396 Saints at The Wrong Time

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Saints at The Wrong Time”, originally shared on January 29, 2026. It was the 396^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Doing the right thing for the right reason is our goal, right? But is doing the right thing for the wrong reason bad? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Sally and I went to the 44^th Annual Asian American Expo at the Fairplex in Pomona a couple of weeks ago. It’s the largest Lunar New Year celebration in the country.

   There was a whole pavilion dedicated just to anime culture with lots of cosplay. There were 7 pavilions filled with food and cultural enrichment. There was live entertainment, and I got to speak some of the Mandarin I’ve been leaning. The place was packed!

   I had bought our tickets online in advance because its promotional material said that it might sell out.

   But when we got to the entry gates, we saw that there were several lines for ticket holders, and one line with a sign over it that said that if you are 70 or older, you could get in free!

   I told Sally, “Let’s go in there. Maybe if we don’t scan our tickets, we can get our money back. (that’s another story).

   So, we went through that line and, when we got to the front, the guy there asked for Sally’s ID. He checked it and waved her through.

   Then I stepped up. He took a look at me as I reached for my ID and said, “That’s OK. Come on in.” (!) 😊

   But aging doesn’t bother me.

   In fact, one thing that you may not know about me is that I can travel through time.

   I didn’t always know that I could travel through time but, one day several years ago, I realized that I could.

   It’s called aging. It just happens very slowly. 😊

   I’ve learned many things by traveling through time and one of them is that time moves pretty fast.

   One day you’re young, and the next day you’ve got a favorite pharmacy. 😊

   But the only day that we are conscious and alive is in the present. It’s weird, isn’t it? 😊

   Bil (yes, that’s the correct spelling) Keane, the cartoonist who drew “The Family Circus” comic said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”

   So how do we live our lives, right now, when we believe that these lives are gifts from God? What does it mean when Christians suffer in these lives? What does the Christian life look like in our largely secular culture?

   All of those questions and more come into play when we look at the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12, AKA The Beatitudes, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

   Some people say that the Beatitudes represent the radical love that the teachings of Jesus call his followers to live by, but do they?

   I would say that every word in that sentence that you just read is wrong.

   I would say that because I grew up on another planet. Yes, in addition to being a time traveler, I grew up on another planet. 😊

   Or, at least, it seems like that to me more and more every day.

   I grew up in a stable home where several generations of my family were alive and lived close by, where a skilled worker could buy a home and support a family, where kids could tell their parents that they were going out to explore in the morning and their mom would tell them to be home before the street lights came on and wouldn’t think about it for the rest of the day, where I actually did walk to school with holes in my shoes, in the snow, and it was uphill, both ways! 😊

   And, I learned that a good climbing tree had lots of branches and that I could climb it by looking up and grabbing the first branch. And then I could look up and grab a higher branch, and then another branch, and another, and keep going up until there were no more branches or they were too small to support me, and then I would look out and I could see forever.

   That’s how identity, confidence, and trust were built. Not by the baseless affirmations of others, but by doing something hard.

   We see that life lived in this week’s Gospel reading.

    It points toward a life that the world thinks of as hard and away from everything that the world values today. It points us to the reign of God, who makes no promises that life will be easy, but only that He will never leave us or forsake us.

   Is that enough?

   What would you need to call yourself blessed?

   Take a look at who Jesus calls blessed, in Matthew 5:1-12,

   ¹When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ²Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ⁵“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. ⁶“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ⁷“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. ⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ⁹“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. ¹⁰“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

   What is He talking about? Could this be any farther from the values of this world?

   What Jesus is saying is what theologians mean when they talk about “the theology of the Cross.”

   Jesus says that being blessed is knowing that you have nowhere to turn but to God, and that you turn to God.

   Being blessed is living in the freedom that knows that this world is not all there is, but that there is a better life that has been prepared for us.

   Being blessed is knowing that you are not alone, that God enters into our weakness, our mourning, our desire for a better world, our work for peace, and our testimony to the reliability of God in Jesus Christ, and God meets us there.

   The Beatitudes project a message that makes no sense to the world, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18,

¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

   We are sinners separated from God. We can’t save ourselves. Our only hope is for a Savior. The message of the cross is that God has come and   our Savior, our Savior from ourselves.

