Come and See
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
January 18, 2015
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
John 1: 35-51
Genesis 28: 10-17
Let us pray,
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
35 The next
day again John was standing with two of his disciples; 36 and he
looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The
two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus
turned, and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” And they
said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He
said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying; and they
stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One
of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s
brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, “We
have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to
Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You
shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
43 The next
day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And he found Philip and said to him,
“Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Beth-saida, the city of Andrew
and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathana-el, and said to him, “We have
found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathana-el said to him, “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47
Jesus saw Nathana-el coming to him, and said of him, “Behold, an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” 48 Nathana-el said to him,
“How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you
were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathana-el answered him,
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus
answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you
believe? You shall see greater things than these.” 51 And he said
to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” [1]
Call stories are always my favorite stories
because they preach so well. They seem
to always find us where ever we are, and speak to us because they relate to us.
Call stories are about regular people, doing regular stuff, and then all of a
sudden something very irregular comes in. And there is God calling you to
service. There is Jesus calling you to become a disciple, to follow, or in this
case to Come and See. This week we take a look at the call of the disciples
according to John's gospel. It is interesting because like other aspects in
John's gospel, as we have seen, it is different from the other Gospels. There
aren't any fish, no full nets, no I'll make you fishers of men. Instead we get
two different descriptions that are very much related.
In the first grouping, we get a little bit of
background that the others don't give, that some of the disciples of Jesus had
been disciples of John the Baptist first. We get told that there were two
followers of John, who heard him say, "Behold the Lamb of God." And
so these two guys having heard that, decide to check out Jesus, since it was
early in the day, they check him out hanging with him for the afternoon and
decide to follow. One of those disciples is named. . . Andrew, and the other is not named. It is
noteworthy that one is named and the other isn't. . . what do you think? Who do
you think this unnamed disciple could be? . . . . . . Right. . . Most people suspect that it is
Judas, and he isn't named because they didn't want to acknowledge him. But the
other one, Andrew, is Simon's brother, who would later be called Peter,
actually here in this story at first he is given the name, well Cephas. . . and
it is Andrew that tells him that they have found the Messiah. So this one
doesn't have the details around Peter being the one to first claim that Jesus
was the Messiah. . . but again John's Gospel doesn't wait to say stuff like
that, making sure that the claim of exactly who Jesus is, who we are supposed
to believe and receive is already here right up front from the very beginning.
So those are some of the details from the first half of our reading.
The second half covers the calling of
Nathanael. It just so happens that Nathanael is from a town outside of
Nazareth, Bethsaida. And it is Phillip that comes to him and says. . . Hey we
found the Messiah, come with us. He's from Nazareth it is great. . . and
Nathanael, famously says "Nazareth. . . really. . . what good could come
from Nazareth?" It would be like someone in Louisa wondering if anything good could come from Orange, or a UVA grad wondering if anything good could come from Blacksburg, and myself I would have trouble believing that anything good could ever come from Randolph Macon in Ashland. . . But like the others Nathanael is convinced by Jesus to
follow. And this is what drew me to this. It jumped right out at me in my first
reading of it. Notice what Jesus says to all of these guys. He says, "Hey
come see." He doesn't argue, he
doesn't entice, he doesn't really even preach, he just says, hey follow, come
and see what you will see.
There are literally 13 references to sight in
this passage alone. There is "Behold," twice, then look a bunch of
times, see a bunch of times, and saw a bunch of times. So it really jumped out
at me. . . Jesus asked these guys to come see, and they saw, and seeing was
believing for them. What did they see? Wouldn't you like to know? And then was
it easy to see? If it was easy to see, why did only a small number actually
see? And if we were there would we have seen? These are the questions that were
going through my head all week. For here it is John's gospel invites us to come
and see, just like the other gospels invite us to become fishers of men.
In the middle of the week, my friend sent me a
copy of his devotional reading from the day, and it was all about seeing. He
said that he sent it to me because it reminded him of my prayer for illumination
that I always say before my sermons. It said: "Love is alot of things but
blind is not one of them" it was all about how visible love is. He told me
that it reminded my of my Prayer for Illumination, asking for help to see with
God's eyes. The devotion writer, puts
"O, that I may see as love sees, all things in their true shapes,
all life in its highest possibility. that I may see what beauty there is in
this soiled world. That my senses would hunger as much for justice and right
proportions of things. Love, be my vision, my eyes, my light, till all things
are clear, till Christ be revealed. In Christ, my eyes, my light, my blindness,
my sight. Amen."[2] I
couldn't help but think that perhaps love is the "come and see," that
love is instantly recognizable, and also is something that once invited into
its world, it immediately drags you in and that you want very much to be a part
of it.
