I read a story this week about a sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a few months before his death. He talked about what kind of eulogy he would like, and was clear that he did not want anyone to focus on his Nobel Peace Prize or his other awards. He was more interested in folks knowing that he had tried to feed the hungry, lift up the lowly and free the captives. More than anything, he wanted to “leave behind a committed life.” I wondered if he had felt that way at the beginning of his life - if he had aspired to do great things – to win the Nobel prize. I’ll bet not. But somewhere along the line, “come and see” got under his skin, inside his gut, and that invitation from God had lasted him a lifetime. Then, once he’d “been to the mountaintop,” he “had a dream” and it went far beyond the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You know, God has a dream for us, too – and it is told about with new energy in the New Testament account we have today of two more servants of God named John the Baptist and Andrew.

John’s whole ministry can be summed up in today’s lesson: he was to reveal the Messiah to Israel. It was he who was to proclaim God’s dream which included telling who Jesus is and what Jesus does. And John did all that and more when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” First, Jesus is the “Lamb of God.” Although we might think that John was referred to Jesus as our sacrifice, lambs were not sacrificial animals at that time. John was more likely referring to Jesus as the Passover Lamb, whose blood was smeared over the doorposts of the Israelites so that the Angel of Death would pass over during the final plague in Egypt. With this meaning, John was inferring that Jesus’ blood would “defer” our inevitable death sentence.

Second, what Jesus does is to “take away the sin of the world.” For those of us on this side of the crucifixion, it might be hard to understand how that is true, since Jesus’ death on the cross obviously did not erase sin from the world. Here our “Greek for the week” might be helpful. The word airo (????, pronounced “eye-row”) means literally “to take upon oneself” or to “remove and carry away.” This is not eradication, but someone standing in, taking away from us, our sin. John believed that Jesus was the One God had sent, and once finished with his proclamation of who Jesus is and what Jesus does, John declared simply, “this is the Son of God.”

Now Andrew must have caught that dream clearly from John, because that day he turned away from John and followed Jesus with what seems to be a very clear mission. Every time we focus on him in scripture, Andrew is bringing someone else to meet Jesus: first, Peter, his brother; then a little boy with a lunch of loaves and fishes that will miraculously feed more than 5,000 people, and finally some Greeks at a festival in Jerusalem who were eager to meet Jesus. Once his task was complete, Andrew disappears from the story. Oh, he is still “one of the twelve,” but Andrew is not named again in the gospels.

So we turn to Jesus. It’s always good to pay attention to what Jesus says first in each Gospel, and in John it is the famous question, “What are you looking for?” It’s a question we will hear again at the end of the story, when Jesus encounters Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter. “What are you looking for?” Here, he asks the two who are following, and they don’t seem to know, for they answer Jesus’ question with one of their own, “Where are you staying?” Here again, the Greek helps inform this interchange. The word meno (???? – pronounced “meh-no”) means “abide” and is used numerous times in today’s story and all through John’s gospel. It is the word that describes the Holy Spirit who had come and remained, “abided” on Jesus at his Baptism. “Where are you abiding?” “Come and see where I am abiding” – and they go and “abide” with him because it is late in the day, 4 o’clock, which according to rabbinic tradition, was the time when God had breathed life into a man named Adam. Why had they remained? We don’t really know, but somehow they caught the vision John had given them, because without some sort of connection between these men and Jesus, they would have just kept on looking…

You know, the invitation to “come and see” seems pale to me – perhaps it is because I see so many ads and church banners that say, “Come and See.” It’s almost as if we could just do what we do and everyone would take it upon themselves to “come and see,” which would relieve us of the responsibility of moving outside these walls into the world where we are to “go” and take God’s light into the darkness. But I guess we must keep in mind that we are the ones who have come and have seen, and so therefore, we have a job to do and a story to tell. It’s kind of like Mr. Packard, the car maker of the 20th century. Packard, apparently, would not advertise his car in print or on billboards. He maintained that if someone was interested in a Packard, they could, “Ask the man who owns one.” Which, after Mr. Packard died, became their first advertising slogan: “Ask the man who owns one.” Sort of like, “come and see.”

This week, I’d like you to spend some time dealing with Jesus’ question, “What are you looking for?” It seems that questions are all around us these days, as we have offered classes on Atonement and Baptism and Faith and Religion, the questions at the root of these studies are all basically, “Is this Christianity thing about how we die, or how we live?” Now, I can tell you generations ago, say, in the Middle Ages, Christianity was most certainly about how we die. For in the time of bubonic plague and Black Death, eternal life was a source of hope for something better than this. However, nowadays, we are not so interested in a better place – this life seems pretty good for most of us – and so our response would probably be that Christianity, our faith, is more about how we live.

I remember the beginning of my classes in seminary. They would always start out the same way on the first day. The professor would arrive and ask, “What do you expect to get from this class?” I hated that! I didn’t know what I expected to get from this class! I mean, it was required! Sometimes, especially for those of us who were baptized as infants, it probably seems that our faith is “required.” And if we let that be all we are looking for, then we risk missing out on the marvelous vision of trusting God beyond our wildest dreams, beyond our most idealistic expectations.

Just for fun, perhaps we should ask what God wants. In the Kansas City Star’s religion section on December 22, the “Voices of Faith” column, where local faith leaders answer questions that have been submitted asked, “Does God Want Us to be Happy?” Rabbi Amy Katz responded that Jewish tradition assumes that if you live a good life (meaning that you are devoted to the study of sacred texts, observant of customs and traditions, and work to repair the world) happiness will ensue. So it’s not that God wants us to be happy, but rather that God wants us to live a good life – and in living a good life, we have a better chance of finding happiness.

So what are you looking for? This invitation from Jesus is unique among all the world’s religions, because through it God is asking us what we want, what we need, and then Jesus is inviting us to “come and see.” But regardless of all the questioning and growing, doubting and stretching, underneath it all is that rock solid foundation of God’s never-ending love of us. In closing, I’d like to share a powerful but somewhat graphic story, which I promise you will not soon forget:

A tourist visited a church in Germany and was surprised to see the carved figure of a lamb near the top of the church's tower. He asked why it was there and was told that when the church was being built, a workman fell from a high scaffold. His co-workers rushed down, expecting to find him dead. But to their surprise and joy, he was alive and only slightly injured. How did he survive? A flock of sheep was passing beneath the tower at the time, and he landed on top of a lamb. The lamb broke his fall and was crushed to death, but the man was saved. To commemorate that miraculous escape, someone carved a lamb on the tower at the exact height from which the workman fell.*

Whether we know it or not, all who embrace Jesus as their Savior and have fallen - or will fall – can depend that they will land (in some sense,) on top of the Lamb. Amen.

* Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com, Original Source Unknown.