   The message of the Beatitudes breaks into our world from the outside. God is made manifest in it. It’s an Epiphany!

   Which is why, I guess, that we get the same text today, in the season of Epiphany, that we’ll read again in nine months, on November 1^st, on All Saints Day. We are saints today, but at the wrong time. 😊

   Earlier, I said that some people say that the Beatitudes represent the radical love that the teachings of Jesus call his followers to live by. And I added that every word in that sentence is wrong.

   Why? Because many Christians today are saints, but at the wrong time.

   Because following Jesus is about who we are first. What we do comes second. It is the natural outcome of who we are Jesus Christ.

   It’s like the climax of T.S. Eliot’s play/poem “Murder in the Cathedral”, where a character says, “The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

   The Christian life is lived in response to the new life that God has given us in faith.

   Doing the right things to appease or to satisfy God is a betrayal of that gift. That’s why Jesus was always knocking heads with the Pharisees.

   Who we are is a gift from God, not something we have to earn. We have been born again in our baptism, we have been made a new creation in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created, restored for us by Jesus on the cross.

   What we do isn’t what makes us Christians, it’s who we are that makes us do what we do. That’s what makes us Christians.

   It’s like the situation we sometimes find ourselves in when someone tells us, “You don’t have to believe it. You just have to do it.” When that happens, as someone said online, you can be pretty sure you are living in an oppressive system. Our Gospel reading for today describes the people who don’t do it, who resist the temptation to go along to get along, who don’t conform to this world.

   All who believe and are baptized shall be saved, not those who think that they can earn their way by their actions.

   So, when we see people on the news describing their social and political actions as an expression of God’s radical justice found in the Beatitudes, they may pride themselves as being radical, but they are not nearly radical enough.

   The word “radical” comes from the Latin word, “radix”, for “root” or “source”.

   The truly radical vision of the Kingdom of God is life transformation, at the root of our natural human nature, that comes to all those who receive the gift of faith through God’s grace and are baptized. It comes from the source, from God within and among us. We live from the inside, out.

   “Justice” in the Bible has one clear definition: it is doing God’s will. It comes from our inner transformation, not from the Bible verses I can find that agree with my politics.

   We can’t pick only the causes that draw media outrage today and justify our personal sense of righteous rebellion “by any means necessary” and call that the Christian life. We live on a much larger, more radical, scale.

   The comedian Garry Shandling once reflected on Leo Durocher, the ruthless coach of the Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers, who famously said, “Nice guys finish last.”

   Garry Shandling said, “Nice guys finish first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where the finish line is.” That is radical.

   Jesus proclaims it in every time he says “blessed” in this week’s Gospel reading to people who have done or experienced hard things, mostly because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

   Of the poor in spirit he says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To those who mourn he says, “they will be comforted.” To the meek he says, “they will inherit the earth.” To those who hunger and thirst for righteousness he says, “they will be filled.” To the merciful he says, “they will receive mercy.” To the pure in heart he says, “they will see God.” To the peacemakers he says, “they will be called children of God.”

   To those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake he says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To those who are reviled and persecuted and spoken against with all kinds of evil falsely on His account he says, “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. ‘

   None of those things are what most people would describe as the blessed life today.

   In fact, in Jesus’ day, they, especially the religious leaders, would have said that those people were getting what they deserved for being sinners.

   But Jesus called them blessed. Why? Because they knew that they needed a Savior, and that they had one on Jesus Christ.

   But things have not changed much in some ways since then.

   I read an interview with an editor of “Christianity Today” magazine who is a former church leader in the Baptist denomination. He said that pastors are increasingly telling him that church members are coming up to them, after even parenthetically mentioning the Beatitudes and asking the pastors where they got those “liberal talking points”.  

   When the pastors would say that they were literally quoting the words of Jesus Christ, the response was, “that doesn’t work for me anymore. That’s weak.”

   That reaction is an excellent example of the contrast that historic Christianity brought to the idea of what it means to be a man in this world. It is a change grounded in this week’s Gospel reading.

   I read a review some time ago of Nancy Pearcey’s book The Toxic War on Masculinity, praising it as a "splendid" and nuanced analysis that navigates modern gender debates by contrasting the "Good Man" (the Christian ideal of responsibility/sacrifice) with the "Real Man" (the secular, aggressive stereotype).

