they Zealots, who just wanted to find a political leader who would be willing to overthrow the ones in power in Rome? Or were they like many who went to the temple on any given day, hoping that the Jews were indeed the chosen people of God, and continuing their wait for the promised Messiah? What kind of commitment to his task might Jesus expect from these first few who had followed him from town?

Jesus, of course, would not have cared about their reason for following him. He would simply have wanted to share his story with them. As his Father's Son and Servant, he would have wanted to get to work. What about with each one of us, though? It has been a long time since those first followers of Jesus, since the first baptisms Jesus performed. What about our own baptisms? What about our own commitment to Jesus' work?

Think about those days when we might be quite like the scribes and the Pharisees. Oh, I don't think we are like them all of the time, but now and again we may just vaguely bear some resemblance to those folks. As Barclay says in his commentary, the scribes and the Pharisees were legalists, who looked at tiny details in the law to see what might have been disobeyed, rather than looking at the big picture and envisioning a changed world. Do you ever do that? Do I? Well, I know that at least I do! For instance: the Presbytery of Seattle met last week, and I had the opportunity to attend part of that meeting. As I sat in the pew of the church where the meeting was being held, I noticed that they had quite an elaborate folder in the pew rack that told about the programs of the church. I was pretty sure that some of the programs of this particular church were not going to be what I would have most fun participating in, so I was prepared just to read the information and take it back to my home church as a sample if it had a new twist to something. But then I came to a poorly written sentence. And then, there was a comma where one clearly was not needed. Aaack! I had not intended for the editor in me to take over, but it did, and I really lost my focus on their brochure. If it had been a church that I had been thinking of attending, the poor editing job would have got in the way, for me, of my ability to worship: sounds like the scribes and the Pharisees to me. "What are you looking for?" Jesus might well have asked.

Or, how about our lives as Sadducees? Ever had one of those moments, when the most important thing came to be your place at the table . . . or maybe your place in line! How about those times at the grocery store when you have to wait and wait because it is the busy time of day, and they call a new checker, and everyone looks around to see which check stand will be opening. The new checker comes and takes for his or her first customer . . . the person right behind you! Or one of the managers comes over to you and says, "there is no waiting at check stand 6", and you move to check stand 6, and by the time you get there, there are more in that line than in the one you left! Ooh. But: "What are you looking for?" Jesus might well ask.

Might we be Zealots on occasion? Is it even possible that we might like to have God send us someone who could really take care of our political troubles? This has come to be a much touchier question in the past few months. Clearly, those who acted on their religious beliefs in such a way that people died and buildings fell down thought they were acting for God to take care of political troubles. Generally, our beliefs don't call for the same kind of action. We might like to think that we would respond more along the lines of the fifth chapter of Matthew, where Jesus' instruction to the people is to "love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you". For me, that has not always been an easy thing to do. Well, again, Jesus might ask, "What are you looking for?"

I have hope that on most days, most of us would categorize ourselves with those who go to the temple regularly, and know that they are God's chosen ones, those who are -- in the words of Alan Jones -- the apples of God's divine eye. Those with whom - as Alan Jones also says -- God has fallen in love, and deeply cares that we come home. Those who, having heard the words of John the Baptist, would remember the words of the prophet Isaiah that were a part of our reading for today, the words of God to the servant: "It is too light a thing," God says, "that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth."

Jesus was to be a light to all of the nations, that our God who wants to be in relationship with us would have a model for us to observe. "Come and see," Jesus said to those who wanted to know where he was staying. Think of the number of times that Jesus used that phrase, or one similar, in his ministry, just in trying to get the people to pay attention, to WAKE UP! In times such as we know right now, perhaps it is difficult to discern what it is that we are looking for. But if our baptisms can call us to respond when Jesus says, "come and see!" we will make progress for the kingdom.

And we must.

Amen.