What are you looking for?

 

John 1: 29-42
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 18, 2026

Photo of a person holding a magnifying glass in front of their face, enlarging the appearance of their nose and blue-framed sunglasses.  They are wearing a dark blue suit with thin white stripes and have dark hair and pale to light brown skin.

When I read this gospel passage, I keep coming back to that scene in the movie Forrest Gump, when he’s been running for more than two years and people start following him. For some reason what he has been doing makes sense to people. “Here’s a guy who’s got his act together. Here’s somebody who’s got it all figured out. Here’s somebody who has the answer. I’ll follow you anywhere”, his first follower says. We look for hope and inspiration anywhere we think we can find it.



Forrest remembers that his mama told him that you have to put your past behind you before you can move on, and he figures that’s what his running was all about. So, after a little over three years, he stops in the middle of the road in the Arizona desert and turns to face the crowd of people who’ve been following behind him. “Quiet, quiet, he’s going to say something.” The camera zooms in on his scraggly bearded face and Forrest says, “I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll go home now.” And with that he walks toward the crowd and they part down the middle, with a look of shock on their faces and the first guy to follow him shouts, “Now what are we supposed to do?”



What are you looking for?



At the University of Pennsylvania, undergrad students are looking for a much-sought-after spot in an unusual course entitled “Existential Despair”. Professor Justin McDaniel in the religious studies department receives over 400 requests to fill a class for 40 people. He developed this class in 2015 after bemoaning the fact that higher education has become more about accumulation and performance than about developing human beings and an interest in learning good material simply because it’s really good. There is no syllabus, no tests, no papers, no grades. Students in this class read on average about 3,900 pages of literature and have intense conversations about what they’ve read, sometimes writing about it too but it’s not required. Instead, they are set free to be transformed by what they have read.



What are you looking for?



What are these first disciples of Jesus looking for? John calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Two of John’s disciples call Jesus “rabbi”. Andrew tells Simon Peter that they have found the Messiah or the Anointed One. Maybe they were thinking, “Here’s a guy who’s got his act together. Here’s somebody who’s got it all figured out. Here’s somebody who has the answer. I’ll follow you anywhere.” Jesus owns up to none of this. Instead, he gives them an invitation: “Come and see”.



What are you looking for?



What were you looking for when you found this church? What were you looking for when you started this church more than 45 years ago? I would bet that most of you would answer with community. But what kind of community? Welcoming, affirming, peace and justice building community? Yeah, I know, leading the witness, but really, when we describe it that way, what makes church any different from the ACLU or a chapter of Indivisible or Moms Demand Action?



What are you looking for?



Why do we do this thing called religion? Religion isn’t necessary to know right from wrong; empathy is. We don’t need religion to teach us empathy or morals. So why do we persist with it? As Professor McDaniel puts it, why do we go through hell to get to heaven? Why do we restrict ourselves, limit ourselves in order to get freedom or peace? It’s not transactional. We don’t do this to get something, well, maybe some people do, but we don’t get direct results.



What are we looking for?



What the good professor reminds us is that in most religious traditions, it’s not about us. And unlike most cults, it’s not about the leader either. Because everything we do is in community. And in communities we share rules, rules that bind us together in a way that makes us not only responsible to each other but aware of each other. As in other faith traditions, in Christianity we have moral rules as well as rules about how we will behave with each other. And these rules are intended to reduce the fear between us. We can trust each other and thus work together better as a community.



What makes religious community different is that it is non-teleological, that is, it has no end goal, not if it’s honest with itself, and I think that’s why we persist with it. It’s always unfinished business. We’re restless and dissatisfied with the world. Why? Not only because it’s unfair but because it’s unjust and thus harmful and we human beings are the ones who made it that way. Religious community is about the continual naming of what is wrong in the world, our part in that, and how we can repair it. It’s about the ongoing transformation of the human heart and thus the transformation of how we live together.



What are we looking for?



Right now, people are looking for, hungering for meaning and purpose, as human beings always have done in times of upheaval. What is so frightening is that some are finding meaning and purpose in violence, in holding onto power, in amassing wealth, in blaming and persecuting minorities, as they always have been, only now the gloves have come off and White middle-class Americans are targets as well. Our government is ignoring its own laws, invading people’s neighborhoods with military force, prosecuting its opponents, dehumanizing and killing with impunity.



Professor Sam Greene at King’s College tweeted, “Authoritarians don’t win because they control the guns or the media or the courts or the streets. Authoritarians win because they control imaginations. Because they make it impossible for citizens to imagine solidarity. To imagine justice. To imagine victory.”



What are we looking for? That another kind of life is possible and together we can imagine it. Together we keep the fire going that another life is possible by how we live our lives. More of us are going to have to stand up, stand together, resist and take risks, as these early Jesus movements did so long ago. The lectionary gospel readings throughout Epiphany are call stories—how Jesus and his followers got together and what he was asking of them.



What are you looking for? If there is a goal it is this: In the words of Dr. King, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” 

So, if you came for change and to be changed. If you came to be transformed and to give something of yourself. 

If you came more for the questions than the answers. 

If you came to figure out what to do with heartbreak, emptiness, failure, longing, desperation, grief.

If you came to use your imaginations and have them challenged. 

If you came looking how to do the Jesus things: hang out with who Jesus would hang out with, feed those Jesus would feed, turn over the tables that Jesus would turn over, forgive those Jesus would forgive, love those Jesus would love, well my friends, you’ve found what you've been looking for.

Benediction – Samir Selmanovic, It's Really All About God



“Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him…to summarize his selling point:

‘Follow me, and you might be happy—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might be empowered—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might have more friends—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might have the answers—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might be better off—or you might not.

If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless.

Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have:

you will learn to love well.’”