   The Real Man was “tough, strong, aggressive, highly competitive, unwilling to show weakness, unemotional, imposing, isolated, and self-made. They grab all the guns, gold, and girls they can get, and don’t care much who gets hurt in the process.”

   The Good Man, the man of God, is characterized by “honor, duty, integrity, and a willingness to sacrifice. They’re responsible and generous, and they provide and protect, especially the weak.”

   We all struggle with putting ourselves at the defining center of our lives and not God. It’s the tendency that is at the center of our national divisions and partisan diatribes. What can we do to bring the temperature down?

   Popular wisdom was once, “If you can’t say something nice about a person, don’t say anything at all.”

   The 16^th Century Church reformer Martin Luther’s takes that wisdom a bit further in his Small Catechism with his explanation of The Eighth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

   He said, “What is this? (or What does this mean?) We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

   In our world, some people would take advantage of that kind of empathy. They would weaponize it and use it against us.

   But what if everybody practiced Luther’s meaning of the 8^th Commandment? It would make the world an almost unfathomably much better place, a much holier place, because it would reflect the grace of God in action.

   Sally and I often drive through LA on our way to the Museum of Tolerance where Sally is a docent or to some doctor’s appointment.

   Sometimes, we take a route that brings us to this sign, “Welcome to Beverly Hills. Police drone in use.”

   We used to see signs that said, “Speed enforced by aircraft,” though I don’t think that I ever saw any speed enforcing aircraft. And these days we’ve never actually seen a speed enforcement drone. Yet. 😊

   I’ve thought that maybe the signs were only set-up to be a deterrent. A threat to control our destructive behavior. Sometimes we need that.

   There is no threat in The Beatitudes, however. They are signs that point us to God. 

   They are a reminder that we are called to be saints at the right time. Anything else is just self-righteousness, a lack of trust in God.

   They are a reminder that doing the right thing for the right reason is the foundation of the Christian life when the reason is Jesus.

   The Beatitudes are a reminder that we are not protected from challenges, even suffering, in this life but that we live in God’s promise, which we see plainly in Hebrews 13:5b,

for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

   It’s by doing the hard things that God has called, equipped, and sent us to do, to be saints at the right time, to do the right thing for the right reason, that we live.

   It’s like climbing a tree. We look up and grasp the hand of God.

395 Foreigner

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Foreigner”, originally shared on January 21, 2026. It was the 395^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Are we foreigners in this world? Do we belong here, really? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Sally and I went to the 44^th annual Asian American Expo at the Fairplex in Pomona last Saturday.

   I wore a T-shirt with the word “lǎowài”, (老外), printed on the front in the Mandarin Chinese characters. “Lǎowài” is a slang Mandarin Chinese term for “foreigner”.

   What it means depends upon how you say it, though, as with many words in all languages.

   It can be an insult, though a mild one or (on a T-shirt) it can be a funny, ironic way to say that a person recognizes that they are unfamiliar with Chinese culture.

   It’s a mild insult because it literally means “old outside/foreign” and originally meant “amateur”, but today it also means “non-Chinese’, or “outsider”, or “alien”.

   It’s also funny to some Mandarin speaking persons because it’s a reminder of some Westerners who have had a tattoo done on their skin because they think that the Chinese figures look cool, while the characters actually mean something derogatory, or not understood or as intended, like “foreigner!”.

   In fact, several people asked me if I knew what it meant. 😊

   “Lǎowài” means something similar to the word “gentile(s)” in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, Matthew 4:12-23.

   Jesus has been baptized and tempted by the devil in the wilderness for 40 days.

   Then, this happens, at the beginning of today’s reading, in Matthew 4:12-17,

¹²Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ¹⁵“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— ¹⁶the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” ¹⁷From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

   God ended three hundred years of prophetic drought with the appearance of John the Baptist. There had been no word from God through a prophet for all that time. And then almost immediately John points to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of God, and then John gets thrown in jail and taken out of the picture!

   St. Matthew tells us that the imprisonment of John was a turning point for Jesus.

   Jesus moved. He changed his place of residence to fulfill a prophecy. And if that prophecy sounds familiar, it’s because we just heard it on Christmas Eve, Isaiah 9:2-7, and again as the First Lesson in most churches this coming Sunday!

