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Come and See
by Rose Duncan
January 20, 2008
[Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-11; Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42]
Almost all of us have had our refrigerators decorated with children’s drawings. Mine is filled even as I speak with renderings from our granddaughter Ava Claire. The really wonderful ones are the family pictures where the sun is shining, mom and dad are twice as big as the house and Ava is playing. Now we are all watching to see how Ava will include new baby brother Luke in the family scene. Sometimes, when Ava gets on a roll, Judy and I just might wind up with enough drawings to paper every wall in our entire house!
When there is an appreciative audience, children love to draw and the only limits on their creative energy is their imagination. Another thing about children’s drawings is that they can be very powerful statements about their identity – how they see themselves in the world. I discovered just how powerful these images can be some years ago when I worked with children as an intern at the Receiving Home for Children. Very often there were no smiles on the faces of the family members, and sometimes the child’s image of self was no more than just a scribble in the corner of the drawing. Can you imagine feeling like just a scribble in the picture of your family or the wider picture of your life? For some the answer may be yes. Now the struggle of identity may not be as dramatic as the drawing I just described, but no one escapes the inner question; “Who am I – really?” Margaret [Guenther] and I often joke about what we want to be when we grow up. But as I get older I realize more and more that the question is more about who we are and whose we are than it is what we want to be.
Our readings today provide strong statements about identity. Our Gospel is quite clear on the identity of Jesus – and if we will look closely – the message of the text contains a clue about our personal identity, helping us to discover who we are as well. John the Baptist points to Jesus and says of him, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Two of the Baptist’s disciples hear this, stop following John, and follow Jesus. They hear that Jesus is the promised one, and they are called by him to follow. So off they go. But this is a call to relationship. Jesus does not say, “Do this.” He says, “Come and see.”
To respond to such a call for relationship, for intimacy, is very different from signing up to do a piece of work or a particular job. To set out to do a job requires some clarity about what is involved; it may be negotiable, it has its limits, you know what it looks like when the job is over. But to be called into relation- ship—to be called to follow—that is to enter a mystery; it is to move out, full speed ahead into uncharted waters. Jesus simply says, “Come and see.” He calls us first to himself—to a personal intimacy and shared life. That is what matters, and that is to be central. Everything else is left behind. When we are called by God, as we are each called in our Baptism, we are, like those first two who followed Jesus, called to be disciples. In them, and in their call, we can see, with some real clarity, the call of Christ to each of us, and to all of us.
“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the two disciples. Now when you think about it, “What are you looking for?” is a fairly strange question for Jesus to ask. The logical question might be, “What do you want?” But maybe this isn’t about what people want or what we want. Maybe it’s about what people need – what we need. The word for staying and for remaining in Greek is the same word – meno – and it’s used in this story five times in very quick succession. Twice John says the Spirit came to Jesus and remained. The two disciples asked, “Where are you stay- ing?” They go and see “where he was staying and they stayed with him that day.” Remain. Stay. Come and see. When we are called, it is primarily to be held for a while, not to go anywhere. But at some point that call will lead us some- where. We may not know where for a while, maybe for a long while. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about call this way:
If we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer the question we shall have to go to him, for only he knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy.
Those first disciples were not called to go somewhere in particular—they were called to go anywhere Jesus might lead. They were not called to renounce this thing or that thing, but to be able to walk away from anything and everything, for only then would they be free—only then would their lives fully belong to Jesus. This is often why a sense of call can be both frightening and frustrating. We might know something very powerful is go- ing on, something that has to do with all of our life and much more. Then, because we live in a society that insists that for something to be valuable, it has to produce, we start looking for what we are called to do. Well, we are, especially at first, to get to know God and Jesus a little better. We need that before we can hear much else. We all need time to listen, and to wait. Jesus says, “Come and see.”
Wherever Jesus takes us we have nothing to worry about for we are not alone. He may take us to rebuild after a natural disaster or to an AIDS hospice. He might lead us to be a part of a demonstration or a mission trip. He may send us to a classroom, a community, a neighbor’s house or a hospital. What matters most is that we go at the direction of Jesus and stay with Him. We don’t know where this call to follow Jesus will lead. We don’t know what opportunities for courageous deeds will be present- ed to us down the road. But we do know that Jesus is calling us this today. We are called to be HIS disciples. That call came with our baptism – and anyone who has been through a discernment process will tell you that a call to relationship and ministry will haunt you, and track you down; it may trouble your sleep and whisper in your ears at the worst possible times. It will grow stronger and weaker and stronger again, it may seem to go away, but it always comes back. Come and see.
Tomorrow our nation remembers the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who would have been 79 this year. When Dr. King answered the call to follow Jesus he had no idea where that would lead. He wrote in Searching for God in America, “My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or a supernatural something; on the contrary, it was an inner urge calling me ...” Dr. King would later hear the Lord’s voice, calling him to cry out against injustice, violence and racism and to point towards a future where all peoples would live together as brothers and sis- ters, regardless of their race, color or creed. Dr. King kept his focus on Jesus and found in Him the source of his strength amidst insurmountable obstacles and a reason for hope even in the darkest of days of the civil rights movement.
One of Dr. King’s last projects was working for better housing for the poor. How appropriate it is today that as a com- munity we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Rebuilding Together, formerly known as Christmas in April. The late Trevor Armbrister may have thought that he was just on an assignment to write an article about a volunteer organization in Midland, Texas, but Jesus’ invitation to Trevor was “come and see.” He was so touched and inspired by that program that he returned to D.C. and started Christmas in April here. Today Rebuilding Together has grown to operating with 235 affiliates nationwide.
I have heard that Trevor often quipped that he still didn’t know the difference between a hammer and screwdriver. But he knew a good recipe for making a difference in people’s lives. Every day of the year Rebuilding Together works across the country to provide warmth, safety and independence to the elderly, the disabled and families with children. They are rebuilding homes, and rebuilding lives – one house, one community at a time.
No, when we follow Jesus, we never know where we will end up. But the call is the call to new life and to true peace. You see, the lamb that we follow is the Lamb of God. He is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God. He is the one who calls us to Himself, and the one whose presence transforms our lives. Go with Him and stay with Him. Jesus bids all who encounter Him, “Come and See.” As we follow I pray that we, by the grace of God, discover more and more whose we are and who we are – in Christ! Amen.