Please see the table below

A B C
1 31 34 23
2 22 27 45
3 31 12 24
4 45 14 27
5 23 45 12

How to use lookup (or any function), which looks for value only in
column C and return the value from corresponding row in column A. Say
I want to look for "27" in column C, and if i find 27 in column C, it
should return 45 from column A.

The problem with vlookup function is that if I define my Table_array
from A1:C5, it will look for 27 in range A1:C5 and will match 27 from
cell B2 first and then would return 22. If I define my Table_array
from C1:C5, it will match 27 from row 4, but cannot return anything
from Column A because vlookup cannot return the value from outside the
range of its table_array.

I hope I am able to explain my problem. Any way to overcome it
without using VBA?

Thanks
Chatur