   Jesus, the light of the world, has dawned, bringing life to the world that had been sitting in darkness. It’s an epiphany!

   And what message does Jesus, the light of the world, bring to “the people who sat in darkness”, and “in the region and shadow of death”?

   “’Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” The same message John the Baptist used to prepare people for Jesus. It’s time for a change!

   We consider the meaning of The Magi during the season of Epiphany, the wise men who came to see the baby Jesus. They were the first non-Jews, or “gentiles” to encounter Him.

   How could they not have been changed by that encounter?

   In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi”, he writes as one of the wise men,

“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”

   To encounter Christ is to die to our old selves, to die with Christ in our baptisms, to be transformed. His age is not important. His being is. Everything is made new in Him, and he calls us to repent.

   “Repentance” doesn’t mean to say, “I’m sorry.” Repentance means to receive an inner reorientation, to turn around, to become a new creation in the living relationship with the one true living God, to turn away from “an alien people clutching their gods.”

   That is exactly what happens when Jesus calls Simon who is called Peter, Andrew, and James and John to follow Him. It’s exactly what happens to us.

   Watch how long it takes for those four fishermen to consider what to do with their lives once they have received the call from Jesus to follow him, continuing in verse 18,

¹⁸As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” ²⁰Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

   They clocked out “immediately.” How could that happen?

   Some of them had encountered Jesus before, but now Jesus was inviting them to respond.

   And they responded. Immediately. Why?

   When Apple Computer was getting started Steve Wozniak was the tech guy and Steve Jobs was the visionary/marketer guy. As the company began to grow, however, it became obvious that they were going to need a highly able CEO to run the business side of the company.

   Steve Jobs was focused on recruiting Jim Scully, the CEO of the Pepsi Corporation, one of the largest multi-national corporations in the world.

   John Scully was reluctant to say yes to this little tech start-up. Until one day, Steve Jobs turned to him and said, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

   That was convincing. He relented and helped grow Apple Computer into a major corporation and social transformer.

   Jesus made no such promises to his disciples.

   But God did change the world through their faithfulness.

   Saying “yes” to Jesus was transformational.

   Have you ever been a team captain, taking turns picking the players for your side? What if you were an employer, what kind of person would you be looking for? How do you decide who to vote for? Jesus doesn’t seem to look for any of the qualities that we would choose when he selects his disciples. God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called, just like he called you and me.

   And they weren’t recruited with a romantic appeal to a life filled with challenges, like the way young men were alleged to have been recruited to deliver mail for the Pony Express with the poster, “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” 

   Jesus offered no glamor, only an invitation: “Follow me.”

   But every one of those disciples who accepted that invitation but one would die because they followed Jesus. And God changed the world through them.

   The invitation to follow Jesus is what we refer to as a “call”. Our word “vocation” comes from the Latin word “vocare”, which means “to call”.

   The Lutheran understanding of work is that we all have a vocation. It’s our job.

   The Lutheran understanding of work is that every job is what we do in answer to God’s call.

   Some people are called to be teachers. Some are called to be artists, or lawyers or nurses or electricians or businesspersons or homemakers, shoemakers, athletes, or pastors. None is more noble or more holy than another. They’re just different.

   We live our Christian vocations in our daily lives by being good at what we do and, thereby, glorifying God.

   The disciples were called to literally follow Jesus as their primary jobs for a particular reason. They glorified God by their obedience. Nothing else qualified them.

   God didn’t call the rich and powerful, the well-known and respected, the popular or the influencers. God called regular people.

   They weren’t successful by the world’s standards. Their only distinguishing trait seems to be their willingness to say “Yes”. Remember the rich young ruler that Jesus called to follow Him? He was successful by the world’s standards, and he said “no”.

   God has God’s own standards, and God often sees things in us that we don’t.

   When the prophet Samuel was sent to anoint the next king of Israel after Saul from among the sons of Jesse in Bethlehem, Samuel saw Eliab and thought for sure he was the one. But David wasn’t there. Jesse hadn’t even called in his son David from the fields. He thought he was too young, too small, not King material, and he thought Samuel would feel the same. 

   Instead, we see in 1 Samuel 16:7, speaking of Eliab,

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

   Likewise, God calls us to change the world through Him who strengthens us.

