WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “What Are You Looking For?”

I’m sure I preached on this question somewhere along the line because it’s so obvious a life theme, but if I did, I’m not sure just what I said.

It has to be the theme of many songs. I think of Mariah Carey’s song, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” with the line, “Do you like the things life is showing you?” and the haunting refrain, “Do you know?” “Do you know?”

How many times have Best Buy sales folks, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and best friends, asked us, “What are you looking for?”

TODAY’S GOSPEL

In today’s gospel Jesus says to these two disciples of John the Baptist, “What are you looking for?”

It’s one of those questions that we’ve heard a thousand times in our life – and if we’re over 65, we’ve said it to ourselves a half dozen times a day – scratching our head, having walked into another room and wondering, “Now what was I looking for?”

“What are you looking for?”

ANSWERS

Our first answers might be:

· Peace in the world.
· That the economy gets better.
· That people out of work would find jobs.
· That the new president and congress and staffs and state and local governments would help turn things around.
· Good Health and Good Health Care for everyone.
· Peace in our families
· Laughter. Joy. Peace. Hope. A good day every day.

Our second answers might become more specific:

· Health and healing for so and so who has cancer.
· An end to drinking and drugs for so and so.
· That a kid’s marriage will turn around – especially because there are kids involved.
· That there be no plane crashes today, but if there are, let them be as lucky as the one the other day in the Hudson River.

Our third answers might be wider or deeper or different, because we might turn to God more or go down deeper into our soul:

· I would want my life to be more pleasing to God.
· I would want my life – what I’m doing each day – my work - my time at home - my outside interests - to make sense to others and be helpful to others.
· I would want to have loved and been loved.
· I want to see my children’s children!
· I would want the world – well at least the places where I’ve been – to be better because I was there. If you cry every Christmas as you watch the black and white movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life” you’re there. You get it.

POEM

I gave two talks to the Anne Arundel County Catholic Catechists yesterday in St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish in Pasadena and I used a poem by the Sufi poet Hafiz. It’s entitled, "With That Moon Language."

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE*

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud; otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in the world is dying to hear?

He’s saying if we want to be loved, look deep into the full moon in every eye that is saying the same thing. “Love me.”

What are we looking for? To be loved – so love one another. Sounds familiar? Read the gospel of John – especially his account of the last supper. It’s all about love.

What are you looking for?

TODAY’S GOSPEL

When Jesus asks the disciples that question, they answer with another question, “Rabbi – Teacher – where are you staying?”

Jesus says, “Come, and you will see.”

This scene takes place in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

The Gospel of John has been reworked and reworked in the early Joannine Community – and it has a rich, well developed theology.

I was recently reading my notes from a book on preaching, Imagining a Sermon. It's by Thomas Trogher. He urges the preacher to use imaginative theology. The preacher has to evoke. He writes, “I will not cheat the congregation by handing them a souvenir from my trip on the river when I can take them along on the voyage and let them feel the current and the water for themselves.”

How do you do that? The Gospel of John can do that. It can take you on the journey to meet, feel, taste, experience Jesus.

The Gospel of John wants us to come and see Jesus – come and be with Jesus – come and stay with Jesus – come and experience Jesus.

And if you have the overpowering experience that one of the disciples, Andrew, has, then you will go about bringing others to Jesus – so they too can have the same experience.

This is the year of the Gospel of Mark for Ordinary Time – but I smiled when today’s gospel for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time is from John. This is the year of Paul. The Pope also said it’s the year for us to be thinking about Africa.

So if you want to be contrary, make this the year of John or the Letter to James for you.

When I say the rosary I only say the Joyful Mysteries. One of these years I might find myself moving into other mysteries, but I haven’t found myself so moved yet – and this has been going on for about twenty years now. And surprise – I’ve met people who said, “Thank you for saying that. I thought I was the only one.” One lady told me she makes only one station of the cross – the fourth station. Isn’t religion interesting?

The gospel of John provides many, many great questions. But notice this one in Chapter One: “What are you looking for?”

And notice the question in Chapter Twenty: “Whom are you looking for?”

Or the question in Chapter Twenty One, the Last Chapter of John, "Have you caught anything yet?"

Notice the other line in the last chapter of John’s gospel, “None of the disciples was bold enough to ask, ‘Who are you?’; they knew quite well it was the Lord.”

Then they had a meal and Jesus asked Simon Peter three times, “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” and three times Peter says “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” And three times Jesus says to Peter, “Look after my sheep – feed my sheep.”

CONCLUSIONS

What am I looking for?

Love – and hopefully in all the right places. Isn’t that what Paul is telling the Corinthians in today’s second reading - to realize our bodies are temples that can hold the Holy Spirit – that we are the body of Christ – and life is to give glory to God – not to immorality?

Today’s first reading has a great text from the first book of Samuel. Three times the Lord calls the young man Samuel – and he is too young to get it. He has to sleep some more. The prophet Eli is there to help him process his calling. [Oh would that the Giants won last Sunday and in that story it was Eli who was sleeping and he didn't wake up.] It seems that for most people we spend a good period of our life sleep walking. Maybe today or this year is the day or year to wake up – if we haven’t yet – and we say and pray to the Lord, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

And today’s Gospel challenges us to discover what and who Andrew discovered in the first chapter of John, “We have found the Messiah. It’s Jesus.” Please God we’ll find Jesus, that we’ll realize that he like everyone else has a sign in his eyes that says, “Love me!” and if we haven’t found him yet, we’ll find him now, love him as the one we are looking for in whatever chapter of our lives we are in now. Amen.**

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

*I found the poem by Hafiz in Chapter 8 of “Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again”, by Roger Housden. It is translated by Daniel Ladinski. It is worth reading to get a far better explanation of this poem than the quick comments I made.

** And then there is the book, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists. He discovered that the meaning of life was to practice loving Jesus Christ. How? By putting into practice all those wonderful descriptions of love that Paul gives in First Corinthians 13:1-13 that so many couples pick for a reading at their wedding. Alphonsus had a great love for Jesus being born for us, giving his life for us, especially in the Eucharist and dying on the cross for us. Alphonsus, like Andrew in today’s Gospel, went around telling everyone, especially the poorest and most abandoned, that they are loved by Jesus. Yes – even the poorest and forgotten have that message in their eyes, “Love me!”