Seeing Is Believing
Sermon
Facing the Future with Hope
Cycle B Gospel Text Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Object:
Eugene Peterson tells about his boyhood days growing up in the "Big Sky" country of Montana. One day as a five-year-old Eugene stood at a barbed wire fence looking at a farmer plowing the field with his enormous tractor. The thing the boy wished for most in those days was to get a ride on a John Deere tractor. The boy knew the man driving the tractor was Brother Storm who always sat at the back of the church. Suddenly, the man stopped the tractor, stood up, and from his seat began to make strong waving motions with his arms. The big man looked mean and angry. He was a large and ominous man in his bib overalls and straw hat. The wind was blowing against him so the little boy couldn't make out his words, but he knew he was yelling at him. He probably should not be where he was on the fence. He decided he better get out of there fast.
The next Sunday after worship Brother Storm came over to the boy, and said, "Little Pete, why didn't you come out in the field Thursday and ride the tractor with me?" The stunned boy replied, "I didn't know I could have, I thought you were chasing me away." "No," the man replied, "I called you to come. I waved for you to come."1
It is easy to misinterpret what someone is trying to say to us, but there could be no misinterpreting Philip's call to Nathanael in our scripture today when he said simply, "Come and see."
Philip had met Jesus and he wanted his friend Nathanael to know him too. It was only when Philip told Nathanael that Jesus was from Nazareth that a stumbling block occurred.
Nathanael's hometown was Cana -- only a few miles from Nazareth. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt, and Nathanael reasoned how can anything good come out of such a tiny village of Nazareth that he knew so well. Surely, if Jesus was the Messiah he would have come from Jerusalem, or at least from Bethlehem the smaller town mentioned by the prophet Micah. But Nazareth seemed impossible!
We don't know very much about Nathanael. He is not listed with the twelve in either Mark's or in Matthew's account of the twelve disciples. He does appear later in the gospel of John (21:2) where he is identified as one of the followers who met the risen Jesus by the sea of Tiberius. At one time it was thought that Nathanael might have had another name, Bartholomew, because he is mentioned in Mark's and Matthew's accounts of the twelve and his name appears right after Philip. But this theory is not held by many biblical scholars today.
In any event, Nathanael is hard to convince that Jesus is the Messiah until he meets Jesus who greets him with the words, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" (John 1:47). Nathanael is astonished that Jesus could say that about him without knowing him. He was further mystified when Jesus added, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you" (John 1:48).
Did Jesus sense that Nathanael too was yearning for the Day of the Lord and the coming of the Messiah? Nathanael undoubtedly was aware that the prophet Micah had once written that faithful Israelites would one day "sit under their own vines and under their own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid": for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken (Micah 4:4).
Jesus continued by saying that one day Nathanael would even "see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (John 1:51). These last words are an obvious reference to the patriarch Jacob's experience of God at Bethel where he saw in a dream "angels ascending and descending." Unlike Nathanael, Jacob had been a deceitful person prior to the Bethel episode. If God had called Jacob to serve him, how much more was he apt to call Nathanael, "a man with no deceit"? In other words, one day Nathanael will see Jesus in his fullness as the Messiah and in his role as mediator between heaven and earth.
Philip gives us in capsule form a method of reaching out to others with the good news about Jesus. He plainly said, "Come and see." He didn't badger or belittle Nathanael because he did not know the Messiah had arrived. He didn't even attempt to argue with him or reason him into the kingdom of God. He said, "Come and see." It was as if he said, "Seeing is believing."
William Coffin, Chaplain at Yale University for eighteen years, often encountered much skepticism about God not just from young students but also from his colleagues -- professors at the university. When some of these professors would mock religion in his presence he would invariably ask them, "Tell me about the God you don't believe in." Coffin knew that 99 chances out of a 100 he wouldn't believe in their kind of God either. Coffin habitually quoted one of his favorite philosophers, Blaise Pascal, who once wrote: "The heart has reasons of which the mind knows nothing."2
Attempting to assure someone that God exists or that they should consider following Jesus seldom works. Philip's "come and see" approach is a much better way.
A number of congregations I know have committees called "Come and See." The purpose of these committees is not to do the work of evangelism for the whole congregation but to motivate, inspire, and instruct the congregation to be a welcoming community of faith.
One congregation I know operates as follows. They have welcoming bags at the door for all first-time visitors. These bags contain information about the church including a DVD setting forth the congregation's varied mission programs including a ministry to the homeless, regular visits to the inner city to man food pantries, and to carry on other social justice programs.