   We are, all of us, called to be disciples of Jesus Christ, whatever the form our particular vocation might take.

   And even though few of us are called to fish for a living, we are all called to be fishers of people, to make disciples.

   That means going to where the fish are. Sometimes that means being quiet and listening, as in the title of a book on evangelism, Out of Their Faces and Into Their Shoes. Sometimes it means being patient. Sometimes it means enduring long stretches when nothing seems to be happening.

   But what it always means is saying “yes” each day to living as the disciples of Jesus Christ.

   And what did the disciples see when they followed Jesus? We see in the conclusion of our main Bible reading for today, in Matthew 4:23

²³Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

   Jesus is the Messiah, the one anointed to be the redeemer of Israel. But, from his very first day of his 3-year public ministry, we see in today’s text that Jesus has also come to bring good news to the gentiles, the foreigners, to us.

   And we have become Christians because of an unbroken line of witnesses to who Jesus is for us going back 2,000 years. An unbroken line.

   Jesus taught and he proclaimed the good news of the inbreaking kingdom of God.

   He performed miracles, not as suspensions of the laws of nature, but as signs of what nature was intended to be from the beginning, pointing to the Creator and the Redeemer and the Sanctifier of all that is: God.

   Jesus’ miracles are signs of the greatest miracle of all: they point to the reconciliation of God and humanity at the cross, restoring the living relationship with the one true living God for which we Created.

   When the wise man in the poem says, “I should be glad of another death,” he is speaking of dying to his old life, dying to sin and rising to new life in Jesus Christ. Repentance. Baptism. Things in which we participate every day. And he speaks of the death of Jesus on the cross that makes our new life possible, so that we can say “yes” to Jesus’ invitation to us to both be his disciples and as a result to say “yes” to his command to us to make disciples.

   One of the highlights of the Asian American Expo last Saturday for us was the appearance of a man on one of the stages who demonstrated the centuries old Chinese art of Bian Lian. It comes from the Sichuan Opera where performers instantly change elaborate silk masks to reflect shifting emotions.

   We learned from a friend of his that he had studied this art from childhood.

   He developed techniques like pulling threads, flicking fans, and blowing powder, using misdirection and skills that are closely guarded secrets passed down through families.

   We especially liked that he came down to make contact with the audience so that we could see the masks change right in front of us.

   We also learned that he had come to the United State many years ago and had opened a restaurant that is still very successful.

   And, at the end of his performance, he took off all his masks and showed his real face.

   There were then no more illusions, but only the real flesh of a human being.

   The work “hypocrite” is a Greek word that comes from words for “under” and “to judge, or interpret”, and originally meant “actor”, based on the practice of actors in Greek plays speaking from under the masks that represented their particular character in a play.

   The only face we need before God is the real flesh of a human being.

   The only true selves we need to speak from are our new selves in Jesus Christ.

   Peter, called to follow Jesus in today’s Gospel reading, reminds us in 1 Peter 2:10,

¹⁰       Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

    We are God’s people. We have been called, we have been equipped and we have been sent.

   Do you want to change the world?

   Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, once said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

   We aren’t any better than anyone else.

   But our God is greater than everything else.

   We were all foreigners, but now we are followers. God saved us and made us his people by His grace, through faith and in baptism.

   Paul writes, in Romans 5:6-8,

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

   Jesus is still looking for followers whose lives begin with the eternal transformation that comes when we encounter Jesus.

   Jesus is still looking for followers whose eternal life begins when we say “yes”.

   Jesus is still looking for followers whose commitment comes in response to what Jesus has already done for us on the cross.

   He has turned his face toward you. His true face.

   Jesus has now called you to show His face to the world. 

394 Who's Looking?

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who’s Looking?”, originally shared on January 14, 2026. It was the 394^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Many churches include “come and see” on their websites and promotional materials, but is anybody looking? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Have you ever applied for a job? You probably had to bring your résumé.

   "Résumé," is a French word that means “summary”, but it’s not the word French people use when they apply for a job.

   In France, and in many other parts of the world, job-seekers bring their CV, or “Curriculum Vitae”, which is not French at all but Latin for “course of life”.

   Here’s a fun fact: when Sting, the rock & pop singer and bass player, appeared on the TV game show “Jeopardy” in 2021, he had written lyrics to the show’s theme song and he sang them:

“Of all the things in my CV,

Everything in life from A-Z,

But how I wish my ma could see

Here I am on Jeopardy!”

