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Come and See
A sermon preached January 20, 2008, Epiphany Day, at University United
Methodist Church, East Lansing, by Alice Fleming Townley
John 1:29-42
Isaiah 49-1-7
I want to thank you, University, for the sincere welcome
you gave me when I was a student here, 17 years ago. Thank you for the welcome
you have given to Mike and I, and our children Jonathan and Grace, as we
returned to the community this past summer, and finally, thank you for welcoming
me as an interim pastor. You have said to me, “We are so glad you are here.
What a gift.” “I say to you—Joy meets Joy.”
In just a minute I will invite you to join me in silence.
In the quiet, I ask that you would pray for me, and I will pray for you. Pray
that the Holy Spirit will move through each other and make this Word to live.
Let us pray. O God, may this Word heal where we need to be healed, strengthen
where we need to be strengthened, convict where we need to be convicted.
Sermon
John the Baptist had spent most of his life searching,
waiting, preparing for the Messiah. Now John the Baptist had known Jesus since
they were both in the womb, for Luke tells us that when Mary went to visit her
cousin Elizabeth, the baby within her leapt with joy. I imagine Jesus and John
the Baptists grew up aware of each other because of their mother’s closeness.
They probably visited one another’s houses, climbed trees, and skinned knees
together. One day Jesus came to be baptized by John. During the baptism, the
Heavens opened, and the Spirit of the Lord descended on Jesus, saying “this is
my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
John the Baptist told his disciples, “I have found him, the
one whom I have been telling you would come. Look here he is, amongst us.” The
two disciples who heard this followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them
following and said, “What are you looking for?”
They said to him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”
Jesus invited them to, “Come and see.” Join me.
Participate in my life. They came and saw where he was staying. The Bible
doesn’t describe it. I imagine that that is because there was nothing unusual
to record. The Bible does say they stayed all day, until about 4:00 p.m. After
hearing Jesus all day, Andrew, went and found his brother Simon saying, “We have
found the Messiah” The one for whom we have waited and searched. Come and see.
What John, Andrew, and Simon Peter were learning, as Elijah
learned on the mountain, is that God doesn’t always come in the flashy fire, in
the moving wind, and in the loud thunder, but that God can become flesh in
something and someone very close to us. If we are waiting for an extraordinary
experience, then we can easily miss ways God might try to get our attention.
John the Baptist, Andrew, and Simon Peter were invited to discern the work of
God inside their lives and inside their place. This is our invitation—to see
our lives as part of God’s movement.
In her book, The Preaching Life, Rev. Barbara Brown
Taylor tells about how when she was seven her family decided to give church a
try and they found a small Methodist congregation way out in the Ohio
countryside. One Sunday the pastor asked me to sit up close to the pulpit.
He wanted me to hear his sermon, he said, and as I listened to him talk about
the beauty of God’s creation and our duty to be awed by it, all of a sudden I
heard him telling the congregation about a little girl who kept tadpoles in a
birdbath so that she could watch over them as they turned into frogs, and how
her care for those creatures was part of God’s care for the whole world.
It was as if someone had turned on all the lights—not
only to hear myself spoken of in church, but to hear that my life was part of
God’s life, and that something as ordinary as a tadpole connected the two. My
friend’s words changed everything for me. I could no longer see myself or the
least detail of my life in the same way again. Then the service was over. That
day I walked out of it into a God-enchanted world, where I could not wait to
find further clues to heaven on earth.” (14)
This is what happened to John, Andrew, and Peter. Jesus
said, “Come and see.” They looked and saw that their life was part of God’s
life. I believe that most of us came here today looking for the same thing. To
see somehow, God calling us to come and see God actively dwelling within us.
Often the opportunities (to be part of God’s
movement) are closer then we realize. A few weeks ago I received a Christmas
card from very dear people who were part of the church I served after seminary.
Dear Alice, the letter began, I don’t know if you heard, but in August our
grandson was killed in Iraq.” O, my heart broke for them. I had a strong urge
to respond to Bud and Loretta’s letter, so I put it in a special spot on the
kitchen. Days and weeks passed, as I wondered what I would say, and wondered
what card to choose. Anything I thought of was inadequate. I busied myself
with getting ready for Christmas and going back to work after 6 ½ years.
Something in my heart kept nudging me. Finally, I picked up the phone. “O,
Pastor Alice, Bud was just talking about you yesterday. Wondering why he hadn’t
heard from you. Thinking, hoping he would.” Bud told me, “Nothing will ever
bring him back. Nothing will ever make it alright. What helps me keep going
are the calls and cards from my friends and family.” We may be so busy waiting
and preparing to be part of God’s movement in big ways, that we miss the daily
nudges already present in our lives. “Come and see,” Jesus says.
Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer. When Gandhi was visiting
South Africa he began to ask questions about the fairness of a law that forced
him into a lower class, less then human. His questions led to change. God
said, “Come and see.” And Gandhi went back home to India—home where it is often
hardest to see. He saw the oppression of his own people under the English
empire, and he did ordinary things that he could do—like weave his own clothes,
make salt from the sea, fast for peace—and God used these activities to
galvanize a non-violent revolution. Rosa Parks was really tired and so she did
what she could do—she sat down on a bus. This sounds very normal. Christ said,
“Come and see” and those who did thought sitting down on a bus should be legal
for Black Americans and a whole movement of change began within the Black
community. Martin Luther King, Jr. came from a long line of Baptist preachers
and grew up immersed in Christian worship. As he said, “I am so deeply a
preacher that it is in my bones.” Christ came to where Martin was preaching and
said, “Come.” And as Martin followed Christ he became a preacher for the
transformation movement. The Jesus movement. The salvation movement. The
“word made flesh and dwelling among us,” movement.
The most dramatic story of call we have heard this week has
happened in the Bingham-Tsai household. Kennetha, Kee, and Keeton had longed
for another child to be part their family. We longed with them. Baby Kamdon
so needed a stable and loving family. On Tuesday, amidst surprise and
delight, Kennetha, Kee, and Keeton met Kamden, and brought him home into their
family. In the weeks ahead we will take the baptismal vows, as we do for all
our children, to raise him in Christian community. We are part of the God
movement, the shalom movement, the salvation movement. Come and see.
We hear these call stories, as Isaiah’s words still echo in
our hearts, “Come, I have chosen you, I have known you, since before you were
born. You are mine. You are to be a light to the nations, that my salvation,
my shalom, may reach to the end of the earth.”
May we dare to see with John the Baptist, Andrew and Peter,
that the Word has become flesh and is dwelling among us. May we join daily in
this God movement. May our desires and our actions be as one. Hear again the
song written for us, UUMC. The“Prayer for Peace” by Marjan Helms:
O for a thousand tongues to sing! Sing shalom. And for
ten thousand hearts who yearn for peace, shalom. Hasten the day; make smooth
the way; yehi shalom; cast fear away! In beauty and truth, work tirelessly
toward the day when all that is broken will be made whole, and the heart of a
gentle child leads the way. With kindness and mercy, in justice and truth. O
for a thousand tongues to sing, ten thousand voices strong, to usher in the
reign of God, O sing, “Yehi shalom!”
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