Come and See

Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42
Psalm 40:1-12

When I was a child I had two kinds of friends.  There were what you might call my “lunchroom buddies,” whom I would horse around with at recess or in the school cafeteria.  And then there were that small number with whom I enjoyed something more intimate.  The thing that seemed to make the biggest difference, that set these friends apart from the lunchroom crowd, was that they had come over to my house, and I had been over to theirs. 

We lived out in the country growing up, on rural roads where the homes were few, and we took the bus to school.  So going over to someone else’s house, or having someone over to mine, was not a casual matter.  It involved forethought, and planning and effort.  And once it had happened, and you’d seen what your friend’s bedroom looked like, and met his parents and his pets, and knew how his house smelled, and what he ate for dinner, you could never look at him quite the same way again.  You’d run into him at school the next day, along with the rest of the lunchroom buddies, but the air of casual indifference that there used to be between you would feel strained all of a sudden, because you knew who that person really was. 

That could be exciting, especially where girls were concerned.  In eighth grade I had a girlfriend named Trish, and in the spring I would leave home an hour early and ride my bike across the highway and over the mountain, and go past the school, another half mile to Trish’s house, so I could help her feed her horse, and then ride back to school with her.  It could also be too much.  I remember a time when I was about fourteen and my mom had a dinner party at our house for the members of a volunteer board she served on.  One of them had a daughter named Cheryl who was in my High School class, and who came along to the party.  I spent the entire evening upstairs in my room, and never came down even to say hello.  I liked Cheryl okay, I guess, but I wasn’t ready to be more than lunchroom buddies.

Jesus is not so shy.  In the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he moves in swift decisive strokes from place to place, and incident to incident, carrying out his mission like one who has a lot to do and not a lot of time.   But John builds his story around a relatively small handful of episodes and the conversations that Jesus has with the people he meets along the way.  John’s Jesus has time to go to weddings, and to hang around at wells.  He seems to want to get to know people, so that they get to know him and begin to understand who he is. 

Take the story of his baptism.   In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is no sooner baptized than he heads out alone, across the Jordan, for forty days of fasting and testing in the desert.  But in John’s version Jesus doesn’t hurry off anywhere.  He hangs around at the Jordan for a while, where John the Baptist keeps seeing him walk by.  In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus comes upon his disciples out of the blue work and calls them to drop everything and follow him.  In John, the first disciples follow Jesus on their own initiative, because John the Baptist has referred them to him.  Jesus turns and asks them what they are looking for, and they ask if they can come over to the place where he is staying.  

This verb, “to stay,” which elsewhere is translated as “rest,” “remain,” “dwell,” or “abide,” appears again and again in the Gospel of John.   It conveys not just the physical residence of Jesus, but the inner abode of his spirit, the continual, intimate, loving availability to God in which he is centered.  Jesus abides in God and God abides in him, and this is what gives him his grace and glory and power.  This is what the two disciples of John the Baptist are looking for.  This is what Jesus invites them to come and see.  They do come and they do see, and they remain (that word again) with him for the rest of the day.  And their first impulse when they go away again is to invite others to come to get to know Jesus for themselves. 

In John’s Gospel, Jesus invites the disciples to his own dwelling, to the place where he remains in intimate, loving relationship with God.  And from that place he sends them out as he himself has been sent, with an open invitation to anyone who wants to come and see.  This depiction of discipleship has implications for you and me.  We, who gather on Sunday in the name of St. John, have to consider the real possibility that each one of us has been called here to see the place where Jesus dwells, to have our own direct personal experience of communion with Christ.  And it is just as likely that we are not only called, we are also sent, to invite others to do the same.

Of course, sometimes the best we can do in that regard is to invite them to church; which is not necessarily the same thing.  We might believe with all our hearts that Christ is in our midst when we gather, and that he is truly present in the Word of scripture, and in the sacramental Bread and Wine.  But these are statements about God’s faithfulness in answering our prayer for Christ’s presence, not about our power to reliably produce it.  So what about our friends and neighbors who are not so sure?  If they respond to our invitation to come and see, will they find Jesus abiding here? 

The answer to that question is beyond our control, which makes the whole business of inviting risky.  And as much we might like to think that we can tip the scales in our favor by the warmth of our welcome, or the quality of our printed materials, or the catchiness of our music, or the charisma of our clergy, we know that none of this really makes a difference.  These things might induce our guests to like us, or appreciate our taste, or admire our talents.  But they won’t help them see Jesus abiding with us.  According to the Collect of the Day, the prayer I said for us at the very beginning of this service, the only thing that can really do that, is for us to light up in response to the things we do here.

“Grant that your people,” says the prayer, “illumined (lit up) by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.”  But this lighting up is not something that can be forced.  We can’t make ourselves shine, no matter how broadly we smile or how cheerfully we sing.  It can only come as a spontaneous response of our whole being in recognition of the presence of Christ.  It can only begin with our own need, our own desire to see for ourselves where Jesus is staying. 

So it’s risky to invite other to come and see, because we can’t guarantee that we’ll have anything to show them but ourselves.   And being illumined by God’s Word and Sacraments doesn’t make us better-looking than we were before.  Our teeth don’t get straighter or whiter, the wrinkles in our faces aren’t miraculously smoothed away; our blemishes don’t fade.  If anything, we appear more clearly visible than ever in that light, more openly and transparently human.  The light of the world, the glory of God, does not dazzle or embellish or entrance.  It lights people up from within, with the light that is their own truth, their own way to the place where Christ dwells, unseen. 