This particular congregation not only invites visitors who attend worship to become part of their fellowship of faith but its members go out where the people are and listen to them, ascertain their perceived needs, and then share the good news. Their aim essentially is to seek a commitment not to an institution but to a person, a commitment to Jesus Christ.
We may perceive ourselves to be a "welcoming" church, but others may discern us differently. They may not know how to get in.
Vincent van Gogh, the great Dutch artist, had been a lay preacher to coal miners in his early adult years, but he became troubled in spirit at the lack of success of his art career. It was only after his death that his art was really appreciated. Today his paintings sell in the millions. A few weeks before van Gogh took his own life he painted a picture of a church known as "The Church at Auvers." As you look at the church in the picture, it emanates a dimly eerie light from the inside, but you look more closely and notice that the church has no doors. There is no way to get in.
How haunting! How many others around us today can't find a way in?
Of course, we may have the dogmatic attitude that we don't want too many people in our church if they are not the right kind of people. Lewis Smedes tells of such congregations he once knew: "When I was a parish minister, I came across a group of three Dutch families in Paterson, New Jersey, who had joined together to form what they believed to be the only true Christian church in America but they had a disagreement. Finding no way to resolve it, they split into two churches, one with two and other with one family, each sure that it was the only true Christian church in America."3
But the simple fact of the matter is that we do need each other. Our doors should be open wide to welcome everyone no matter where they might be on their journey.
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner tells the story of one day when he was at the beach he observed two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building a sand castle that had gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they were nearly finished building the sand castle, a huge wave came along and knocked it down. Kushner said that he expected the children would burst into tears but they surprised him. Instead, they ran up the bank away from the shore, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle.
Kushner reflected upon what he saw: "I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh."4
Holding hands eases hurts, pain, and disappointment. We welcome "whosoever may come" into our fellowship. We need each other. We do not want to be a church of the "closed door."
If we have a compelling story to tell, and we do, we also need to be willing to listen to stories of other people who may see things differently from the way we do. We do not need to accept everything we hear but we need to listen. The Christian faith is not so much propositional as it is relational, and all relationships take time to cultivate. We do need to hold hands, to learn from one another, and to support one another.
Ann Lamott in her poignant memoir, Traveling Mercies, tells about responding to an invitation to visit a small, black congregation on the fringe of San Francisco. She went there time and time again with mixed feelings. The church was called St. Andrew Presbyterian, and it looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a small cross on top. Ann was mesmerized by the hymns wafting out of the church building and she would stop and listen. She would stop occasionally and stand in the doorway to listen to the songs. The choir consisted of five black women and one "rather Amish-looking white man" but together they made a glorious noise. The worshiping congregation consisted of about thirty people. Once in a while various people would come back to the door and shake hands with Ann or give her a hug. The pastor spoke mostly about Jesus and social injustice.
Ann went back to the church about once a month but usually left before the sermon. She didn't want to be preached to but she did love the people and the children who were always running around or being embraced. Every other week the people brought in huge tubs of food for the homeless families living in the nearby shelters. But it was singing above all else that captivated her. She would sing along even though she was still standing in the doorway.
Finally, one Sunday she decided to sit on one of the folding chairs off by herself. The singing continued to be breath and food for her. She had been drinking heavily and carousing and she became sick. As she lay in her bed one night she had the sensation of someone being with her, "hunkered down in the corner." At first, she thought it might be her father who had died recently, then she realized it was Jesus. She was appalled when she thought about her hilarious progressive friends. What would they think of her if she became a Christian? She turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."
Nonetheless, she felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of her sleeping loft, watching her with patience and love. Finally, she fell asleep and in the morning he was gone. During the day she felt that a little cat was following her, wanting her to reach down, pick it up, open the door, and let it in. But she knew what would happen: You let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So she tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming her houseboat door when she entered and left.
The next week she went to church and she stayed for the sermon. Once again the sermon did not make sense to her but the last hymn caused her to weep and be filled with joy at the same time. Something was holding her and rocking her like a scared kid. She opened to that feeling and it washed over her.
Ann left the service before the benediction. She ran home and felt the little cat running along at her heels. She opened the door to her houseboat. Finally, she cried to herself, "… I quit," and said out loud, "All right, you can come in."5
This was how she described her moment of conversion.
It took Ann a long time but eventually this welcoming congregation with its open invitation of "come and see" set her on a remarkable journey of faith. Whether it is a short length of time or a longer time, the same thing can happen to us. Amen.
