Victorious Living through Christ pt 2 "What Are You Looking For?", First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY

Victorious Living through Christ, part 2
“What Are You Looking For?”
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 1/16/2011



This morning’s Gospel reading tells us how Jesus begins gathering his disciples. It all seems very innocent with John the Baptist declaring every time he sees Jesus, to be the “Lamb of God”, suddenly two of his own disciples leave him to go and follow Jesus. I wonder what John was feeling when Andrew and the other unnamed disciple left him to follow this Jesus.
How would you feel if this happened to you? Lets say for example, two families, we will call them the Smith’s and the Jones, had found their way through the front doors here at First Congregational. As a congregation, we receive them in, we extend our emotional support to them, we spend time teaching them the lessons of scripture, since neither of these families have ever been to a church before, we baptize them, invite them to become members of our faith community; in essence they have become a part of us.
Then one Sunday morning I announce from the pulpit that a new church has been started down town and that the minister there seemed to be doing a good job in preaching the “Good News”. A few weeks pass by and there is a community gathering of praise being held in this church. The guest speaker just happens to be the new minister of this new church, named The Church of What’s Happening Now. I introduce the new minister as a person who is one who “understands” the word of God and that this new church specializes in healing ministry. After the service is over, the Smith’s and the Jones become acquainted with the new minister. The next week we don’t see the Smith’s or Jones in church. It isn’t long before we find out that these two families, who had been so warmly nurtured by us, have left First Congregational and are now attending the services of the newly formed Church of What’s Happening Now.
Our first response might be one of anger, not toward the new minister, but rather of the Smith’s and Jones for leaving us for that new church and following that new minister. And these thoughts would be logical from the stand point of the amount of time and emotional energy that we as a congregation invested into them. Our negative thoughts would stem from a sense of betrayal and of rejection; rejection because we had opened ourselves up to them, making ourselves vulnerable. It brings up questions like, “what’s wrong with us”, or possibly “why aren’t we good enough for them” and maybe even deeper questions might be asked such as: “aren’t we preaching the gospel here?”
I think this particular segment of the Gospel that is being shared with us today, is probably one of the most important that we will ever find in scripture. It is important because it asks a question that not only sets the stage for Jesus’ ministry, but is the basic question that all of humanity continues to ask itself, day in and day out. After John the baptizer has pointed out the man who was walking by as being “the Lamb of God”, Andrew and another disciple of John’s start following Jesus. Jesus stops, turns around and asks the question of all questions, “What are you looking for?”
When we personalize this question to be “What am I looking for”, we begin to ask one of life’s most challenging question, which seems to have plagued human kind since its origins. Andrew and the other disciple didn’t leave John for Jesus because John was not preaching “truth”, but rather because they saw that in Jesus, they would find more than what they already were experiencing. Andrew is like most of us, we are looking for something that will bring more meaning into our lives!
Last Sunday, I presented the first of a number of steps that we need to recognize and then work through in order to experience the most out of ourselves and life, which God would wish for us. That first step was to: recognize that we are powerless of the sin within our lives, and that through that sin, our lives are unmanageable. The second step that I would suggest in our journey to seeking a Victorious life through Christ is, to come to believe in the love of God, who forgave us and accepted us in spite of all that we are and have done.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans by saying, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” I like the way Eugene Peterson puts it, “But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.”
After we admit that we are by nature filled with sin, the next step then, is to seek out that which is pure love. A love that is more radical than that which we have most likely experienced. The Greeks have three differing words for love: Eros, Phileo, and Agape. Eros is the lowest form of love, as it deals with the physical. It is the physical passion that comes when two people are attracted to each other. Phileo love is what we normally think of the words "brotherly love". Phileo love is about feelings, and is what friendships are built upon. Agape love is about how we act toward others, it is also the type of love that we attribute to the actions of Jesus and of God.
Agape love is the type of love that is “unconditional” as opposed to conditional love. Conditional meaning that there is some condition that must be met in order for something to happen. If we are talking about love, then it means that there is some sort of action that must be taken in order to receive that love which is given conditionally. A large number of the people have been raised with some degree of “conditional love”, which affects how they will react to both receiving love and acceptance, or in how they give love and acceptance.
The love that Paul is sharing in today’s text is about God’s “unconditional love” for us. “…when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” In the 1990 American thriller film, Flat liners, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt as medical students using physical science in an attempt to find out if there's anything out there beyond death by conducting clandestine experiments with near-death experiences, a common experience occurred with all five medical students. They all encountered a person whom they had done something bad to as a child, and all of the victims were still living, except for the beautiful Julia Roberts experience. She was experiencing an encounter with her father who had committed suicide when she was a child. Ultimately the story line presented its self as the reason for these events were due to the fact that each of these medical students was holding onto the “action” or the “guilt” of their action toward the person they encountered.
This is the thought that I want to leave you with this morning. It is the burdens that we carry around with us, that keep us from fully accepting the loving forgiveness that comes through Christ. These things have already been forgiven, but even once we ask for forgiveness we often do not turn loose of that action. We walk around carrying it and eventually, it bogs us down. This is where the second step comes into play, we must come to believe in the love of God, who forgave us and accepted us in spite of all that we are and have done. Until we turn loose of all those hurts, of all those lost dreams, of all the wrong things that we have done toward others, then we really are not trusting, not believing in the forgiveness that God has already given us. If God has forgiven us of our offenses, then who are we to tell God that we want to carrying them around with us?
This believing in the love of God in a personal way leads us to the word we speak so freely, the word being “grace.” What is Grace? Without over simplifying it too much, it is “forgiveness of our sinful nature, by God.” Coming to believe in the love that God has toward us starts as we accept God’s forgiveness of our less than perfect lives, and the believing is demonstrated by our willingness to let go of that which we have been forgiven. “What are you looking for?” Jesus has responded with, “Come and you will see!” Amen