KGL+
Sermon
Trinity Church Boston
Year A Epiphany 2
January 18, 2026
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
What are you looking for?
That is the question I ask myself far too often as I walk into a room in my house with purpose, only to discover that no, the reason evaporated in the few minutes between the impulse to seek out whatever it was, and execution to locate it. I have no idea what I came in looking for.1This is A Thing, apparently, and not just my own brain and memory taken to task, and scientists say so: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-doorway-makes-you-forget/ I don’t know about you, but in that moment I tend to make the decision to simply ‘find’ something in that room, regardless of my original intent—to make that 30 foot journey somehow valuable to my bottom-line craving brain. Did I walk in originally looking for my library book? Probably, but after standing for a minute sorely aware of the fleeting nature of memory, I am absolutely walking out with a can of tomatoes; or a pair of earrings; that one free pen from my local bank. If I can’t recall the point of the endeavor, then everything is in play for my focus.
Each second Sunday of Epiphany, the predominant synoptic gospel of the lectionary year (either Matthew, Mark or Luke) is replaced with scripture from the Gospel of John.2John 1:29-42: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi2_RCL.html On this particular Sunday, we move away from the narrative-driven storyline of the Gospel of Matthew which has been our framework for the season of Christmas—and given the nature of God coming among us, is entirely appropriate for it to have narrative aplenty—and we take a step back. No narrative of the baptism of Jesus is available here; no intimate moment between Jesus and the man purported to be his cousin (which is not a plot point in the Gospel of John whatsoever); no live action narrative of a dove or Spirit alighting on Jesus.
The writer of the Gospel of John forces us to relinquish, for a moment, the preciousness of our Christmas narrative centered on a single child; a single family; a single moment in time. We hold that Christmas story close to us, and we should—it transcends all of the stories we tell ourselves about love and grace and God’s presence. And, if we stay in the manger in Bethlehem, we omit the actual miracle of the incarnation—we limit God’s descent and dwelling with and as someone mortal. As the Magi left the manger with the news of the messiah to share with the rest of the world, the Gospel of John acts in a similar manner for us in the congregation.
John (both Gospel writer and Baptist, in this instance) has little interest in the how; and all the interest in the why. Fewer plot points, more meta-narrative. John the Baptist points to Jesus this morning, heralding him as the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Messiah, and, if you read with a careful eye, all from about a two block distance from the man himself.3John the Baptist references the prophetic injunction to witness the descent of the Spirit, and we can extrapolate that perhaps Jesus was baptized by John, but there is no narrative that John does so himself, nor that he ever speaks directly to Jesus. John is not consumed with the personality of Jesus, but rather about Jesus as the revelation of a God who defies our binary notion of human and divine; earthly and heavenly; the world which is, and the world which is to come. Jesus, for him, punctures the our space and time liminality.
Basically, John is that one friend from college who needed to make everything ‘deep’ and ‘profound’ and ‘big picture’ when you just wanted to complain about your professor.
Which sounds silly until, along with John’s errant disciples who move on to follow Jesus, realize that, like Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights, though we might love Christmas Jesus with his golden fleece diapers best, we have an adult Jesus looking us in the eye and asking us with love, ‘What are you looking for?’4Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a marvel of a movie (for certain people) with all sorts of homiletical nuggets (for certain preachers). A seminal scene which has evolved into a life of its own is when there is an argument at dinner over how to address Jesus during grace over the meal. Will Ferrell’s character (Ricky Bobby) affirms that he likes ‘Christmas Jesus the best’, and his father-in-law replies that ‘Jesus was a man! He had a beard!’ The scene continues with a number of images of Jesus exchanged which, on paper, all seem incredibly far-fetched and so absurd as to have such a comic effect, except—they aren’t. How we imagine Jesus (physically) is a direct correlation to the impulse we have as what he and his ministry, death and resurrection mean to us.
Andrew and the other disciple of John the Baptist are not expecting this question either, by the way, if it makes us feel like we are in better company. As they shift allegiances from John the Baptist to Jesus, they answer Jesus’ question with a non-sequitur question of their own: ‘Where are you staying?’ What are you looking for, Jesus asks them. What are you selling, they reply.
See for yourself, Jesus tells them.
Do we remember what we are looking for, Church, as we start to follow Jesus down the street?
I suspect that, on paper, we think know what we are looking for when it comes to Jesus, but we conflate it with what we look for in a church. Good music; good sermons; or rather, good sermons under fourteen minutes long which don’t make us feel too emotionally compromised or too personally indicted; an easy fellowship with other parishioners and abundant church coffee. A righteous conviction of faithfulness at the end of the day, might be the cherry on top.
When we feel that way, we might need to follow up with our own non-sequitur: ‘Where are you staying, Jesus?’
Where does Jesus dwell for us, Church? Might it be in the way we are each given the same sacrament with no prerequisites expected, or demanded? The way our outstretched hands at the altar are not signs of weakness, but a sign of deep trust? Might it be in the ways we sit next to one another, bound not as friends, but, as Morgan noted in his sermon last week, by virtue of mutual pew and sanctuary neighborhood? Might it be in the ways we refuse siloes to radically gather together each week to focus not on what solidifies our outrage, but actively grounds our hope? Our love? Which defies our individual preference, and instead proclaims what can only be described as a currently politically foreign notion of interdependence and mercy? Might we find a group of humans acknowledging wrongdoing, and asking for strength to try again better, rather than doubling down defensively for fear of confronting our own shame?
Maybe the most radical thing we can do is to point to the Lamb of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, and blow wide open the precious pastoral scene from the manger into a living, breathing, incarnate acclamation of God puncturing our existence and signaling to us that if we wish to know better our Creator and Redeemer, we need to move ourselves, transform ourselves like Simon to Cephas, to do it.
We come here, to this place and people, each week not to preempt our own personal epiphany, but to participate in communal acclamation and memory—so when we are too bound up in our own exclusive plotlines, we turn to a God who asks us to consider what we are truly seeking. And once we name that which we believe we are seeking, asks us to change so that we might be able to come and see it, join and be it.
Is what we seek too small? Too inconsequential? Because, as we all have experienced personally before, if we forget what we are looking for and why we are looking for it, there is no telling what we will leave the room with in our hands instead.
Amen.