What are you looking for? What do you need?

 Scripture: Isaiah 49:1-7 -1 Corinthians 1:1-9 - John 1:29-42 - Psalm 40:1-12

This week's gospel in the second week of the Epiphany seaon has Jesus calling his disciples to be fishers of men. What makes them drop their fishing nets to follow him? In "What Are You Looking For?" Debie Thomas peels back the Scripture to help us answer Jesus' call to discipleship. Looking, Seeing, Finding. It requires looking, seeking, and seeing, not once, or twice, but constantly, to Jesus' invitation to "Come and see."

 Leaving comfort zones, examining ourselves honestly and thoroughly is not easy, but the journey helps us to find our true selves with the presence of Christ to help us find what God has in store for us. It is saving. It is life fulfilling. It is a gracious vision. It is about forgiving and seeing as Jesus sees. Loving as Jesus loves. Later Jesus would say that in losing ourselves we will find ourselves. What does that mean? Accept Jesus' invitation to  "come and see," and all that that entails.

In "Be Called," Dr. Sharon Fennema says we are called into becoming aware of the contours of God moving in our midst, from John in his gospel exclaiming, "Behold the Lamb of God," the presence of the grace of God, embodied in Jesus. Jesus, who, in John's gospel, before performing any miracle, or casting out any demon, asks "What are you looking for?" He's asking "What do you need?" From the"ends of the earth" passage in our reading from the prophet Isaiah, to Jesus's call to leave the familiar behind, we see God is doing a new thing, and calls us to do the same. The calling is liberating and collective. It was never just an insular individual calling. God will not be boxed in, and through God's grace in the redemptive and freeing love of Christ, neither are we. Such is the freedom of the ἐξουσία (authority which liberates - gives choices instead of domination) of Jesus. Jesus, whose name means "he who saves," the deliverer, the Messiah.