What Are You Looking For?

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Jan. 18, 2026
John 1:29-42

“What are you looking for?” It takes a special kind of person to venture out on a cold January morning to come to church. You got up this morning, got dressed, and drove to church, and…“What are you looking for?”

On this second Sunday after Epiphany, the Gospel of John now shines a light to reveal who this Jesus really was. Everything is new, Jesus ministry on earth is just getting started, there’s change in the air. Last week we heard Matthew’s version of John the Baptist passing the baton to Jesus, and this week in John’s Gospel, it is John the Witness who had devoted his life in preparation for this day–to point to the Messiah. And without warning, Jesus just showed up one day by the banks of the Jordan. John happened to notice Jesus walking by and pointed him out, “Hey! Here’s the Lamb of God! The one I’ve been telling you about all this time!” Some of his disciples had been paying attention to John’s message claiming that he was not the one but he was preparing for the One, the Messiah, to come. The disciples of John recognized the moment had come and got up and followed Jesus even without an invitation. 

Jesus sees these guys tailing him and turns around to ask an obvious question, “What are you looking for?” It’s almost as if the anticipated moment snuck up on Jesus, too. “What is it that you want that makes you leave John to follow me?” And clearly what they’re looking for is too lengthy of a discussion as to warrant a short, direct answer, so in rabbinic fashion, they answer with a question, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Sort of like our more modern equivalent of “How much time you got?” Cuz they had a lot they wanted from a Messiah. 

The people of Jesus’ day were looking for a Messiah to come and save them from the injustices perpetrated by the Romans. They wanted power, they wanted freedom, they wanted their land back. Many of them thought that they’d found the kind of savior that they were looking for in Jesus. But Jesus refused to be that kind of Messiah. Jesus refused to lead them in an armed revolt against the Romans. Jesus called them to a different path; a path that required them to renounce violence, hatred, and greed; a path that demanded not violence, but love of enemy, and care for the poor and marginalized among them. 

Jesus’ way of being in the world was, and is, not an easy path to walk as the disciples were going to soon find out, and keep finding out for the rest of their lives. Following Jesus requires sacrifice and commitment to live in this world in a different way. To actively participate in bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and not as a passive observer. The Way of Jesus was going to turn these follower’s understanding of God upside down as they had to learn the difference of God’s path to the Kingdom of Heaven or the path, which too many favored, that led to hell on earth. 

There’s a classic story of a big tough samurai who once went to see a very little monk. And he said in a voice that was accustomed to being obeyed, “Teach me about heaven and hell.”

And the little monk looked up at the mighty warrior and he looked at him with utter disdain and he said, “Teach you about heaven and hell? I couldn’t teach you about anything. You are dirty. You smell. Your blade is rusty. You are a disgrace and embarrassment to the samurai class. Get out of my sight. I can’t stand you, you know.” So the samurai is completely furious and he gets all red in the face and he pulls out his sword, he is speechless with rage, and he is about to slay the little monk, and the monk says, “That’s hell.”

So the samurai is now overwhelmed with the compassion and the surrender of this little monk who really was willing to sacrifice his life to convey this teaching and show him hell. And he puts down his sword and you can sense he is filled with gratitude, he sees the monk differently, and suddenly he is deeply peaceful. And the little monk said, “And that’s heaven.”

What I like about this story is that the wake-up of the samurai comes so clearly from that flash of, Oh, there is goodness in this life, there is connection, there is heart, there is something really basic here that I can trust. Heaven is that experience of that connectedness, of love deep enough to sacrifice. Come and see, says Jesus.

Hell is believing in separateness. It’s that sense that something is intrinsically wrong with me, with you, that there is a threat because there is just nothing really okay in this universe in some basic way. Hell is not understanding we are all interconnected through Christ, not your political party, not your salary, not your ethnicity. Hell is a dangerous, miserable place. Nothing is okay.¹

“Come and see,” Jesus said to his new followers. From that moment on, they were with Jesus and Jesus remained with them. They, like us, were living in tumultuous times, strangers in their own land. They wanted war and violence to get what they wanted and Jesus turned their world upside down through peace and love. This gets scoffed at just as much today as it did 2000 years ago. How can love and peace stand up to forces of violence? “Come and see,” says Jesus.

Choosing peace in difficult times doesn’t mean nothing bothers us. It means we stop making everything worse by losing ourselves in our thoughts. It means we stay grounded enough in our faith to see what we can actually do, then do it with a calm heart. I’m not sure what your answer to Jesus’ question, “What are you looking for?” is, but seriously, what is it you look for in the Christ you one day up and followed? Do you want Jesus with a SWAT team to take out your enemy? Do you want Jesus to come in with a magic wand and make things all better without asking too much from you? Evil draws power from attention. Evil draws power from fear. Don’t let it. 

Jesus didn’t give them the Messiah they thought they wanted and needed. He didn’t raise up an army to kill or expel the Roman occupiers, he didn’t set up a special club (although we tried to turn the Church into one) where you could keep others out. He didn’t even say, all you have to do is believe in me and everything will be fine. He said, “Come follow me.” Like, you have to actively walk on the path to see what Jesus was about, to find what you’re looking for. 

We will get to the Beatitudes in a couple of weeks which is the Way of Jesus in one teaching–even if we prefer the ten commandments because it gives us a sense of moral control. And sometimes I think that is too often what we are looking for. But Jesus does not give us power to control what happens, but wisdom to see clearly what helpful action we can take, to breathe consciously, to remember that even in difficulty, we are still held by life, not death, still capable of responding wisely instead of simply reacting, and always to ask,”How would Love respond?” Certainly not as a spectator sport, but actively responding to each and every situation and each and every person with Love. 

Love does not protect us from harm. The situation is what it is. But we can change how we meet it—with the presence of God instead of panic, with clarity instead of confusion, with wise action instead of helpless worry.

What Jesus wants is for us to recognize our own humanity, like he did, and our connection with each other. Jesus wants us to come and see that love conquers fear, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.”² The stark reality of our faith is to not fear even death itself, the ultimate lesson of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are not people of death. We are resurrection people.

It just might be that whoever walks through the doors of our church, or those that we encounter when we leave this place, that the thing they’re looking for is, actually, Jesus. I hope that’s what we all find. Not the Jesus that keeps us in control, not the Jesus that waves a magic wand so we don’t have to participate in the requirements of Love, but the Jesus that says put away your sword, love your enemy, love God and love your neighbor. Respect the dignity of every human being. Jesus was willing to die for the sin of the world. He wasn’t making amends for us to an angry God but came to liberate us from the sin of the world–the violence, the hatred, the corruption–and walk us back home.

What are we looking for? Where will this path of Christ lead us? Jesus says, “Come and see.” 

1.  Tara Brach: How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1, Jan 15, 2026. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tara-brach/id265264862?i=1000745296801&r=386 ↩︎
2. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7. NRSVUE. BibleGateway ↩︎