When I jumped in my car last Sunday after services, I heaved a resigned sigh. It’s one thing to drive the one hour it takes me to get home from church. But I wasn’t headed home. My GPS was set to my daughter’s address – some 320 miles away, in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
It was going to be a long day.
The invitation was not out of the blue. Isabel’s three month maternity leave was up, and she wanted someone she trusted to take care of Kobi during her first week back at work. She felt it would be less stressful for Kobi if he wasn’t dropped into daycare immediately. For his entire life – three whole months! – this kid has enjoyed the undivided attention of a wonderfully loving mother. Maybe if he had the experience of being cared for by someone else, it might take some of the shock out of the inevitable traumatic moment when he finds himself just one of a bunch of kids at a daycare center.
That was her thought process, and of course I was delighted to oblige. It meant that I would be able to spend a week of quality time with my grandson!
What could be better?
But will Isabel’s plan actually make any real difference for Kobi? One might be forgiven for being skeptical that a mere one week with Papako would actually ease the little boy’s transition into the wide world. We best not hold our breath. It’s an open question that is not likely to be answered anytime soon. At a tender three months of age, Kobi has neither the language or the emotional maturity required to proclaim: “Hey, thanks Mom! Your excellent plan made all the difference!” We may never really know whether or not the wee one’s well being was served by Isabel’s careful planning.
Most of the time parenting involves following your instincts. Will the decisions you make on the kid’s behalf in the short term pan out to deliver good results in the long term? We hope so, but we can’t be sure. We don’t know the future. Parenting is not an exact science.
**
This morning’s scripture lesson comes from the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
We are back at the beginning of the story.
The liturgical church year started with Advent – we celebrated Christ’s birth at Christmas, and his baptism during Epiphany.
Now, as the curtain goes up on this new scene, the lights reveal three men standing center stage. One of these men attracts our attention more than the other two. He has wild hair and fiery eyes and he his clothes are “ made of camel’s hair.” He may have the leg of locust or two stuck in his teeth because, that . This eccentric fellow goes by the name of John the Baptist – the very man who has recently baptized Jesus in the River Jordan.
The two men who are keeping John’s company are not just bystanders who happen to be loitering around with him. Taken with John’s charisma, and his message of the coming of the Kingdom of God, these two are his followers.
These three are talking when a young man enters stage left. This is the carpenter from Nazareth that John recently Baptized in the River Jordan.
When John sees who it is, he turns to the man standing next to him, and, speaking loud enough so that we all can hear him, says:
“Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
When the men hear their respected teacher John describing this new arrival as the Lamb of God, their interest is naturally peaked. Like good actors on the stage, they dutifully leave their teacher behind and follow the newcomer.
This young man, of course, is Jesus.
When Jesus turned and saw them following, the text says, he said to them, “What are you looking for?”
“What are you looking for?”
Isn’t this interesting?
Its not what one would expect at such a moment. You might expect Jesus to ask a “why” question. The obvious one that springs to mind is:
“Why are you following me?”
Or if he didn’t ask that, then the next thing that you might expect would be “who” question. A question like:
“Who are you looking for?”
But no.
Jesus asks a “what” question.
He asks “What are you looking for?”
**
I have presented this morning’s scripture reading as if it was a performance on stage, but to tell you the truth, the first thing that came to my mind when I read this little interaction again this week, was not a play, but a poem.
The poem I thought of was by Robert Frost. It is entitled The Pasture. This poem was one of my mother’s favorites — she introduced it to me when I was at a tender age, and read it to me often.
I was fortunate to have a mother who perceived that I was interested in such things as poetry at such an early age. I have the impression that there has never been a time that this poem was not a part of me. If you wish to follow along as I recite it, you will find it printed on the back of this morning’s bulletin.
The Pasture. By Robert Frost
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
The worst violence you can inflict on a poem is to explain it. Poems exist as the expression of an emotion, and the miraculous thing about a poem is that the emotion it expresses may begin with the writer, but it ends – it really happens when it finds its way into the mind, the heart, the body of the reader.
Thankfully, even if you wanted to explain this poem, you would be wasting your breath. There’s very little room for interpretation here. The poem is written in everyday language that can be understood without the aid of a dictionary. It makes no obscure allusions that require a PhD in English to appreciate.
I will say this, though.
I think this poem and our scripture passage have something in common.
Both Jesus and the poet offer something.
Neither of them ask the question why.
They are not answering an immense cosmological question about why we exist in the universe.
Neither of them ask a who question.
They do not say – this is the person who will give you everything you need.
Even though, in John’s gospel we are talking about Jesus – the one who John claims is the “only one” who can save us.
In this moment, its not about who.
It’s about what.
Both the poem and the scripture offer us something.
What is it?
**
Last week I noticed that a town I know well – Lewiston Maine, where my Alma Mater, Bates college is located, is in the news.
Why?
This city of 37 thousand people is prominent in last weeks news cycle because, in the last twenty years, it has become a center for a community of Somali immigrants – a group of immigrants who have been singled out by the Trump Administration.
Thousands of Somali people have fled bloody unrest in their country in the last twenty five years. Living up to our lofty ideals, the United States welcomed these refugees, offering them safe haven from the horrors of civil war and terrorism by giving them Temporary Protected Status here in the United States.
This week, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security revoked that protected status. She said:
“…allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”
In a cabinet meeting on December 2nd, President Trump said that people from Somalia are “garbage.”
The person in the highest office of government calls human beings “garbage.”
Garbage doesn’t need to be protected from civil war and terrorism.
Garbage can be thrown away.
**
At the end of each stanza of Robert Frost’s poem, the poet gives the reader an invitation:
“You come too.”
The men who Jesus encountered in this story – men who would become his disciples, were also given an invitation. Jesus said to them:
“Come and see.”
This is the answer… The answer to the question: What are you looking for?
The answer is
Come…
So what is it? What is being offered?
An invitation.
An invitation to relationship.
There are those who suggest that Jesus himself was the answer – that he was the only way to salvation.
But Jesus himself did not say that.
Jesus himself said: “come and see”
Jesus invited us into relationship.
Relationship with each other
and relationship with God.
The two are not different.
They are the same.
**
As you no doubt have already guessed, I had a wonderful week last week.
It was the most joyful of weeks.
My three month Grandson smiles a lot.
He is just beginning to giggle.
He looks at me with wide eyes, and smiles when I hold him close.
We are already very close.
There is no wealth like this wealth.
There is no joy like this joy.
I never met either of my grandfathers. Both died before I had a chance to meet them.
I met both of my grandmothers, but I hardly knew either of them.
So it was not my grandparents, but my daughter who, in her great wisdom, gave me the sacred invitation.
“Come,” she said.
“Come and see.”
Amen.