Come and See

(Scriptures: Scripture:  I Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-18;  John 1:43-51)

Our readings today invite us, in a variety of ways, to come and see – to come and see the world around us, to come and see ourselves and one another, to come and see what God is doing.  They also invite us, in a sense, to look at ourselves and our surroundings, not only through our own eyes, but through God’s eyes.

In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus has just begun his ministry in Galilee.  He called Philip, and after hearing the call, Philip called his friend Nathanael, saying, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  And Nathanael responded, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth.”   And with good reason: Nazareth, in the far north of Israel, was in Jesus’ day a small, nothing village, with maybe as few as 500 people.   You wouldn’t expect to see the Savior of the world hanging out in a Podunk place like Nazareth.   When he considered Nazareth, Nathanael saw no possibilities, but only impossibilities.   But Philip insists:  “Come and see”.  When Nathanael comes to see Jesus – probably grumbling under his breath the whole way – Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” – in other words, here’s a stand-up guy, no BS.  Nathanael probably thought Jesus was just trying to flatter him, and asked, “Ok, Mr. Savior of the World from Podunk Nazareth, how do you know anything about me.”  And Jesus responds that he saw Philip under a fig tree before Philip called him.  Nathanael does a 180, going from skepticism to exclaiming “Rabbi, you’re the Son of God! You’re the King of Israel!”  And Jesus basically says, “Is that all it took to get you to believe, that I saw you under the fig tree?  Fasten your seat belts, Nathanael, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Our reading from I Samuel also gives us a lesson about keeping our eyes open for the unexpected ways of God.  Young Samuel, just a boy, was ministering at Shiloh, which was an ancient worship center – Scripture tells us that Samuel’s mom would make a little robe for him each year – he was a growing boy, after all – and bring it to Shiloh for Samuel.  Samuel was being mentored by Eli, the longtime priest at Shiloh, who was very old and, one would think, very wise.  But in our reading today, it is to the boy Samuel, not to the aged Eli, that God speaks.  Now, to be fair, God had previously spoke to Eli, specifically about his sons, who were abusing their positions as priests, taking the best cuts of the sacrifices for themselves, attacking any God-fearing worshippers who tried to stop them, and even sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the sanctuary.  God told Eli to rein his sons in, and Eli did speak to them.  But Eli was unsuccessful – and, as we’re also told Eli was very fat, we can surmise that Eli himself was eating from the portion of the sacrifices stolen by his sons.  Eli could have removed his wicked sons from serving at the Temple, and he didn’t.  So God was done with Eli and his family, and it was through the boy Samuel that God’s message came, so that the beginning of Samuel’s story coincided with the end of Eli’s line.

For, as we read in Psalm 139, the Lord has searched us and known us – each of us.  God knows our going out and coming in, our sitting down and standing up.  God in Jesus knew Nathanael as a man of integrity, and God knew Eli’s sons as corrupt and Eli himself as complicit.  And God knows each of us, inside and out, the good and the not so good. 

We are not only known, but loved.  As the saying goes, God loves us, just as we are – and God loves us too much to let us stay that way.  God loves us despite the brokenness in our lives - and God loves us enough to try to repair the brokenness, so that we, like a fractured bone that has healed, can become strong in the broken places.

God sees, not only us, but our church, and our society.  And God’s vision is different from ours.  The things our society strives for – wealth, security – are not what God values.  Conversely, aspects of our society that we blithely accept as “just the way things are” grieve God – when the poor go hungry and homeless, when the rich enjoy their wealth – however honestly or dishonestly come by – without caring for the poor.   At the same time, God rejoices at the smallest act of kindness – a cup of cold water given to one who is thirsty – when done from a desire to please God, especially when done for the poor and destitute whom Christ called his sisters and brothers.  In one of his letters, St. Paul spoke of seeing things “through a glass, darkly”, but perhaps at times, it’s more like we see life in a funhouse mirror, where insignificant things are blown up to huge proportion and vital, crucial things are shrunk down to the point of being nearly invisible.

