A Sense of Place
Second Sunday after Epiphany – January 20, 2008
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9/Psalm 40:1-11/John 1:29-42]

Jesus said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. [John 1: 38b-39]

This is among my favorite passages of Scripture (yes, I know that I have many, it’s a professional hazard). In fact I can remember when I was in seminary doing the course on the Johannine corpus – the body of John’s writing – and we went through this. I was thrilled. So, bear with me today because I want to share with you what excites me about this text.

“What are you looking for?” It’s a question all of us have asked and been asked, isn’t it? If we’re honest, it’s a question that we go on asking ourselves pretty much all our lives; because we’re always looking. Jesus asked that question of two disciples who had heard their teacher, John the Baptist; identify Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” John points to him using the language of revelation, “behold.” While I like and appreciate the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, there are times when I wish they would have left a few things alone because “look,” doesn’t carry quite the same emphasis as “behold.”

John the Baptist points out Jesus to the disciples, and to us, as one who is not “out there,” not someone who is beyond us or away from us. Rather, Jesus is “for us.” The Baptist identifies Jesus as the “lamb of God” – the one who takes away sin – and in identifying him as such, John isn’t talking about the laundry list of misdemeanors that we use to trivialize and marginalize the reality of sin, the separation, alienation of humanity from God, made manifest in our self-centeredness and lack of loving-kindness toward others. The Baptist points out the One who can heal the deeply-felt sense of alienation and separation which all of us experience, if we’re honest and take the time, the effort to reflect deeply. The Baptist points and his witness triggers a response in his disciples; they follow after Jesus.

Jesus notices them and asks a question, “What are you looking for?”/ “What do you seek?” This is heavily symbolic language and there is more to this question than Jesus looking at these two strangers and asking “S’up?” (Pardon the use of the vernacular.) This isn’t a polite opening to a conversation. Rather, Jesus is asking a question that is on the same level as God’s question to Adam, “Where are you?” What Jesus is really doing here is defining humanity and calling out the essence of our nature. He’s saying, “So you are one of them who seeks.” There is something eternally restless about humanity. We’re always looking, always seeking, searching for meaning, for the fulfillment of life. Jesus may have been asking Andrew and his companion, possibly John (“the beloved disciple”), this question, “What are you looking for?” But in actuality, Jesus was asking that question of all of us – and he still does.

Their question in response indicates that he appears to be someone who knows, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Again, the question is symbolic language that is far deeper than “What’s your address?” The Greek word here is menein, to abide or stay, and is used repeatedly in John’s Gospel. So much so, that the late Raymond Brown – recognized as the premier Johannine scholar – talks about it as “Johannine immanence,” the presence of the Divine in the human; God comes to abide, to stay with us. So, what the Baptist’s followers ask Jesus is really, “Where is HOME?” In other words, show us the way to where we belong. Give us a sense of place. I went back and looked at my notes from seminary and found my professor, Father Demetrius’ powerful point. He said that they were asking, “Take us home. We are pilgrims ready to find shalom, to find rest in the Father.” At the core of our spiritual search, then, is this quest for belonging, for a sense of place.

I don’t think one can question that the sense of place is a, if not THE, primary motif of the Bible. Human beings are always looking for a place to call “home,” right from the moment when we’re expelled from the Garden. Then there is the call of Abraham, the search for a homeland, a land of promise. The Exodus brings God’s people from bondage to that land of promise and, eventually, they are dispersed again. And the theme goes on and on. Whether it is captivity in Babylon or the conquest of Alexander’s armies, or the Roman occupation – there is a longing for home.

This theme of search, of pilgrimage, gets picked up in Christian literature. Early on, we have the nun Egeria describing her pilgrimage to the holy sites in and around Jerusalem, which give us some of our best historical information on how the early Church worshipped. Not too many years after Egeria, we’ll have Augustine chronicle his spiritual journey in his Confessions. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tell the stories of various pilgrims on the way to the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. There are many other pieces with a pilgrimage theme, but perhaps the most famous of all, the Puritan preacher John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan’s allegory of the Christian life is right up there, along with The Imitation of Christ, and the Bible as all-time best-selling books. The Eastern Church also has a pilgrim-themed book, The Way of the Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way, written in 19th century Russia, it continues to grow in popularity.

We know that the covenant-Exodus-pilgrimage motif greatly influenced the Puritans. After all, we have Governor Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation writing, “So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years, but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” [p. 50] The new world wasn’t their “dearest country,” rather it was their sense of place as God’s people that not only set them apart, as it had Israel and the early Church, but also inspired them to venture forth to a new land. The Puritans who came in the “Great Migration” of 1630 saw themselves to be like Israel, on an “errand into the wilderness,” that would bring them a new identity and experience of God’s presence.