__________
1. Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), 158-160.
2. William Sloan Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 3, 17-18.
3. Lewis Smedes, My God and I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 92-93.
4. Quoted in Leonard Sweet, A Cup of Coffee at Soul Café (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 29-30.
5. Ann Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Anchor Books, a Division of Random Harvest, Inc., 1999), 50.
The next Sunday after worship Brother Storm came over to the boy, and said, "Little Pete, why didn't you come out in the field Thursday and ride the tractor with me?" The stunned boy replied, "I didn't know I could have, I thought you were chasing me away." "No," the man replied, "I called you to come. I waved for you to come."1
It is easy to misinterpret what someone is trying to say to us, but there could be no misinterpreting Philip's call to Nathanael in our scripture today when he said simply, "Come and see."
Philip had met Jesus and he wanted his friend Nathanael to know him too. It was only when Philip told Nathanael that Jesus was from Nazareth that a stumbling block occurred.
Nathanael's hometown was Cana -- only a few miles from Nazareth. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt, and Nathanael reasoned how can anything good come out of such a tiny village of Nazareth that he knew so well. Surely, if Jesus was the Messiah he would have come from Jerusalem, or at least from Bethlehem the smaller town mentioned by the prophet Micah. But Nazareth seemed impossible!
We don't know very much about Nathanael. He is not listed with the twelve in either Mark's or in Matthew's account of the twelve disciples. He does appear later in the gospel of John (21:2) where he is identified as one of the followers who met the risen Jesus by the sea of Tiberius. At one time it was thought that Nathanael might have had another name, Bartholomew, because he is mentioned in Mark's and Matthew's accounts of the twelve and his name appears right after Philip. But this theory is not held by many biblical scholars today.
In any event, Nathanael is hard to convince that Jesus is the Messiah until he meets Jesus who greets him with the words, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" (John 1:47). Nathanael is astonished that Jesus could say that about him without knowing him. He was further mystified when Jesus added, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you" (John 1:48).
Did Jesus sense that Nathanael too was yearning for the Day of the Lord and the coming of the Messiah? Nathanael undoubtedly was aware that the prophet Micah had once written that faithful Israelites would one day "sit under their own vines and under their own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid": for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken (Micah 4:4).
Jesus continued by saying that one day Nathanael would even "see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (John 1:51). These last words are an obvious reference to the patriarch Jacob's experience of God at Bethel where he saw in a dream "angels ascending and descending." Unlike Nathanael, Jacob had been a deceitful person prior to the Bethel episode. If God had called Jacob to serve him, how much more was he apt to call Nathanael, "a man with no deceit"? In other words, one day Nathanael will see Jesus in his fullness as the Messiah and in his role as mediator between heaven and earth.
Philip gives us in capsule form a method of reaching out to others with the good news about Jesus. He plainly said, "Come and see." He didn't badger or belittle Nathanael because he did not know the Messiah had arrived. He didn't even attempt to argue with him or reason him into the kingdom of God. He said, "Come and see." It was as if he said, "Seeing is believing."
William Coffin, Chaplain at Yale University for eighteen years, often encountered much skepticism about God not just from young students but also from his colleagues -- professors at the university. When some of these professors would mock religion in his presence he would invariably ask them, "Tell me about the God you don't believe in." Coffin knew that 99 chances out of a 100 he wouldn't believe in their kind of God either. Coffin habitually quoted one of his favorite philosophers, Blaise Pascal, who once wrote: "The heart has reasons of which the mind knows nothing."2
Attempting to assure someone that God exists or that they should consider following Jesus seldom works. Philip's "come and see" approach is a much better way.
A number of congregations I know have committees called "Come and See." The purpose of these committees is not to do the work of evangelism for the whole congregation but to motivate, inspire, and instruct the congregation to be a welcoming community of faith.
One congregation I know operates as follows. They have welcoming bags at the door for all first-time visitors. These bags contain information about the church including a DVD setting forth the congregation's varied mission programs including a ministry to the homeless, regular visits to the inner city to man food pantries, and to carry on other social justice programs.
This particular congregation not only invites visitors who attend worship to become part of their fellowship of faith but its members go out where the people are and listen to them, ascertain their perceived needs, and then share the good news. Their aim essentially is to seek a commitment not to an institution but to a person, a commitment to Jesus Christ.
We may perceive ourselves to be a "welcoming" church, but others may discern us differently. They may not know how to get in.
