“Where are you staying?”
In the Gospel reading, Andrew asks our Lord a simple question, “Where are you staying?” Jesus answers him by allowing Andrew to come with Him. When Andrew heard John the Baptist say “Behold, the Lamb of God” [1] he began to follow Jesus from a distance. How many of us follow Jesus but only from a distance, not willing to come closer to Him? What happens when we follow a person from a distance? Many times we talk about stalkers or maybe we have seen a detective movie in which an agent is following a person, in both cases the person following does not want to been seen by who they are following. Do we follow Jesus from a distance because we are curious and we really don’t want Him to see our thoughts, actions, words, etc.? There is a safety in following from a distance, but there is not an intimacy. Throughout salvation history, God has called His people to intimacy. Psalm 95, the invitatory prayer, prayed each day in the Church, says, “Today, listen to the voice of the Lord: Do not grow stubborn, as your father’s did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works.” From a distance we can “see God’s works” but from a distance we cannot “hear His voice”. When we want to hear someone we might ask him or her to come closer. God is asking us to not follow from a distance but to come closer. From a distance we can see a shadow of the person, or maybe their body and limbs but we cannot see their face. The face is a sign of intimacy; to be so close to a person that you can be face to face is intimate. When people explain that they have met a famous person they usually say how close they were to the person, maybe 10 feet. If they were very close they might say that they spoke “face to face” with that person.
God wants to be face to face with His people. “God of hosts, turn again, we implore, look down from heaven and see. Visit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hand has planted. Men have burnt it with fire and destroyed it. May they perish at the frown of your face. May your hand be on the man you have chosen, the man you have given your strength. And we shall never forsake you again; give us life that we may call upon your name. God of hosts, bring us back; let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.” [2] God not only looks down from heaven but also comes down from heaven. Jesus brings us back so that we can see the face of God and that the face of God will shine on us. When we have an intimate relationship with Jesus, we see the face of God, for Jesus says, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father…” [3] It is only when we see the face of God that we can “perish at the frown of your face” and be saved when His face shines on us. In any relationship, we are upset when we see a frown on the face of the one we love, especially if our actions or words cause the frown. We then in sincere sorry, repent of what we have done and make amends. In the same way we experience great joy when the face of the one we love “shines” on us. If we are not close we see no facial expression at all and are left in the “unknown”. We do not know where we stand in the relationship and in fact could question whether we have the relationship at all.
Jesus turns to them and asks a simple question of what are they looking for. In His heart, Jesus already knew the answer, but He wanted to give them the opportunity to ask it for themselves. Jesus is asking the exact same question to us, “What are you looking for?”
“Where are you going?” Dave Matthews Band This song reminds us of the same question Andrew asks of Jesus, and it is the same for us. Once we realize we are not superheroes, when we do not have all the answers, and we are nothing with out God, we can turn to Him and ask “Where are you going?” and knowing anywhere God is, that is where we belong.
Why does Jesus allow them to come with Him? In a historical sense, the time of day was literally the tenth hour, from sunrise, in the Roman calculation of time, and some suggest that the next day, beginning at sunset, would have been the Sabbath. [4] They would have stayed there because nobody traveled on the Sabbath. In a theological sense, Jesus allows anyone and everyone to follow Him. He invites us to take time out of our day and stay with Him as long as we can. We can be so distracted by everything in the world that we fail to recognize Christ and to be with Him. When we do, Jesus calls us close to Him to be with Him as long as possible in order for us to truly understand and know that Jesus Christ is King. If we recognize this we too can go out and seek others to follow Jesus as well.
What did Jesus and Andrew talk about through the night? The scriptures do not tell us, but what we do know is just after one night, Andrew fully believed that Jesus was the Messiah. We know this because he goes after his brother, Simon, to tell him “We have found the Messiah.” [5] A conversation with Jesus changes lives. We see this throughout the Gospel. The woman at the well and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus have the same time of conversation with Jesus, resulting in a conversion in which the individual is inspired to evangelize, to tell others about Jesus.
Awake My Soul by Mumford and Sons Right in the middle of this song, the singer sings a very poignant lyric, “Where you invest your love, you invest your life.” Jesus calls us to come and follow Him to begin to know Him. But more importantly are souls from the very depths of them we are called to love Him, and if we truly do this our souls will be awaken and we can begin to serve Him with our bodies, minds, and souls because we are all made to meet our Maker.
[1] Jn. 1:36
[2] Psalm 80 (Thursday, Morning Prayer; Week II)
[3] John 14:9
[4] NAB Mt. 1:39 footnotes
[5] Jn. 1:41