Famous First Words

If you go onto the Texas department of criminal justice website, you can find the repository of the last words of executed prisoners.  It used to record their last meals as well, but for now, you just have their last words recorded for public posterity.  I have discussed these words in the past, contrasting them with the last words of Jesus Christ from the cross, and I will be using them today, but just as a frame to talk about something else.  For someone may very well have their last words recorded, for good or ill.  Some of these last words are relatively famous last words, that you could possibly identify by looking at them for a moment.


“Kiss me, Hardy.” Was said by Horatio Nelson


“Honeybun, how do I look in the face?” Were the closing words of Jeb Stuart.


“Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.” Those were the last words of James Wolfe on the plains of Abraham.


Now, the final words of these men were recorded, but nobody recorded their first words.  Nobody recorded their first words because their first words would likely be something incredibly straightforward, and rather dull.  It’s always exciting when children speak their first words, but it’s rarely something overly meaningful.  In fact, it’s likely going to be something along the lines of babble, possibly ‘mama’ or ‘dada,’ but nothing too terribly important. 


Now, we don’t have the actual first words of Jesus Christ recorded, but what we do have are the first time he speaks in each of the Gospels.  Luke’s gospel, I suppose, carries the first words of Christ that would have occurred chronologically, that is words that he speaks as a boy in the temple, where he says “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?”  Each Gospel gives you a different facet of the same story, though, and the Gospel of John flat out tells you why it was written.  The famous last words of the Gospel of John says “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name…Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  Not everything was recorded, but the things that were recorded are there to let you know who this Jesus is, and what he’s all about.  Not all of his words will be recorded, but the important ones, the ones that lead to faith and life in his name, certainly will be.


So the famous first words of Christ are a question.  In our Gospel reading, He is there, walking on the shores of the Jordan river, and John points him out, identifying him as the very lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And when Jesus is identified as such, two of the disciples of John begin to follow him.  Jesus turns and asks them an important question:  “What are you seeking?” 

It’s an open question, and a question that can be asked in a multitude of different ways.  For those who are boomer-tier, you have probably had multiple occasions in which you’ve walked into a room, or downstairs or whatever, and stood there, looking perplexed for a moment.  There’s a good chance that you have been rifling through a drawer, either drunk or clothes, and have had someone come up behind you and helpfully ask what you’re looking for.  But this question, just taken on its face value, is deeper and broader than just that particular moment.  It reminds me of this moment from Star Trek IV, the voyage home, where Spock is answering a number of questions correctly that all have to do with science, logic, history, all that sort of thing.  But then the computer asks him, at the end of the test ‘How do you feel?’  Spock doesn’t know how to answer the question.  The question is not a logic question, a science question, a question about sine waves, but a question about how Spock himself feels.  If you’re actively looking for an item, or a person, or whatever, then you will be able to answer the question of what you are seeking relatively easily.  But if the question is bigger and broader than that, if the question is about what you are seeking, big picture style, it’s much harder. 


When Jesus asks that question to his disciples, he is asking it to you as well.  What are you seeking? What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?  You spend your days working, expending effort, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, all those things, and you must be doing them for a reason.  What is that? What are you looking for overall?  Honestly, we are usually too busy working, driving, drinking, smoking, watching Netflix or sleeping to consider the large metaphysical questions, so when Christ asks this question in the words of the Gospels directly to us, we stand there, like Spock, blinking and staring at the page.  We may as well repeat Spock’s answer “I do not understand the question.” 

It’s a rare occasion in which we deal with the question as printed.  It’s a rare occasion in which we deal with the implications of answering what it is that we are looking for.  What are we looking for, what is the pearl of great price that we seek? What is it that we desperately want to find, what is the focus of our lives and effort?  Well, most people would have hard time answering that question.  Even the disciples who find Jesus that day don’t have a clear answer – instead, they say “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  They follow him to where he is staying, and stayed with him that day.  Whatever he said to them was important enough for them to find others and to bring them to Jesus, with the promise “we have found the Christ.”


So, you who are reading this blog, the question comes to any of us who read the scriptures, where Jesus asks us “what are you looking for?”  What do you hope to find in the person of Jesus Christ? The world by and large is confused by this question, and will approach it the same way as Spock, not understanding it. But why the Christian faith at all?  Why do we go to church, venerate the Lord, listen to his word, any of it? What is the purpose?  For a great many people, their understanding not just of God, but of the concept of gods in general, comes down to hoping to find something that will operate as a justification for what they do . For what the human heart wants and craves is to be justified.  The human heart desires to hear the voice from heaven that says to us ‘you are already doing the right thing.  You have nothing to change.’  But we want to hear that when we do have things to change.  We want to hear that voice when we have a large number of things to change.  We want to hear that voice no matter what.  And when you want to hear that voice from God, even in the midst of your own imperfections, in the midst of your sins, then you aren’t looking for God at all.  You’re looking for an idol.


The big question any of us Christians have to ask ourselves is how we would handle it if Christ were to speak words against us directly.  What would you do if Jesus spoke directly against you, with some degree of anger or wrath that would humble you? What if the most important thing Jesus came to do was not to reinforce the view that you have that you are the best and have nothing to change?  Part of the revitalization of the faith is to realize that for too long the dialogue from the church was only to say to people that they were super, and had nothing to change.  Morally, says the church, you are an exemplar, and have nothing to alter.  Even Jesus of Nazareth, the lamb of God would agree.

But if he is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, then John the Baptist has in mind something different than what we normally think.  If you are seeking a god who will agree with you all the time in every way, then Jesus will have nothing for you.  But if you have in mind the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, then you have to deal with the fact that there are sins to be forgiven . That’s an incredibly hard question to deal with.  By and large, we want to have all of the benefits of justification without the mess of dealing with the sins that exist.  But all that does is to make us into what we tend to be – creatures that believe so powerfully that they are right that they will earnestly resist anyone who tells them otherwise.  There have been lots of people who have left their spouses, left their churches, left their families because they were confronted at a certain point and told that they weren’t 100% correct on everything.  But in the pages of the Bible, Jesus tells you where you have gone wrong frequently and consistently.  He calls the one who he named Peter, the rock on which the church would be built “Satan” just a few moments afterwards, so you know that he’s not all about ignoring problems.

He’s all about fixing them. 


Christ is all about making you perfect as God is perfect.  He’s about giving you abundant life, and full joy, that’s his role and his job.  But this only works if your sin and imperfection is encountered, dealt with, and removed by Christ at the cross.  This only works if what you are looking for is not an idol, not a cheerleader, but a savior.  And that’s Christ. The very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.


That question posed to the disciples, ‘what are you seeking?’ is asked to us as well.  What are you seeking?  I hope it is forgiveness.  I hope it is salvation.  For you will find that in Jesus Christ.