What are you seeking?

A high peak Adirondack trail sign, pointing the way to different destinations

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Matthew 14:22-33

What are you seeking?

This is Jesus’s first question to his disciples in the Gospel of John. It is a simple question, but we don’t stop very often to ask it. We spend an enormous amount of our lives seeking things: success, security, recognition, wealth, beauty, belonging. Some of those things are good. Some are not. But perhaps the deeper question is not simply, “What do I want?” rather it is, “Is what I want worth wanting?”

I have the question, “What are you seeking?” written on the whiteboard on the first day of class each semester, and I ask my students to write down a two-sentence answer on a small sheet of paper without any further prompts. Most say they want a good grade. Some say they want to learn. There is usually at least one student trying to be cheeky who writes something like, “I want a hamburger,” or “I want a nap.” By doing so, they accidentally bring the class into a much more interesting discussion about the terms of the question itself. But not once in three years of asking my high school students that question has one written, “I’m seeking a life worth living.”

And, of course, why would they? Most of us don’t talk that way. We simply start chasing whatever we have learned to want, which is usually some vague concept of happiness. We rarely stop to ask whether the thing we are seeking is actually worthy of us. That question What kind of life is worth living? has become one of the driving questions of many of our religion classes.

Now, here is a true story:

On Monday of this week, I was talking with the Dean of Academics at my school in Houston about this very question, and I showed him a passage I had recently noticed in the story of Joseph that sounded remarkably like Jesus’s first question in John’s Gospel. We pulled it out and talked about it for a while. Only a few hours later, I opened the Sunday lectionary to see what we would be reading today as I prepared for this sermon. And there it was: the very same passage we had been discussing. With that kind of providential nudge, let’s look at what Joseph was seeking, because it has a lot to say about what we seek and how God is seeking us.

Joseph is seventeen years old. He is his father’s favorite. His father has given him special gifts that none of his ten older brothers received. Joseph has already tattled his brothers to their father and gotten them in trouble. And, on multiple occasions, he has happily shared dreams in which his entire family bows down before him. Arrogant. Entitled. Spoiled. Annoying. That’s a reasonable characterization of Joseph at this stage of the story.

When Joseph’s father asks him to go find his brothers, he encounters a nameless man who asks him this same question: “What are you seeking?” His response seems obvious enough: “I am seeking my brothers.” And yet, given everything we already know about Joseph, we might wonder what that means. Is he seeking his brothers because he loves them? Because he wants his father’s approval? Because he wants another opportunity to prove himself the favored son? We don’t know. Perhaps Joseph doesn’t entirely know himself. He only knows that he is seeking his brothers.

The man points Joseph in their direction and sends him on his way. And that is the beginning of one of the most extraordinary and rich stories in the Old Testament: Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery and fake his death. In Egypt, he is falsely accused and thrown into prison. Through an extraordinary series of events, God raises him from that prison until Joseph becomes Pharaoh’s right-hand man, charged with preparing Egypt for seven years of famine.

Years pass. And then Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt seeking grain. They bow down before Joseph, whom they do not recognize, fulfilling the dreams Joseph had as a boy. Joseph now has extraordinary power over them. He could imprison them. He could kill them. He could finally make them pay for what they did to him.

Instead, Joseph listens as his brothers, not realizing that he can understand them, confess their guilt over what they did to him all those years before. And then Judah – the brother who had proposed selling Joseph into slavery – does something extraordinary. When the life of their youngest brother Benjamin is threatened, Judah offers himself in Benjamin’s place.

The brothers who once sacrificed Joseph to save themselves have become men willing to sacrifice themselves to save a brother. And the arrogant, entitled seventeen-year-old who once dreamed of his brothers bowing before him has become a man who weeps over them, forgives them, and saves their lives. Joseph set out at seventeen seeking his brothers. But it takes years of suffering, loss, and grace before he discovers what it actually means for them to be his brothers. At seventeen, seeking his brothers meant finding where they were. Years later, by the grace of God, Joseph finally finds them.

Before the story even began, Joseph encountered a nameless man who asked him what he was seeking. And it turns out that Joseph’s answer was true: “I am seeking my brothers.” He simply could not yet understand what that answer would come to mean.

This is one of the mysterious ways God works in our lives. We begin by seeking one thing, often without fully understanding why we want it. And God does not always simply give us what we seek. Sometimes, by his grace, God changes the seeker. He teaches us to desire differently. He teaches us what is worth wanting. Joseph set out seeking his brothers. By the end of the story, he has found them, but he has also become a different kind of brother himself.

And that brings us back to Jesus. “What are you seeking?” The disciples don’t really know how to answer him either. They respond with another question: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Jesus does not give them a lecture about what they ought to want. He does not give them the right answer to the question. He simply says, “Come and see.” And so they follow him. They do not yet know where that invitation will lead them. They do not know what they will see. They do not know how much they themselves will change along the way.

Perhaps that is because the Christian life does not begin with having the right answer to the question, “What are you seeking?” Perhaps it begins by following Jesus long enough to allow him to teach us what is worth seeking.

Amen.