"Come and Ask, Come and See" -- John 1:35-42 (3rd Sunday After Epiphany), sermon and prayer practice
- Scott Clark
- 3 days ago
- 10 min read
Photo Credit: Christy Dalmat, used with permission via Unsplash
SCRIPTURE: John 1:35-39
35The next day John [the Baptist] again was standing with two of his disciples, 36and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” 37The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.
SERMON:
There’s a story in my family about a road-trip that my mother and I took when I was 3-years-old. My Dad was serving in Vietnam, and my mother and I lived with my maternal Newlon grandparents in La Porte, Indiana. My mom was determined that I would also spend time with my paternal Clark grandparents. So often, on Friday afternoons, when she was done teaching school, she’d load up the car, and we would drive from La Porte to Fillmore, Indiana, which was 4 hours away.
The story is that on one such Friday, when we were about to leave, my Grandpa Newlon buckled me into my seat, and said to me, “Scott, it is your job to make sure that your mother stays awake while she drives.” That is an awesome responsibility to place on a 3-year-old. And so, the story goes, as we pulled down the drive, I started talking. And, as my mother tells it, I did not stop talking.... until we got there... four hours later.
Now I imagine, because I was after all 3-years-old, that in all that talking, I asked a lot of questions: “What do you think Grandma and Grandpa will do while we’re gone? Why are there more cows on the left side of the road than the right? Are we almost there yet?” And I know that my mother, who is a teacher by both training and temperament, listened. I expect that she answered the questions she could; told me when she didn’t know; and here and there, she probably did that teacher thing, answered a question with a question: “Well, what do you think about that?”
Questions are an essential part of learning and life.[1] To learn, and grow, and thrive, we need space to ask questions, and we need folks around us willing to listen and engage.
Questions are expressions that seek knowledge or understanding. We live life, and we reach the limits of what we know now – and we question, we wonder, we ask.
Questions take us
from what we know now
to discover what we don’t know yet,
and, then also, to name and sit with what we may never know.
Questions can move us to greater understanding and action, and they can also hold for us those things we know not... you know, those times we are left sitting with our questions.[2]
Now I thought about saying that we cannot learn without questions. But there is a model of learning that is just memorizing facts – rote learning. And there is a model of learning that envisions an expert, standing at a podium, imparting knowledge to an audience in a one-way direction – learning as the delivery of information.
But at least since the days of Socrates, we have understood learning to include the asking of questions.[3] Most traditionally, teacher to student, but nowadays, we understand that learning involves us asking questions person to person, teacher to student to student to student – all of us asking and learning together.
Questions make the learning lively. They engage minds. They bridge and connect knowledge. They help us critically take concepts apart, and then creatively put new constructs together.[4] Questions can generate and spark entirely new ideas. One Nobel Laureate has said that, as a child, when he got home from school every day, his mother wouldn’t ask, “How was your day?” She would ask, “Did you ask a good question today?”[5]
Now we’re not talking just about formal education.
· The scientific method is based on questions; asking questions, testing them, and coming to preliminary answers, as we name the remaining questions.
· As a lawyer, I was trained in asking questions: direct examination, with open-ended question, and cross-examination, with questions that drove to a point.
· Across religions, folks ask and wrestle with big questions, the daily-living questions.[6] Think of a Buddhist teacher, asking questions of their students – or rabbinic schools thrashing it out with questions that seek to find ways of living that lead to more life – think Jesus and his disciples.
· We use questions in our civic life – we question our elected officials, as we seek to find better ways to live our common life. (You know, there’s even a constitutional right that covers that – “the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances” – the right to ask). Just this week Barbara, Michelle, and I and well over a hundred other neighbors questioned our County Board of Supervisors – Why are you and the Sheriff sharing data with ICE about our immigrant neighbors?
· And on a much larger scale – those mass protests we saw on Friday across the country – most significantly the thousands of folks in Minneapolis – they arose out of questions: How can this be happening? How can the government wantonly terrorize our neighborhoods? Why? What can we do? How can we mobilize to resist and to create real change?
Questions work – large and small – because they stir things up, and sometimes that’s uncomfortable.[7] Questions introduce a degree of uncertainty – they can challenge what we think we know . And, we may not know the answer. It may take some hard work and struggle as we move toward as much of an answer as we can find together. The answer may lead us to change the way we think, or even, the way we live. Sometimes it feels easier and safer to just sit as still as we can in the status quo, un-questioning. Don’t question the way things are. Don’t question authority. Don’t question the way things have always been.
Jesus loved to ask questions. In the gospels, Jesus asks about 307 questions. (I have not counted them, but other folks have.)[8]
This morning’s scripture centers on a question.[9] In the Gospel of John, the first words that Jesus speaks form a question:[10] “What are you looking for? What are you seeking?”– a question that sets in motion the life he will live with his disciples.
We’re in the Gospel of John, the Gospel where the Word becomes flesh and dwells in the midst of us full of grace and truth. The Gospel announces that at the very start, and then introduces John the Baptist who comes to point us to the Word-Made-Flesh – “a witness to the light.” John has just has just seen Jesus and said, “This is the One. This is the one greater than I. When I baptized him, the heavens opened. This is the Son of God.”
