You Will Look for Me

Gospel: John 8: 21-30

It is often said that the aim of religion and spirituality is the quest for God.  We undertake a search that takes us to many places - through religious texts, to shrines and temples, amid various theologies and schools of thought, and even membership in various religious communities.  Some claim to have found God in one or more of these places, while others go from place to place not finding what they are looking for in any of these places.  Jesus here says that you will look for me but die in your sins.  

It is recorded that in the beginning God created human beings and declared them to be made in his image and likeness.  We later read that human beings are temples of the Holy Spirit.  We have looked for God in all sorts of places - all of which are places created by human beings, and yet we fail to look for God in the one place God created - within ourselves an within one another.  We go about killing one another claiming to defend where we claim God dwells in these places of our invention.  So we die in our sins.  

So perhaps this Lent we search for God within the depths of our own hearts and in the companionship of other people whom God as created as a divine image.  We might find God in these other places, but only if we recognize the fact that they will only point us back to the place within and to the presence of others where God truly dwells and communicates fully to us.  Only then will the tomb be opened and the presence of the Lord fully known to us.