Come and see
Scripture Text:
John 1:29-42
Sermon:
Adam and I adopted a dog last May – a beagle, who we named Odo (after a medieval saint) – and one of the things we do with our dog is take walks. Now, in some ways, the walks are for the dog: Odo has a lot of energy and he needs exercise. But in other ways, the walks are for us, too: Odo gets us out of the house. We HAVE to take a walk because we need to walk the dog.
One of the other benefits of owning a dog is that we’ve gotten to know more of our neighbors because twice a day, one or both of us is out walking Odo. Odo makes us social. He gets us out to see things we wouldn’t ordinarily see: our neighbors, but also how the local park looks in winter, how the pond there freezes over, how the ducks move from the pond to the stream where the water is still flowing, how field mice make little tunnels under the snow that leaves little mouse-trodden highways in the grass that you can see when the snow melts!
John tells us a story today about seeing. (And I mean John the Evangelist or Gospel writer, who is different from John the Baptist, who he writes about.) There are 11 words that have to do with seeing in these 13 verses, in this one passage from his Gospel: about seeing Jesus and being seen by him.
This is Jesus’ very first physical appearance in John’s Gospel. John the Baptist sees him and he’s so excited that Jesus is in their midst that he points to him and exclaims to his disciples “Here is the Lamb of God!” and explains just who this is. Imagine yourself in a restaurant seeing Lovie Smith coming towards you. You would just have to turn and exclaim to the person next to you, “Hey, that’s Lovie Smith! He’s led the Bears to the playoffs…”
See that guy? Let me tell you who he is! The Son of God! (Jesus, not Lovie!).
And the next day, John the Baptist and his see Jesus again. And this time, the disciples leave John and follow after Jesus. And again, we hear about seeing: that Jesus SAW them, and then he asked them, what they were LOOKING for? What a question.
What are we looking for? We are you looking for? If you saw Jesus walking by and started after him, and he turned around and saw you and asked you that question: what would you say back to him? What are you looking for? Well, I can think of so many things I might say, but what those two guys did was actually to ask Jesus a question right back. They ask him: “Where are you staying?”
Isn’t that a strange response? But what they’re really sort of asking is, “Who are you, anyway? And how can we know more about you?” And don’t we all want to know where Jesus is? Where is he staying? Where is he dwelling? And where is the something like a dog or a burning question or a curiosity that will get us out of our own safe houses to go look for him?
And Jesus responds with those wonderfully inviting words: “Come and see.” He invites them to come… just to come hang out with him. No pre-requirements, no bouncers, no special test to have passed beforehand. Just, “Come and see.” He offers a very simple hospitality.
Sometimes living the Christian life is about just that: Come and see. Respond to Jesus’ invitation. Look, ask lots of questions like the disciples, and come and see where Jesus is staying.
And Jesus doesn’t sit in a house waiting for the Elect to arrive and join him. He welcomes all people – in fact, he seeks us out. He’s out walking the roads, he’s spending time with all those he meets: the disciples, people who need healing, Temple teachers and priests, with people like you and me. He’s staying or dwelling (another way to translate the Greek) with us!
When the disciples asked Jesus, “Where are you staying?” they were asking a question John the Gospel writer had actually already given an answer to just a few verses earlier:
John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (When he says, “the Word” he means Jesus.) And then John writes, ”And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Here is God, in the beginning with the Word, among the crumbs of stardust and great big emptiness that would become the universe, all glory and majesty and enormity. And then here is God, come to Earth, become flesh and living among us, in Jesus. In the Christmas story we learn that Emmanuel means “God with us,” and that’s exactly what Jesus is: God with us.
But not just that. Come and see means “come and hang out,” too. Come and see and let God see you. It’s hard to imagine hanging out with the Almighty Creator of the universe, but Jesus? That’s a little easier. And the thing is, Jesus really enjoyed getting to know people – or truly “seeing” them. He wasn’t only about teaching them and healing them. Especially in the Gospel of John, we see him having these long conversations with people (and we’ll hear some of them during Lent this year – long passages, because they’re about long conversations that Jesus had with people). In the other gospels (Matthew, Mark, & Luke), Jesus comes through, says a few words, heals a few people, amazes people, does some miracles… but he doesn’t really have conversations with people like this. In John, we see him deeply and intimately getting to know other people – really seeing them, in the entirety of who they were. Even giving them new names, names like “Rock”!
God doesn’t need a dog to get him out of the house to meet his neighbors. Jesus sees you, in the entirety of who you are. God invites you, in Christ, to “Come and see,” too. Not to be sheepish, but to feel welcomed, to ask questions, and to believe in salvation. God sees you, fully, and God loves you. Look and see if you can see God, too, staying and dwelling with you…
Amen.