Vincent van Gogh, the great Dutch artist, had been a lay preacher to coal miners in his early adult years, but he became troubled in spirit at the lack of success of his art career. It was only after his death that his art was really appreciated. Today his paintings sell in the millions. A few weeks before van Gogh took his own life he painted a picture of a church known as "The Church at Auvers." As you look at the church in the picture, it emanates a dimly eerie light from the inside, but you look more closely and notice that the church has no doors. There is no way to get in.
How haunting! How many others around us today can't find a way in?
Of course, we may have the dogmatic attitude that we don't want too many people in our church if they are not the right kind of people. Lewis Smedes tells of such congregations he once knew: "When I was a parish minister, I came across a group of three Dutch families in Paterson, New Jersey, who had joined together to form what they believed to be the only true Christian church in America but they had a disagreement. Finding no way to resolve it, they split into two churches, one with two and other with one family, each sure that it was the only true Christian church in America."3
But the simple fact of the matter is that we do need each other. Our doors should be open wide to welcome everyone no matter where they might be on their journey.
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner tells the story of one day when he was at the beach he observed two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building a sand castle that had gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they were nearly finished building the sand castle, a huge wave came along and knocked it down. Kushner said that he expected the children would burst into tears but they surprised him. Instead, they ran up the bank away from the shore, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle.
Kushner reflected upon what he saw: "I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh."4
Holding hands eases hurts, pain, and disappointment. We welcome "whosoever may come" into our fellowship. We need each other. We do not want to be a church of the "closed door."
If we have a compelling story to tell, and we do, we also need to be willing to listen to stories of other people who may see things differently from the way we do. We do not need to accept everything we hear but we need to listen. The Christian faith is not so much propositional as it is relational, and all relationships take time to cultivate. We do need to hold hands, to learn from one another, and to support one another.
Ann Lamott in her poignant memoir, Traveling Mercies, tells about responding to an invitation to visit a small, black congregation on the fringe of San Francisco. She went there time and time again with mixed feelings. The church was called St. Andrew Presbyterian, and it looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a small cross on top. Ann was mesmerized by the hymns wafting out of the church building and she would stop and listen. She would stop occasionally and stand in the doorway to listen to the songs. The choir consisted of five black women and one "rather Amish-looking white man" but together they made a glorious noise. The worshiping congregation consisted of about thirty people. Once in a while various people would come back to the door and shake hands with Ann or give her a hug. The pastor spoke mostly about Jesus and social injustice.
Ann went back to the church about once a month but usually left before the sermon. She didn't want to be preached to but she did love the people and the children who were always running around or being embraced. Every other week the people brought in huge tubs of food for the homeless families living in the nearby shelters. But it was singing above all else that captivated her. She would sing along even though she was still standing in the doorway.
Finally, one Sunday she decided to sit on one of the folding chairs off by herself. The singing continued to be breath and food for her. She had been drinking heavily and carousing and she became sick. As she lay in her bed one night she had the sensation of someone being with her, "hunkered down in the corner." At first, she thought it might be her father who had died recently, then she realized it was Jesus. She was appalled when she thought about her hilarious progressive friends. What would they think of her if she became a Christian? She turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."
Nonetheless, she felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of her sleeping loft, watching her with patience and love. Finally, she fell asleep and in the morning he was gone. During the day she felt that a little cat was following her, wanting her to reach down, pick it up, open the door, and let it in. But she knew what would happen: You let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So she tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming her houseboat door when she entered and left.
The next week she went to church and she stayed for the sermon. Once again the sermon did not make sense to her but the last hymn caused her to weep and be filled with joy at the same time. Something was holding her and rocking her like a scared kid. She opened to that feeling and it washed over her.
Ann left the service before the benediction. She ran home and felt the little cat running along at her heels. She opened the door to her houseboat. Finally, she cried to herself, "… I quit," and said out loud, "All right, you can come in."5
This was how she described her moment of conversion.
It took Ann a long time but eventually this welcoming congregation with its open invitation of "come and see" set her on a remarkable journey of faith. Whether it is a short length of time or a longer time, the same thing can happen to us. Amen.
__________
1. Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), 158-160.
2. William Sloan Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 3, 17-18.
3. Lewis Smedes, My God and I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 92-93.
4. Quoted in Leonard Sweet, A Cup of Coffee at Soul Café (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 29-30.
5. Ann Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Anchor Books, a Division of Random Harvest, Inc., 1999), 50.