And that got me thinking because just that day
I was working with a kid on a paper for my class. He was writing a paper on the
Axial Age and how people in different cultures, as shown by the texts he was
writing about, started a trend towards believing in transcendent truth rather
than truth found in the old polytheistic rituals. The text that he was working
on all had to do with being able to look within yourself. To Look with in to
the truth that lies within. . . or the other text had to do with having enough
perspective to be able to see how the
truth was in the connections between things, that if you were focused on one
thing, you would miss it, but if you could stand back far enough to see how one
issue was connected and related to others, that you could begin to know that
there is only one truth and that it is in everything. I couldn't help but see
all the parallels. Here I was trying to teach a kid to write, showing people
how to see the text. . . that the text was all about seeing the truth. . . that
his problem is that he doesn't really see the abilitity in himself enough to
have confidence in himself. He doesn't have confidence in himself because he has never written all that
well before. So it is a vicious cycle, and if he could just break outside of it
I could get somewhere. If I could just get him to see. . . but how.
That got me thinking what are all the things
that get in the way of us seeing Christ, seeing Christ in a drop everything you
have, go follow, proclaim he's the messiah, and then run and tell everyone else
to come and see kind of way. What are the things that keep us from truly
seeing? It may be that we don't go. . . Christ says come and see, and we don't
go, so we don't see. Maybe we don't go because we don't know where to go, maybe
we have too much going on to go, maybe we are better off, or think we are
better off not going to see. It's possible that we do go, that we try very hard
to see, but we just haven't seen. Maybe there are things in our heads that we
have stored up that keep us from seeing. Maybe it is a confidence thing like my
student. Maybe it is guilt, maybe it is a misconception about who Jesus is and
what he is looking for, maybe it is a preconceived notion about where Jesus
would be, and what he is showing us. Nathanael said that Jesus was from
Nazareth, and was so sure that nothing of any value could come from a place
like Nazareth. Maybe we have preconceived notions about the truth, maybe we
prejudge situations and that precludes us from being able to come and to see.
But the amazing thing is there are no barriers
to seeing Jesus. He invites and we go. Everyone invited in this passage to come
see, comes and sees. They all proclaim. And even when they think they have seen
it there is more. The Nathanael story is a great example. Nathanael is ready to
follow Jesus simply because Jesus could tell him who he was and where he was
sitting just a few moments before. It is so great what Jesus tells him. . . if
that amazes you, just wait for what you are going to see next. I will show you the heavens and the earth open with
Angels ascending and descinding.. . very much akin to the Jacob's ladder
passage we read this morning from the Old Testament. . . . the thing that
amazes me though, and the thing I'd really like to take away from this is, even
us, even us who think we have already done our come and see, even if we've
already been able to come and see Jesus, and we are all here, we've all decided
at some point in our life to be here, to follow to try. . . even so, there is
more to be seen. That coming and seeing Jesus seems to be an ongoing
proposition. It suggests that at first sight we will be amazed enough to
follow, but as the relationship grows, as our experience grows, the sheer awe
and wonder of what we see with Jesus will not go away. Bold promises. . .
aren't they.
I also came across in my study for this week,
an article that was taking a look at this passage, and how it relates to
Evangelism, and spreading the word about who Christ is. What the disciples and
we are all eventually called to do. His main point was how often in our zeal to
spread the truth of Christianity, we fail by trying to do more than the simple invitation
shown here. That Jesus simply says, "Come and See," but we tend to argue,
and prove, and come up with the best air tight case for the truth of Jesus, and
in doing so we actually blind the other person the truth. That by seeking so hard
to prove, we end up shadowing what would otherwise be very clear, and that rather
then simply letting our love show the way to Christ, we try the much shorter and
easier road of trying to explain it. As a teacher of writing I don't know how many
times I have told my students that showing is always better than telling, but hadn't
made the connection to this "come and see," until now. I did preach on
a similar subject a few years ago around Easter, when I preached the sermon, "Jesus
on Trial," suggesting that if Jesus doesn't defend himself with words, why
would we think that our words could convince people. If it is the cross that truly
saves, why would we think that anything less could take the place of the Cross.
I'm not sure if I'm going to go all in, in believing that everything Christians
do today muddies the picture, but I think there is something to the critique. It
is much easier to write a book than it is to show love in your life, to simply say,
hey come and see what Christ is doing in the world, come and see what Christ is
doing in our church, come and see what Christ is doing in our lives. And it is easier
to talk about it and write a book than it is to take up your own cross. It certainly
would be easier to write a book, and don't forget this is all coming from someone
who just wrote a book. . . we are all in need.
Let us pray. . . Almighty God, help us to see,
help us to accept the invitation, help us to actually go where you lead, and see
what you would have us to see. Let us be strong enough in our faith that we can
also simply invite others to do the same, knowing that seeing love is enough to
kindle hearts to become loving disciples, through Jesus Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment