Today is the day we hear Jesus say, “Come see!” Those who live in this region will recognize this as a phrase used with children, or perhaps when an explanation does not do something justice, or the person you are communicating with just does not understand, then we say, “Come see. Let me show you.”
It’s a very useful phrase, but it was funny the first time my eldest used it on her Tennessee cousins. They were certain there was supposed to be more to that sentence, but there was not. It’s just a simple invitation that lets you know that there is a reward for participation. Come and you will see.
What’s interesting about Jesus’ use of the phrase is the way he uses it to call his disciples in the Gospel of John. Given the way John’s Gospel starts with the idea of Jesus as the Divine Logos – the Creative Genesis of God enfleshed – you might think this gospel would start with something miraculous like bursting nets of fish to call the disciples. Instead, it starts out simply, relationally, invitationally.
I mentioned before the reading that this story follows the baptism of Jesus, and every year we take a pause after Epiphany to wrestle with what it means that Jesus was baptized by John, who was preparing the people for the arrival of the Messiah with a baptism of repentance for the removal of the claim sin.
John’s Gospel doesn’t really get into why Jesus was baptized, except to say that John was also the one who would identify Jesus. He was the one who would know it was Jesus when he saw the Holy Spirit descend upon him at baptism. For the Matrix fans out there he was like Morpheus, freeing people’s minds in search of the one who would free us all.
Our reading starts with a second look. John has already baptized Jesus and he calls him out, presumably while he was still baptizing others. Maybe he was on his way to work and just wanted to give Jesus a shout-out. “Hey, look! There’s the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!”
In some ways, this little chunk is like an abstract to an article in a professional journal. It contains things we should expect to be unpacked as we read along. For one thing, Jesus doesn’t proclaim anything about the Kingdom of God. Instead, he invites the disciples into it. For another, the titles they give him escalate with their understanding of who Jesus is, but at the heart of it is the way their understanding of Jesus and their invitation to others happens naturally and relationally.
Let’s dig into that a little bit by looking at some of those titles they give him and the invitations offered to others to come see Jesus. John starts in 1:29 by calling him the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and again calls him the Lamb of God in 1:36. Two of his disciples go to check Jesus out, and right away we, as God’s people, have two things to learn from this interaction. John did not tell his disciples to go or to stay. He just pointed to Jesus and expected them to do as the Spirit moved them to do. The next thing is the fact that of those two, only one (Andrew) appeared to follow Jesus, even though both stayed with him for the night, and that doesn’t seem to be a big deal. When Jesus says, “Come see,” it’s not “Come see or else.” It’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity.
I can’t help but wonder how that interaction went. John says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” there is no telling what Andrew and his friend really thought about that, but their Rabbi obviously thought this guy was important – of God even! Imagine what they must have thought when they addressed him and Jesus said, “What do you want?”
“What do we want…” It reminds me of an overwhelmed student meeting a professor unexpectedly at a coffee shop and being received as a person instead of a number on a role…or maybe like that kid in The Incredibles when he sees Mr. Incredible accidentally break his car door. “What are you waiting for?” asks Mr. Incredible. “I don’t know, something amazing!”
So they just say, “Where are you staying?” and he says, “Come see.” The interesting thing is that the word they use is meneo which means abiding. We’ve already been told in 1:14 that the Word was made flesh in order to tabernacle with us, and so we’re already starting to see that this message of hope centers around our question of permanence and God’s invitation into salvation. It is as though we begin John’s gospel with the question, “Where does salvation live?” and Jesus answers us, “Come see.”
Jesus does not give us simple platitudes or complex theologies. He says, “Come see. Come experience. Come and abide with me and me with you” just as he will say in chapter 15, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Come see. Let us bear good fruit together.”
Back to Andrew, though. Maybe the other guy reports back to John, maybe follows Jesus but is unnamed. Andrew gets his brother, Simon, who Jesus renames as Peter. They go to Gallilee and invite Philip (who was from Andrew and Peter’s hometown) to join. He gets Nathaniel who is pretty skeptical about this Jesus guy from Nazareth. Notice how this is all happening within circles of relationships and direct invitation at first, and the first person who is outside of a direct experience of Jesus – who sees Jesus as an outsider – is the first one to reject the idea of Jesus as being sent from God?
There are a couple of ways to think about what happens next. One is that Nathaniel is just a pretty simple guy. Nazareth was a backwater town, and he’s just transparently skeptical. Then Jesus says, “Here’s an Israelite with no guile!” Maybe Jesus was teasing him affectionately, like, “Come here ya big lug!” or it could be a call back to the fact that Israel was named after Jacob, who stole his brother’s birthright by cunning and guile. Maybe Jesus was calling him out for his lack of transparency and lifting him as a reversal of the deceit of his ancestors. Maybe when he said, “I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathaniel thought, “and I bet you heard me, too. That means…he is the messiah!”
It might just be that Nathaniel’s quick reversal and his wonder and devotion were because Jesus seemed to be clairvoyant and all-knowing – along with whatever his friends told him along the way. It might also be that Nathaniel was steeped in tradition. After Philip told him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” And then Jesus said, “I saw you under the Fig tree.” Nathaniel may have been thinking – or the author of the Gospel may have wanted his audience to have thought about – the way the Prophet Zecharia in 3:8 promised to restore the line of David so that there would be peace and a neighbor would call to a neighbor from underneath their own vine and fig tree.
Regardless of all that, what we can plainly see is that Jesus invited them to come and experience what it was like to be with him. He did not give them the answer to the meaning of life. He invited them to experience life with him, and that invitation stands today. Jesus saw the disciples with all of their doubts and questions, and just as he said to Nathaniel, he says to us, “You think being loved unconditionally – being seen for who you are – is special? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
It occurs to me that this, too, is repeated over and over in John’s Gospel. In fact John’s Gospel ends on 21:25 with this: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
What else could that be but a way to say that we are still telling these stories? What else could that be but an invitation to come and see what a wild ride a life of faith might be?
If that is true, and I believe it is, then the real question is not only whether or not we are willing to come and see for ourselves, but are we willing to look into the relationships we share to see who we might invite? I know that many of us have limited circles of influence and maybe everyone you know already has a church, but maybe inviting them to come and see is different than that. Maybe it is encouraging faith by sharing ideas for ministry between our congregations. Maybe it’s through sharing things from our Facebook page and our website. Maybe it’s even simpler than that.
I know a therapist who has a Jesus fish tattoo on her arm. I know people who leave blessings and prayers (along with a decent tip) on receipts. I also know people who feel wounded by the church. Maybe not ours, although there are some wounded by ours as well I am sure, but some congregations have presented Jesus in a way that has actually been harmful. I constantly pray that we are not one of those, but there is an idea that is becoming somewhat of a movement in evangelical circles called “deconstructing” where people are realizing that some have used the teachings of Jesus for power and control rather than grace and mercy.
It’s not uncommon for someone to say, “Can anything good come out of the church?” I can’t blame them, especially in spiritually abusive situations. All I can do, and all we can do, is point to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We can do that, and we can look for opportunities to say that there is a church that embraces your doubts, like Jesus does for Nathaniel. There is a church that loves you unconditionally. There is a church that believes that God cares about injustice and wants us to care about it, too. Come see. Let me know if this news is good news for you.
There is also a step before the invitation that today’s text encourages. That is to be in a relationship with others first. The invitation to come see is not a call to heckle passers-by like we did when we sang carols from the corner. It is to invite those who already know and trust us enough to say things like, “What good could come from the church?” or “It is the hypocrisy that keeps me away.”
You and I most likely already know that there is an endless supply of good works, grace-filled acceptance, and possibilities for new and amazing things that flow from the font of grace and the table of mercy. Today we will ordain and install Deacons and Ruling Elders to support the work of the church and our common ministry together. Let us remember that they are not the only ones to hear God’s call to come and see. If anything, they are the ones who will invite us to come and see.
For even if you have lived a life of faith, the Spirit of God calls to us to live even more abundantly. As we dig deeper into John’s Gospel in the weeks and months ahead, I want to encourage you to consider how and where salvation can be a part of our experience of the God who abides with us – because if you think that’s amazing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! To God be the glory for that, now and always, amen!
It’s a very useful phrase, but it was funny the first time my eldest used it on her Tennessee cousins. They were certain there was supposed to be more to that sentence, but there was not. It’s just a simple invitation that lets you know that there is a reward for participation. Come and you will see.
What’s interesting about Jesus’ use of the phrase is the way he uses it to call his disciples in the Gospel of John. Given the way John’s Gospel starts with the idea of Jesus as the Divine Logos – the Creative Genesis of God enfleshed – you might think this gospel would start with something miraculous like bursting nets of fish to call the disciples. Instead, it starts out simply, relationally, invitationally.
I mentioned before the reading that this story follows the baptism of Jesus, and every year we take a pause after Epiphany to wrestle with what it means that Jesus was baptized by John, who was preparing the people for the arrival of the Messiah with a baptism of repentance for the removal of the claim sin.
John’s Gospel doesn’t really get into why Jesus was baptized, except to say that John was also the one who would identify Jesus. He was the one who would know it was Jesus when he saw the Holy Spirit descend upon him at baptism. For the Matrix fans out there he was like Morpheus, freeing people’s minds in search of the one who would free us all.
Our reading starts with a second look. John has already baptized Jesus and he calls him out, presumably while he was still baptizing others. Maybe he was on his way to work and just wanted to give Jesus a shout-out. “Hey, look! There’s the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!”
In some ways, this little chunk is like an abstract to an article in a professional journal. It contains things we should expect to be unpacked as we read along. For one thing, Jesus doesn’t proclaim anything about the Kingdom of God. Instead, he invites the disciples into it. For another, the titles they give him escalate with their understanding of who Jesus is, but at the heart of it is the way their understanding of Jesus and their invitation to others happens naturally and relationally.
Let’s dig into that a little bit by looking at some of those titles they give him and the invitations offered to others to come see Jesus. John starts in 1:29 by calling him the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and again calls him the Lamb of God in 1:36. Two of his disciples go to check Jesus out, and right away we, as God’s people, have two things to learn from this interaction. John did not tell his disciples to go or to stay. He just pointed to Jesus and expected them to do as the Spirit moved them to do. The next thing is the fact that of those two, only one (Andrew) appeared to follow Jesus, even though both stayed with him for the night, and that doesn’t seem to be a big deal. When Jesus says, “Come see,” it’s not “Come see or else.” It’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity.
I can’t help but wonder how that interaction went. John says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” there is no telling what Andrew and his friend really thought about that, but their Rabbi obviously thought this guy was important – of God even! Imagine what they must have thought when they addressed him and Jesus said, “What do you want?”
“What do we want…” It reminds me of an overwhelmed student meeting a professor unexpectedly at a coffee shop and being received as a person instead of a number on a role…or maybe like that kid in The Incredibles when he sees Mr. Incredible accidentally break his car door. “What are you waiting for?” asks Mr. Incredible. “I don’t know, something amazing!”
So they just say, “Where are you staying?” and he says, “Come see.” The interesting thing is that the word they use is meneo which means abiding. We’ve already been told in 1:14 that the Word was made flesh in order to tabernacle with us, and so we’re already starting to see that this message of hope centers around our question of permanence and God’s invitation into salvation. It is as though we begin John’s gospel with the question, “Where does salvation live?” and Jesus answers us, “Come see.”
Jesus does not give us simple platitudes or complex theologies. He says, “Come see. Come experience. Come and abide with me and me with you” just as he will say in chapter 15, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Come see. Let us bear good fruit together.”
Back to Andrew, though. Maybe the other guy reports back to John, maybe follows Jesus but is unnamed. Andrew gets his brother, Simon, who Jesus renames as Peter. They go to Gallilee and invite Philip (who was from Andrew and Peter’s hometown) to join. He gets Nathaniel who is pretty skeptical about this Jesus guy from Nazareth. Notice how this is all happening within circles of relationships and direct invitation at first, and the first person who is outside of a direct experience of Jesus – who sees Jesus as an outsider – is the first one to reject the idea of Jesus as being sent from God?
There are a couple of ways to think about what happens next. One is that Nathaniel is just a pretty simple guy. Nazareth was a backwater town, and he’s just transparently skeptical. Then Jesus says, “Here’s an Israelite with no guile!” Maybe Jesus was teasing him affectionately, like, “Come here ya big lug!” or it could be a call back to the fact that Israel was named after Jacob, who stole his brother’s birthright by cunning and guile. Maybe Jesus was calling him out for his lack of transparency and lifting him as a reversal of the deceit of his ancestors. Maybe when he said, “I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathaniel thought, “and I bet you heard me, too. That means…he is the messiah!”
It might just be that Nathaniel’s quick reversal and his wonder and devotion were because Jesus seemed to be clairvoyant and all-knowing – along with whatever his friends told him along the way. It might also be that Nathaniel was steeped in tradition. After Philip told him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” And then Jesus said, “I saw you under the Fig tree.” Nathaniel may have been thinking – or the author of the Gospel may have wanted his audience to have thought about – the way the Prophet Zecharia in 3:8 promised to restore the line of David so that there would be peace and a neighbor would call to a neighbor from underneath their own vine and fig tree.
Regardless of all that, what we can plainly see is that Jesus invited them to come and experience what it was like to be with him. He did not give them the answer to the meaning of life. He invited them to experience life with him, and that invitation stands today. Jesus saw the disciples with all of their doubts and questions, and just as he said to Nathaniel, he says to us, “You think being loved unconditionally – being seen for who you are – is special? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
It occurs to me that this, too, is repeated over and over in John’s Gospel. In fact John’s Gospel ends on 21:25 with this: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
What else could that be but a way to say that we are still telling these stories? What else could that be but an invitation to come and see what a wild ride a life of faith might be?
If that is true, and I believe it is, then the real question is not only whether or not we are willing to come and see for ourselves, but are we willing to look into the relationships we share to see who we might invite? I know that many of us have limited circles of influence and maybe everyone you know already has a church, but maybe inviting them to come and see is different than that. Maybe it is encouraging faith by sharing ideas for ministry between our congregations. Maybe it’s through sharing things from our Facebook page and our website. Maybe it’s even simpler than that.
I know a therapist who has a Jesus fish tattoo on her arm. I know people who leave blessings and prayers (along with a decent tip) on receipts. I also know people who feel wounded by the church. Maybe not ours, although there are some wounded by ours as well I am sure, but some congregations have presented Jesus in a way that has actually been harmful. I constantly pray that we are not one of those, but there is an idea that is becoming somewhat of a movement in evangelical circles called “deconstructing” where people are realizing that some have used the teachings of Jesus for power and control rather than grace and mercy.
It’s not uncommon for someone to say, “Can anything good come out of the church?” I can’t blame them, especially in spiritually abusive situations. All I can do, and all we can do, is point to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We can do that, and we can look for opportunities to say that there is a church that embraces your doubts, like Jesus does for Nathaniel. There is a church that loves you unconditionally. There is a church that believes that God cares about injustice and wants us to care about it, too. Come see. Let me know if this news is good news for you.
There is also a step before the invitation that today’s text encourages. That is to be in a relationship with others first. The invitation to come see is not a call to heckle passers-by like we did when we sang carols from the corner. It is to invite those who already know and trust us enough to say things like, “What good could come from the church?” or “It is the hypocrisy that keeps me away.”
You and I most likely already know that there is an endless supply of good works, grace-filled acceptance, and possibilities for new and amazing things that flow from the font of grace and the table of mercy. Today we will ordain and install Deacons and Ruling Elders to support the work of the church and our common ministry together. Let us remember that they are not the only ones to hear God’s call to come and see. If anything, they are the ones who will invite us to come and see.
For even if you have lived a life of faith, the Spirit of God calls to us to live even more abundantly. As we dig deeper into John’s Gospel in the weeks and months ahead, I want to encourage you to consider how and where salvation can be a part of our experience of the God who abides with us – because if you think that’s amazing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! To God be the glory for that, now and always, amen!
Comments