And we cannot see ourselves in this light, except in the mirror that is our neighbor.  But when we do see it, when we look at the person next to us in the pew, or on the bus, or in the line at the grocery store and see the light that is them as they truly are, as God’s beloved, we can be pretty sure that we are also shining.  When we see them that way, then we too are revealed as those in whom Christ abides, ministering love, and life, and light, and the forgiveness of sins to the world.    

Fruit that will last

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Last Sunday a man entered our 8 o’clock service about half-way through and walked without any hesitation right up the center aisle and took a seat in the front pew, right over here.  Needless to say, that’s unusual behavior for a Sunday visitor.  But he seemed comfortable here, coming forward to receive communion as if it were his long-standing habit.  And at the end of the service, when I invited anyone who wished to come forward for a special prayer of blessing, he stood up.  Without looking for further encouragement, or making any preliminaries, he said his name was Richard and he asked us to pray for him.  He said he was out of work and had been for a long time, and had been looking and looking everywhere for a job without success.  He said that he wasn’t going to give up, but that he’d sold everything he had of any value and that it was beginning to look like he and his family were going to have to give up their home and start living in their car.  And he asked if we would please pray for him because he really needed our prayers.

So, of course, we did.  It was the least we could do.  Someone brought him over to the Parish Hall and gave him a cup of good coffee and something to eat.  I could have offered him a little money, but he didn’t ask for that, and in fact he told me in the line at the back after church that he was tired of asking for hand outs.  What he really needs is a job.  He wants to work and support his family and preserve what remains of his dignity.  And he came here, because he wanted us to know that, and to pray for him.  

I’ve been thinking about that as I’ve been praying for Richard and his family this week.  Of course, I’ve been wishing we could have done more for him.  Praying for Richard has made me ask familiar questions of myself.  It’s made me ask what can be done for all the people who need jobs.  What kinds of assumptions lead a society to discard people like Richard without remorse or concern for the consequences?  I’ve been asking whether I’ve done enough to challenge those assumptions, whether I’ve allowed myself to be a little too comfortable, whether I’ve played it a little too safe. 

This week I read an interview with the retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard.  A highly-decorated Vietnam combat veteran, Bishop Packard was arrested along with 15 other members of Veterans for Peace, during an Occupy protest on May 1^st in New York City.  The comments he made in the interview spoke to the questions I’ve been asking myself: “The spirit is calling us now into the streets, calling us to reject the old institutional orders. There is no going back. You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stodgy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows…Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world. It is only outside the church that you will find the spirit of God and Christ.”  

There was a time in my life when I would have rejoiced to read these words.  “Yes!” I would have said; “Bishop George Packard tells it like it is!”  I can still hear the truth in what he is saying, and I can’t ignore the example of his courageous actions.  But the example that spoke to me even more powerfully this week was that of Richard.  I think of the courage that he had, to walk in to a strange church, full of people he didn’t know, to walk right up the aisle during the service to take a seat in the front row.  I think of how, when the opportunity arose, he took his stand.  He didn’t condemn us for being too comfortable.  He didn’t try to guilt-trip us into giving him money.  He just told us his story, simply and humbly, without milking it for sentiment, or using it to make some larger point.  He trusted us to give him a hearing, and he asked us for our prayers.

 

In his own way, Richard took a stand.  He took a stand for himself, and for the hard truth of his situation.  He laid down the stigma of failure and desperation, and he rose up in the Spirit of truth, and by his actions he said, “I am worthy of love and concern.  I also belong to God’s family.  Your prayers matter, and they matter to me.”  And that was a gift to us.  It was a testimony to us of the love that Christ has for us, in our failures, in our desperation.  It was a reminder of how Christ came to us as a poor man, asking only that we receive each other as his friends.  We may be too comfortable with that friendship.  We may be afraid to follow him, to go out and do something about the besetting evils of the world.  Maybe we just don’t know where to begin.  But that world seeks us out, like Richard did, to invite us deeper into friendship with Christ.  And it is not a random coincidence, not something to be taken for granted, that Richard felt safe here to take his stand.

We may be comfortable here, but comfort is at the heart of the Gospel.  Jesus knew the risks involved in telling the truth to a world entranced with false hopes and empty values.  On the night before he died for that truth, he spoke words of comfort to his disciples.  He assured them that his love for them would not die with him, because it was God’s love for the world.  He promised them that if they kept faith with him, and loved each other as he had, they would find him in themselves.  And more than that, the world— the same world that threatened to destroy them, the world that filled them with fear and confusion—would reveal itself to them as his dwelling place, the abode of God’s love.  He sent them into that hostile world in the power of his love to bring forth fruit, fruit that will last. 

      

And so while I agree with Bishop Packard that “outside the church you will find the spirit of God and Christ,” I don’t think that is the only place to find it.  It would, indeed, be a cold kind of comfort if we prayed for Richard and took no interest in the conditions that put him in that fix.  But although what Richard really needs is a job, he also needs an open door, where they will listen to his story and give him a place in the communion of prayer.  He knew where to look for that door, and when he came, it was open.  More than ever, the world needs places where people can lay down their daily struggle for survival or success, and appear to each other to ask for the friendship of Christ, to listen to the voice of the spirit, and to abide in the love of God.

The First Letter of John says that “everyone who loves the parent loves the child.”  On this Mother’s Day, the scriptures remind us of the love that God has for every one of her children, and that if we love God our Mother, we need to love each other for her sake.  That love means continual, defiant resistance to the powers that enslave and destroy the children of God.  It also means dwelling together in the peace and joy of her beloved Son, holding open a space in the world where love and truth can abide.  We don’t have to choose between the church and the world—in fact, we don’t get to choose between them.  We were chosen to hold the world responsible for the commandment of our friend Jesus, to love one another as he loves.  And we were chosen together, to make our life together a real and visible sign of that love, an open door through which people come in to find God, through which people go out to find God.