Here I am on Jeopardy!”

   But whatever you bring, résumé  or CV, you are presenting your credentials to do the work you are setting out to do.

   John the Baptist proclaims Jesus’ credentials, the day after John has baptized him, in the text that the vast majority of churches will be hearing this coming Sunday, John 1:29-42.

   The work of Jesus’ 3-year public ministry that has now begun at age 30, with his baptism, will put Jesus in jeopardy with the religious and occupying Roman authorities of Israel.

   Here’s how it starts, on the day after Jesus’ baptism, with the “he” being John the Baptist, in John 1:29,

²⁹The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 

   Here is Jesus, both who he is and what he’s going to do to change everything we know about life, presented in one descriptive phrase: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

   Here’s why:

   Adam and Eve were created for a living relationship with God. Evil entered the world when they rejected the covenant God made with them. Their Sin separated humanity from God. How could that relationship be restored?

   God called Abraham to sacrifice his one beloved son Isaac and, by faith, Abraham was ready to do it. But God stopped him and provided a lamb for the sacrifice in the place of Isaac.

   God called each household among the people of Israel, in slavery in Egypt, to kill a lamb and to paint the blood of the lamb over their door post. That night, the angel of death visited every household in Egypt and the first-born son died. Except, where the angel of death saw the blood of the lamb over the door, it passed over that door, and the people of God were set free from slavery.

   God called the people of God to make an animal sacrifice on the annual Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, as a sacrifice for the sins of all of Israel, the people of God.

   John announces right here, at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, and that he will die in our place as a sacrifice so that all of God’s people might be set free from the effects of Sin and have the living relationship with God for they were created restored.

   Jesus, at the same time fully God and fully human being, is the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world!

   John the Baptist continues with verse 30,

³⁰This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³²And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 

   John declares right there his life’s purpose in his offering of a baptism for repentance. Jesus comes to be baptized so that He might be revealed to the world and sacrificially be baptized as a model of what is necessary for all humanity.

   It was realized in the living reality of the one true living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Jesus’ baptism.

   John continues in verse 33,

³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’

 ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” 

   Then, on the second day after Jesus’ baptism, this happens, starting with verse 35,

³⁵The next day John 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. ⁴⁰One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 

   Two of John’s disciples had understood what John was teaching and sought to follow a greater teacher, Jesus.

   Jesus responds to them with a question, “What are you looking for?”

   Everybody’s looking for something. Few can name it, and fewer find it. And when they find it, they realize that they haven’t found it, but that they have been found.

   For example, Sally and I have subscribed to Netflix since the pandemic, and we were stuck at home. We still subscribe. But, way more often than not, unless we’re looking for something specific, we say, “Let’s see what’s on Netflix” and spend an hour so looking at trailers without success, give up, and go to bed.

   But, if someone we know recommends something to us, we watch it and we are almost always glad we did.

   Why?

   When you find something good, you tell others about it. When others you trust tell you about something good you check it out.

   John apparently was not looking for a larger following. He loses two of his disciples and is fine with that.

   One of them, Andrew, tells his brother Simon about what he has found, and we see what happens next, beginning with John 1:41,

⁴¹He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). ⁴²He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

   That is the key to evangelism and to church development right there, “We have found the Messiah” the deliverer, the one who can give you what you have been looking for.

   I heard some news people on TV this week talking about an old commercial for Fabergé Organics shampoo. You might remember the pre-social media shampoo commercial where a woman says, “I told two friends” and the screen splits. And then two faces of the same woman say, “And I told two friends.” And the screen splits again and four faces of the same woman say, “And I told two friends,” and the screen splits again, and so on.

   That’s how the Church grows.

   Our media may change, but the personal witness of a credible friend or relative still accounts for 80% - 85% of all the people who come to Christ and who become active members of a local Christian church.

   The key to evangelism is not to find the right proposition or argument, but to introduce people to Jesus.

   Evangelism is, as has been said, just one beggar telling another where to find food.

   “Come and see” is not just inviting people to come to your church.  It is inviting people to come to know Jesus. And when people know Jesus, they want to come and worship Him and tell others about Him.