Jesus hears the question and gives the invitation, “Come and see.” Jesus answers them in the only way that any of us can when someone asks what it means to be a follower of Christ. Though the Church has tried to explain it, we can’t. This sense of place defies explanation, but not the sharing of experience. We can’t explain how we come to a sense of place, when we know that we’re really “at home,” but we know it. So, Jesus invites them to experience and they come and stay with him “that day,” again symbolic language indicating the “great day” of opportunity which is embraced during the whole ministry of Jesus. They came, they stayed and Jesus revealed to them the meaning of “going home,” the fullness of life, the wonder of being one again with the One in whose image and likeness we were made and they experienced their sense of place.

Jesus invites them to “come and see” at “about 4 o’clock,” the tenth hour of the day, perhaps the most restful time of the day in Palestine. The time roughly coincides with the “cool of the day’ of Genesis 3:8 and found in the experience of Jesus what that “cool of the day” means for our life as human beings – a sense of fulfillment and rest. John Shea comments on this text: “The timing of this experience coincides with the temple worship, four o’clock in the afternoon. Jesus is the new ‘lamb’ of God who replaces the need for animal sacrifices of the temple. Through interpersonal conversation and not through ritual, Jesus overcomes their alienation and unites them to the Father.” [On Earth As It Is in Heaven, p. 59] Symbol crowds on symbol, but the essence is clear: what matters is that we experience a sense of place, a realization of belonging, knowledge of deep peace and this is what Jesus comes to offer.

We can try to explain, as Andrew did to his brother Simon, but ultimately we have to “come and see” for ourselves if we are to develop this sense of place. I know this is true in my own life. I can tell you, in no uncertain terms; that the direction my pilgrimage of faith has taken is not what I thought it would be. As I’ve told some of you before, I grew up in a “mixed” religious family – Mom was generic Protestant with Pentecostal and Methodist leanings and Dad was Roman Catholic (multiple cousins as priests and nuns). I was “deposited” – and I use that word intentionally, because my family would drop me off at the local Free Methodist Sunday School. My Grandmother got into the act to make sure that I had “some real religion” and began taking me to Mass. And so it went and, early in my life, I knew that I was most “at home” when I was in worship, or study, or discussion with those who loved God and were part of Christ’s body, the Church. I experienced a sense of place.

That sense of place grew through high school and college, leading me, eventually, to formalize my relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. I began studies for the priesthood, entered the Order of Saint Benedict as a monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey and eventually came to sanctify my sense of place by making solemn monastic vows of continuous conversion of life, stability of place and obedience. Following ordination I continued my studies and returned to the monastery to teach – and something happened. The journey, the sense of place, led me away from what had been “home” and security for me and led me, of all places, here.

I am, God knows, the most unlikely Congregationalist, the oddest Puritan. However, in our Puritan forebears’ desire for “heart religion,” for an immediate experience of the Lord’s presence and their concern for what John Owen called, “the old, the beautiful face of Christianity,” I found a renewed sense of place. And it has been through dialogue with folks here at First Church and in the Wisconsin and National Associations, and the ICF that that sense of place has deepened and grown. These interpersonal conversations have been with people who I now count my dearest colleagues and friends and through them I have been invited again and again to “come and see” – it is an ever-renewing and ongoing experience of a sense of place, of knowing what it means to be, at last, “home.” I can identify with Paul writing to the Church at Corinth, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus. . .”

This is what Church is for me, dear ones. It is having a sense of place, knowing where I belong, where I am welcomed, accepted, loved and cared for – warts and all. This is what I want us to be for this community, to provide a spot on the journey of life where we can, with all confidence, say to people, “come and see.” We have our work cut out for us, because we have to reach in to a number of our people who may have their names on our rolls, but who have lost their sense of place. I am confident, however, that God will honor our work and help us to achieve our goal, because what it’s all about is bringing people to know the wonder and fullness of what it means to be loved of God, to know deep down inside that I am, you are, we are beloved children of God. Paul is so right when he reminds the Corinthians, and us, “He will also strengthen you to the en, so that you may be blameless on the day o our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

So today I again invite you, long-time member or first-time guest, to “come and see.” As I have said, we’ve grown complacent as a body and that must change if we are to answer God’s call to truly be God’s people in this place and at this time. So, I challenge our long-time members to examine afresh why they originally came here, what sense of place drew them and has held them and renew it. I challenge our newer members to share their enthusiasm and what this new-found sense of place has meant for them. All-together, I challenge ALL of us to grow together as people of faith, as followers of Jesus Christ, who have heard him ask “what are you looking for?” and heeded his invitation to “come and see.”