God’s vision is different from ours.  I’m reminded of the short movie that Shawn, our resident film-maker, filmed here at Emanuel in the spring of last year – for those who ordered DVD’s, they’re available after worship if you didn’t get one already.  Shawn’s movie says a lot in nine short minutes about the contrast between our way of seeing and God’s way of seeing. For those who didn’t see Shawn’s film, it begins with a new pastor coming to a church on the verge of closing, an old, weathered-looking church located next to a factory with billowing smokestacks – and as this new pastor approaches the church, he doesn’t look or sound any too thrilled to be there.   There are two angels who have been assigned to watch over this church.  One angel just wants to go back to heaven, insisting that the church is beyond hope.  But the other angel insists that God is not done with the church, and that this pastor is the one chosen to bring the church back from the brink.  On the pastor’s first Sunday, his awful guitar playing drives the small handful of remaining worshipers out the door, and in another scene the pastor is shown preaching to an empty sanctuary – empty except for the one angel who still holds out hope for the church, who of course is invisible to the pastor.  In a later scene, a longtime deacon tries to hold out hope – “Seven people today, pastor! You’re bringing them back” – and senses that music is the one thing the church needs, but doesn’t realize or remember that there’s an organ hidden behind the altar.  The pastor alternates between crazy ideas to bring people back – a bigger steeple, so that the church building will outclass the nearby factory, to be funded by bake sales – and despair over empty offering envelopes and mounting bills.  Finally, the pastor is about to throw in the towel, on the church and on his calling, but by the intervention of the two angels the church is saved.  The pastor in the movie can see only impossibilities – an empty sanctuary, empty offering envelopes, empty hopes of saving the church by making the building more impressive.  Chuck the deacon correctly sees the possibility of music as a way of reviving the church, but doesn’t see the means of making the music happen – he mistakes the organ pipes for water pipes.  It is the angel who can see the possibility that, despite his many shortcomings, this pastor is the one to keep the church going.  And while the movie is of course fiction, it does speak to our tendency to pin our hopes on things that in the long run won’t save us, while missing opportunities to experience God’s grace that are right in front of us.

God’s vision is different from our vision.  There are several ways in which we can perhaps begin to see and understand ourselves and our world as God does.  In Scripture, we have a faithful record of how God’s people over many centuries have experienced God in their lives and circumstances.  In particular, the life of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, gives us a lens through which to read both the rest of Scripture and our own society, as we approach the persons and circumstances in our lives with the question, “What would Jesus do?”  (Granted, I’m not Jesus, and neither are any of us, but Jesus lives in each of us, and so “What would Jesus do?” is a valid question.)  In prayer and meditation, we can not only speak to God, but listen….prayer is not meant to be a one-way conversation, with us presenting God with our daily “honey-do list”, but rather a two-way conversation, with times of silence for us to listen and reflect.

It’s also helpful, in dealing with others who are very different from us, to try to see and understand the world through their eyes.  If we struggle to welcome people from other countries who speak languages other than English, perhaps we can ask what it would be like to be in their shoes, living in a strange land among unfamiliar people, struggling to speak in a language we only half-understand, to people who don’t want to take the time to listen.  If we’re healthy and are impatient dealing with persons with disabilities, perhaps fuming as the SEPTA bus ever so slowly lets down its wheelchair lift to take on board a passenger with limited mobility, perhaps we can try to understand what it is to live with a body that doesn’t do what we ask it to – and in this case, I’m preaching to myself.  As the saying goes, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”   As Christians, we’re called to stand with one another in our struggles, and in order to do that, we need eyes to see, ears to her, hearts to understand.

“Nathanael said to Philip, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth.’  Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”   Philip invited Nathanael – and Philip invites us – to see Jesus, and Jesus invites us to see God and neighbor, to see our society, our world, in a whole new way.  Most of all, as God looks on us with eyes of love, may we at Emanuel Church look at our lives and our world with eyes of love.  May we offer hands folded in prayers of devotion, arms outstretched in love and feet moved by compassion in serving God and our neighbors here in Bridesburg, where God has planted us.  Amen.