And, as this morning’s Scripture opens, John is standing there with two of his disciples, he sees Jesus, and says – “Look, the Lamb of God!” Now the “seeing” word there – it is seeing into – seeing things whole and deep.[11] John sees Jesus whole – and says “Look!” And the two disciples of John, they follow Jesus.
Seeing them, Jesus turns and asks them this question:
What are you looking for? What are you seeking?
And notice the answer: There is no answer.
The two disciples respond to Jesus’ question – with another question: “Where are you staying?”
And to that question – again, there is no answer.
Instead, an invitation. Jesus says, “Come and see.”
This question that Jesus asks – “What are you looking for?” – it invites more questions. What are the questions that bring you to this moment? And the two disciples – well, they respond as requested – with a question of their own: Where are you staying?
Those questions lead into an invitation. Jesus invites them to explore their own questions: Come and see – not only come and see – come and stay – keep coming, and keep staying. That “stay” word in Greek, well, it’s the dwell word.[12] Jesus invites them to come and dwell with him and with each other to live out their questions -- as the Word, becomes flesh.
This question sits at the beginning of the Gospel of John – open-ended – a question for those two disciples as they begin their journey with Jesus. And as we read the Gospel. it’s a question– for the reader – for us.
What are you looking for? What are you seeking?
Imagine for a moment that someone had asked you that question when you arrived this morning: What are you looking for?
How would you have started to respond?
I don’t know about you, but in this bewildering world, I come here this morning with a lot of questions – grown-up questions. There are all the human questions, particularly in a week where our community has experienced death and loss. And, in our day, I ask things like: How has our nation come to this? How can the government walk away from the values of the Constitution we have been taught since we were children? Why isn’t every national leader speaking out against the dishonesty and lawlessness of this regime? Against its plain and palpable cruelty? How can we work together to make it stop? Most acutely in Minneapolis and across the country, we see folks asking and engaging those questions.
In this morning’s Scripture, Jesus invites us to ask and engage our questions, to dwell together with those questions in the Body of Christ – to let them change us for good as we learn – to engage our questions together and live them out, as the Word – God’s liberating love for every bit of creation – as the Word becomes flesh in the fullness of our humanity.
So, my first invitation to us this morning is to ask more questions. That’s the invitation Jesus extends in this Scripture. I’ve seen that in what we do – the Community Fridge project, Guest-Room project – we ask and grapple with hard questions as we bring new ministries to life. Maybe we could conclude meetings not only with action items, but by naming the questions that remain – and then to keep engaging those questions in the life we live.
And then, I want to invite us to take some time this morning to pray with the questions that Jesus asked – to learn and experience a new spiritual practice. We’ve given you this pink handout entitled “A Few of the Questions Asked by Jesus.” This is the work of my friend, colleague, and teacher Rev. Dr. Sam Hamilton-Poore. We’re going to use a prayer practice he teaches that invites us to look through these questions – grab hold of a question that is drawing us in – and pray with it. And so we’ll do our prayer time a little bit different this morning, as we engage this practice.
PRAYER PRACTICE – Praying with the Questions Jesus Asked
1. I invite you to settle in and get comfortable. Take a few breaths. Feel your pew supporting you, and the Earth beneath that. All of us connected to each other and all creation.
2. Take a moment to read through the list – here, in this moment maybe just one page – read through, and notice any of the questions that stand out to you in any way. Some might resonate, and draw you in. Some might unsettle you. Some, you may not understand at first. Notice what you notice.
3. Now, out of the questions you have noticed, pick one. Don’t fret too much over the choice. Pick one that can be the focus of this prayer and meditation today.
4. And consider these questions:
a. Why would Jesus be asking you this question today?
b. What’s happening in your life today that this question grabs your heart?
c. What emotions does this question evoke? How do you feel that in your body?
d. How would you start to answer the question?
e. What is it about the question that you can’t answer right now? What do you not know?
f. Does this question stir up any further questions?
g. With this question and your emerging response, what would you say to Jesus?
Loving God, for the gift of a questioning and curious spirit, and for all the ways you sit with us and listen, we give you thanks.
We bring you our questions today, and ask that you accompany us, as we work to live lives that bring into this world more justice, more freedom, more love, more life. Help us listen for your questions, and for all the ways that you are inviting us to love the world and help set the whole world free.
With all those who have ever called on your name, with a question or a plea, we pray the prayer that Jesus taught, saying:
Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
[1] This reflection on questions – what they are, how they function – draws from multi-disciplinary sources, including: Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, 2024); https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3596240/ (study posted on the NIH website); https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliabrodsky/2021/12/29/why-questioning-is-the-ultimate-learning-skill/ (article in Forbes, reflecting a business perspective); https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-teachers-ask-better-questions/ (article for teachers).
[2] See Berger, p.2 (Questions “enable us to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.”).
[4] See Berger, p.15.
[5] See https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliabrodsky/2021/12/29/why-questioning-is-the-ultimate-learning-skill/
[7] See Berger, pp.1-17; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3596240/
[9] For background on the Gospel of John and this text, see Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. ix (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995); Gail O’Day and Susan E. Hylen, John (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006); Herman Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple: A Work in Two Editions (New York: T&T Clark Publishing, 2005), pp. 102-09.
[10] See Waetjen, p.103.
[11] See id., pp.102-03.
[12] See id., p.105.
© 2026 Scott Clark (sermon only); the prayer practice is the creative work of Rev. Dr. Sam Hamilton-Poore, used here with permission