   Andrew invited his brother Simon to know Jesus and the result was so transformational that Simon’s name had to change; his new name was Cephas (translated Peter), which means “the rock.” It was given to him by Jesus.

   The people who are looking today are not looking for a friendly church home, or an institution they are needed to pay for, or someone else’s legacy to preserve. They don’t need a social or political movement using religious language, or a host of things they can find someplace else and better and for a lower cost.

   Many are not looking for a church at all. They are looking for personal fulfilment. They are chasing a dollar. They are hoping for an out-of-court settlement. They want to spend more time with their families. They are looking for a thousand things that people put at the center of their lives and turn to in times of need that are not God.

   And no matter what they accomplish in life or what they think that they have, there will always be an inner emptiness that can only be filled with one thing, the thing that they were created for: a living relationship with the one true living God.

   How do we present Jesus in a way that people will come to Him and be made whole”

   Psychiatrist Victor Frankl survived a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He wondered why some people survived while others did not. The thing he noticed that most survivors had in common was not health or youth or strength, but purpose. He observed that “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” His “why” was to write his book, Man’s Search for Meaning.

   He said, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

   Does this not describe our age. Civilizations in the West were once known for their great temples and cathedrals, then their centers for the fine arts, then their massive commercial centers. Now, the great cities of the West are known for their sports complexes, gambling palaces, and entertainment centers.

   Why are people looking in all the wrong places to fill an emptiness they can’t define?

   There is what some have described as a “God-shaped hole” in every person when the relationship with God for which we were created is absent.

   Some seek pleasure. Some seek any plausible answer that satisfies for now. Others in some counterfeit thing that looks like the real thing in order to fill that emptiness.

   “Spiritual but not religious.” Rehab as repentance. A life-coach for self-affirmation. Material success in a material world. Financial freedom for security. Artificial notoriety for real fame.

   And yet, to what can they turn when their world view is tested? When they ask themselves or encounter the question, “What are you looking for?”

   Where can we turn to find meaning? Where can we turn when our churches no longer expect or offer life transformation?

   When I was in seminary, I took a class on futures studies. We were taught that, within our lifetimes, one of our biggest challenges as pastors would be helping people find meaning when machines made all work unnecessary. That didn’t happen before I retired, but Artificial Intelligence is now raising questions about what it means to be human. And is it enough?

   What does it mean to be human?

   We are learning more and more about DNA and genes, and the underlying proteins and the underlining metabolomes, and what theologian Leonard Sweet calls “God dust.” But what happens when we can eliminate any genetic trait that we find undesirable? What happens when something we value as a human trait is something that others do not?

   Does answering that we are created in the image of God for a living relationship with the one true living God provide enough of an answer?

   Climate change and the current extinction of animal species has called the sustainability of the human race into question, as has the specter of world war.

   Theology, the study of what we can know about God through reason and God’s revelation, was once called The Queen of the Sciences. The word “science” is rooted in a Latin word for knowledge. How can we know what we know?

   I saw a meme once that contained the text, “Biology is applied Chemistry; Chemistry is applied Physics; Physics is applied Mathematics.” “And,” someone commented. “Mathematics is applied Logic; Logic is applied Philosophy, and Philosophy is applied Theology.” 😊

   We can say “yes, there is meaning, and it comes through a transforming encounter with the one true living God in Jesus Christ.”

   That is our only answer. It is pointing to Jesus Christ, our redeemer and not some little helper meeting our needs.

   Jesus both asks the question of life’s meaning and answers it. He is all that ultimately satisfies, and the revitalization of our churches is contained in Him, and in Him alone.

   People aren’t looking for the church, they see nothing there for them. But the church is the only place where what they are looking for in life can be found.

   The thing is that we can’t look for God. We are sinners. We wouldn’t know where to look or what to look for.

   The good news of Jesus is that God is seeking us everywhere and in everything. He died on the cross to restore the relationship with God for which we were created for all who believe and are baptized.

   All we can “do” is to open our hearts and resonate with that work of the Holy Spirit outside of us. God transforms us. It used to be called our “conversion”.

   God gives us newness of life!

   The Church began as a community of people whose lives were transformed by Jesus, people who loved Him and, because of that love, loved one another. It was their résumé, their CV. He was what defined them.

   We can be that again.