A sermon for the second Sunday of Epiphany given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on January 15, 2012.
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
--Robert Frost
“You come too.” I love the spirit of free enjoyment and invitation that this poem expresses. It’s free from any nagging obligation or fear of offense – it simply wants to invite the hearer into the enjoyment of the spring, the calf.
I want us to see this spirit of free invitation pervading Jesus’ interaction with his first followers here in our reading from John’s gospel.
Andrew and a friend of his had become followers of John the Baptizer. John had made it clear that he was out to do nothing less than proclaim the coming of God to his people.
In a moment, seeing Jesus and telling his followers ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ John gives the first call to the first followers who immediately responded by following Jesus. Their curiosity piqued, their hope strengthened, their desire to know the one who will save them from their sins leads them on to seek him out – who is this guy that John proclaims?
As we recall from last week, Mark begins his telling of Jesus’ life by saying this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, son of God. Mark was saying that the good news is this life that Jesus lived, the good news is not just that Christ died for our sins and rose again. The good news is that Christ lived a life that we can follow. A life that we can imitate and experience a kind of present experience of salvation, a kind of liberation.
Here in the beginning of John’s telling of the good news we find people like ourselves who are profoundly curious of who this guy Jesus is. And so like us they begin to follow him. And as they enter into that life as live with Jesus, they experience God’s salvation as a present reality – an enlightenment, a challenge to a new way of living, and a transformation to a new hope and faith.
Throughout the church year we follow the story of Jesus from its beginnings to its gruesome climax and on to its glorious and triumphant end.
Here we find ourselves with the disciples on the road with Jesus, encountering God’s new way.
When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said “What are you looking for?”
The two asked a question which may seem odd to us: “Where are you staying?”
Jesus’ response to them is his response to our curiosity about God’s call to us:
“Come and see!”
Come and see.
Whatever the two experienced or heard at Jesus’ home was significant enough that when they left the next day, Andrew was eager to tell his brother Simon. And he says to his brother: “We have found the Messiah.”
As they are walking the next day, Jesus and the three followers see Philip. Jesus says “Follow me.” And Philip joins the growing number of followers.
Philip himself is so excited that he goes and tells his friend Nathanael.
Nathanael is skeptical: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip responds with the words that Jesus used in response to Andrew and the other follower: “Come and see.”
And Nathanael meets Jesus and his wonder and curiosity are piqued --so he follows too.
One by one, the one who encounters Jesus, goes to others and says like Frost’s farmer in the poem: “You come too.”
Many people here can think of friends and family members who for a variety of reasons are not interested in being involved in the church. And a lot of those reasons that are keeping them from joining us or other congregations are really good reasons. And I think one of the worst things Christians can do is to ignore those good reasons or discount them.
Evangelism, witnessing to the good news of God’s salvation, has become an embarrassing part of the Christian life in many communities and I want to venture an explanation for this.
There are two kinds of extreme examples of Christian evangelism.
There are those who feel compelled to get someone else to believe in God or to come to church. This inner desire for others to come to know the good news of God’s salvation is wonderful. It is borne out of personal experience of the grace of God in one’s own life. But there can be a vast divide between intention and result. When this inner desire for someone to experience the freedom of God leads you to coerce another into entering into that same experience of freedom, there is a fundamental problem. God’s freedom must be freely obtained. Sometimes, like an anxious salesman, people can get so impatient to have someone agree with them or come to church that they devise all sorts of manipulative methods. Televangelists have mastered this union of faith and market.
And then of course with every extreme pendulum swing to the right, there will be an equal and opposite swing to the left.
There are others who think of evangelism as inescapably coercive. They want nothing to do with a method that seems to try to make another person over in one’s own image. They pride themselves on being cultural relativists and pluralists. They live by the dictum: “I’m ok, you’re ok.” And this too is borne out of personal experience of the grace of God of the freedom of God– a God whose burden is light and does not coerce people to think, feel, or act a certain way in order to be loved. It is also borne out of a moral reaction to kinds of evangelism that have gone right along with a kind of cultural imperialism.
The kind of cultural imperialism that goes like: “I’m right – you’re wrong and you’ve gotta be just like me in order to be right.”
Rather they feel we must respect and tolerate one another’s differences and that means we let the friend or family member “be themselves” and not try to get them to feel, think, or act the way that we’ve come to feel best – they have their own journey.
These are two extremes and with every extreme they have great motivations but have a lot to learn from one another.
There is a third way – a middle way that I see in today’s gospel text.
Notice that Jesus didn’t say to Andrew and his friend: “Believe x, y, and z and then come and hang out with me.”
Equally Jesus did not say to them: “you guys just need to go and do what you’ve been doing, follow your heart and stick to your own personal journey.
Jesus said these beautiful words: “Come and see.”
I think the way between coercive soul-winning and hands-off pluralism lies in these words: “Come and see.”
The gospel of God, the good news of God’s salvation, is in this life, this man’s actions and teaching. We encounter Jesus in this text just as the earliest followers did and Jesus says to us: “Come and see.”
The burden is light – we don’t have to be, think, or feel x, y, or z in order to begin to encounter Jesus.
We must simply come as we are and see.
And so within a few verses we see this way of speaking about Jesus already taking effect. Philip goes to his friend Nathanael and says we’ve found the Messiah in this guy from Nazareth. Nathanael says “Nazareth? What good could ever come out of there?” Philip’s reply: “Come and see.”
“Come and see” is a result of our having already come and seen – we have found something beautiful and life-changing in this story, in this community that follows in God’s loving example. Out of our enjoyment we find ourselves praising the good things we have come to know in encountering Jesus. So, naturally, organically, we invite others to freely come and experience the Jesus we have seen.
This is not a call to abandon one’s own spiritual journey. It’s call to a person on their spiritual journey to consider stopping in Nazareth for a bit.
Neither imperialism nor relativism lies in the words “Come and see.”
What lies in those words is an invitation, a non-coercive invitation into a blessed experience, an adventure of encountering this one Jesus and the good news he claims to have.
We invite because God has already invited all people into this experience of salvation and liberation.
We say “Come and see” as an echo of Jesus’ “Come and see.”
And there are no strings attached. We don’t say “Come and see” and THEN try to make them see what we want them to see.
We know the God who freely reveals himself in beauty and love and we trust that God to be made know through our encounter with Jesus in church, in scripture, in our lives.
Maybe you’ve been hurt by one or the other extreme kind of stance in evangelism.
I suggest three steps forward:
1) Get to know Jesus himself – not just truths ABOUT Jesus that you may pick up – get to know his way – how did he relate to those around him – was he out to win people for his political agenda through manipulative add campaigns or mudslinging of opponents? Or did he say, “Come and see”?
2) If that way becomes attractive to you – if that way indeed breeds grace in your life, if it leads you to a kind of liberative posture of love, then don’t be ashamed or embarrassed to tell someone about it. Only let it be for the sake of telling about it, not for some other agenda.
3) “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” These words from the letter of James go a long way in helping us find a way forward that is neither fearful and silent nor obnoxious and loud. Let us become listeners who share our own enjoyment of God’s way and invite others into it. “You come too.”
So let us not go out and feel like we need to pressure our family members or friends into coming to church or feel like we have to speak about what we heard in church.
All of this “have to” “need to” stuff is not gospel.
God has invited us into an encounter with Jesus which is our salvation and liberation. This invitation becomes an invitation to others as we, enjoying the fruit of God’s good news, can’t help but tell others: “come and see.”
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