Come and See

[This was shared during worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio this morning.]

John 1:29-42
I made a discovery about myself this morning. I was shaving and when I came to my neck, I noticed that as I looked into the mirror, I was squinting. Why was I squinting? It wasn't because my eyesight is that bad. Then, I realized what it was.

When I was a little boy, I sometimes watched my father as he shaved and sometimes, as he did so, he also smoked. (He quit smoking years ago, by the way.) But often, when he came to shaving his neck, dad squinted.

The things we see can have a powerful impact on us.

For example, all my life I heard people talk about how beautiful Colorado is. “You’ve got to go to Colorado,” they’d tell me. “You can’t express how gorgeous and breathtaking it is.” I wrote their words off as hyperbole. Then, about six years ago, friends of ours offered us the use of a house they’d built on top of a mountain outside of Durango. We drove out and guess what? You’ve got to go to Colorado. Even though I really love Ohio, Colorado is gorgeous and breathtaking. But until we went and saw Colorado for ourselves five years ago, I couldn’t have said that.

In today’s Gospel lesson, John the Baptist, gives witness to who Jesus is twice. He points his own disciples and whoever else will listen to Jesus and says, “Look! The Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world!”

Two of John’s disciples were curious enough to approach Jesus, Who asks them, “What are you looking for?” The response of John’s disciples to that question is, on first blush, strange. “Rabbi, where are you living?” The word we translate as living, in the original Greek of the New Testament can also be translated as, remaining, abiding, sticking with. "Teacher," these two curious men were saying, "give us the time to see that you’re not just some fly-by-night Savior, but that you’ve really come to be our Savior."

Now, if Jesus were a candidate as in the current presidential campaign, He might have spent some minutes trying to persuade the questioning disciples that He was really the Savior, that they really could entrust their lives to Him, that He really could bring forgiveness of sin and so, everlasting life, by transforming them from enemies of God to God’s friends. The Jesus campaign would release His answer on YouTube and CNN would have run the interchange time and again. But Jesus’ response is direct, almost curt. “Come and see,” He tells them. Hardly a worthy sound bite!

But we come to faith in Christ and come to deeper faith in Christ not through the compilation of evidence, though there is ample evidence that Jesus really is God and that He really did rise from the dead to bring everlasting life to sinners who repent and believe in Him.

Nor will our faith necessarily be strengthened through logical argument, though one can argue rationally for Jesus and His Lordship.

What really convinces us to follow and to keep following Jesus is when we experience Jesus. That’s why He told the disciples of John to “Come and see.”

There may be some here this morning who long for a real experience of Jesus, who want their faith to be more than just a habit. There may be some of our neighbors and friends who want to believe in Christ, but either find it difficult to believe in a Savior so wonderful and to believe that a Savior so wonderful could love or forgive them. What we all need to do is “come and see” Jesus. We need to experience Him and His goodness. Faith will take hold and faith will grow when we do.

But how do we see a Savior Who ascended into heaven two thousand years ago?

I used to love to play baseball and later, softball. I sometimes played in the outfield. There’s nothing that an outfielder can do about where a ball is hit. That really depends on the pitch selection and what the hitter does with the bat. But the fielder can get in a position to catch flies or cut off grounders. Similarly, we have no control over the God we meet in Jesus Christ. But we can position ourselves to meet Him, to see Him operating in our lives.

Several weeks ago, I mentioned a book on prayer written by Lutheran bishop Ole Hallesby that had a huge impact on my life. Rebutting a book by a prominent atheist, Hallesby wrote another book called, Why I Am a Christian. In it, he identifies five ways those who want to see Jesus Christ can do so.

First, we can read the New Testament. This past week, one of our shut-ins told me that years ago, she’d heard a TV preacher challenge his viewers to read a chapter of the Bible every day. “You know,” this Saint Matthew member told me, “that makes all the difference in my days.”

When we read the New Testament, especially the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—we encounter Jesus Himself. As we submit to meeting Jesus in the New Testament, we find ourselves moving from doubt to faith.

Next, to see Jesus, we can pray. Even those who aren’t sure that they believe or whether they believe that God listens to prayers should start praying. A few weeks ago, I mentioned my own journey from atheism to faith. One of the things that helped me in this journey was my willingness, despite my unbelief, to begin praying. At first, to tell you the truth, I felt ridiculous talking to a God I wasn’t even certain was there. But as South Korean pastor Paul Yonggi Cho has observed, God is a gentleman. He will not go anywhere uninvited. In prayer, we invite the God we meet in Christ into our lives.

When we pray, we learn that God doesn’t expect perfection in our praying or in us. He takes our willingness to pray as affirmation that we want to “Come and see” Jesus.

One of my favorite incidents in the Bible involved the man who came imploring Jesus to heal his child. “If you can help, Lord, please do,” he prayed. Jesus said, “What do you mean ‘if’? If you have prayer as tiny as a mustard seed, you could move a mountain.” The man replied, “I do believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.” That man’s prayer was answered affirmatively. He believed to the extent that he could. He trusted as much as he could. Even doubters who want to believe in Jesus will, eventually, experience His presence and know that He is their Savior.

Another way for us to see Jesus is to take a good look at ourselves, asking God to show us ways in which we’ve failed to love God or love others. Sin can obscure our vision of God and sometimes, we fail to see our sin.

A young man came to see me years ago at my office in my first parish. He was frustrated because his wife, in spite of repeated promises, wouldn’t attend church with him. “Have I done anything particularly terrible recently?” she asked him. When he said, “No,” she said that she guessed she didn’t need God that week.

When we voluntarily ask God to show us the ways in which we’ve not loved Him or others, we remind ourselves both of our need of Him and of His willingness to forgive and be with us twenty-four hours a day. We invite Him into every part of our lives.

Another way to see Jesus is to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion every time it’s offered. You know, we Lutherans are sometimes accused of fudging things when it comes to the witness of the Bible. But we have always taken Jesus' words about the bread and wine of Holy Communion completely literally. Jesus said, "This is My body...This is My blood." We believe Him. And we believe Him too, when He says that He gives us this Sacrament for the forgiveness of sin.

In the bread and the wine, Christ comes to us. Father Richard Farar Capon calls Communion, “the hat on the invisible man.” The “immortal, invisible, God only wise” of Whom we sing in one of our hymns becomes visible and touchable in the Sacrament.

Another way we can see Jesus is to spend time in the fellowship of people we believe are authentic followers of Jesus. Thirty-some years ago, a woman named Martha Schneider, then in her sixties, took me under her wing to teach me about what it means to have Jesus Christ in my life. Martha died this past summer, deep into her nineties.

As she fostered my growth as a Christian, Martha asked me if I would help her with a Good Friday prayer vigil, in which members of the congregation would come to pray for half-hour stints overnight. (Ann said that Martha is the only woman she'd ever let me stay out all night with.)

Speaking from personal experience, it was people like Martha--people who lived wholeheartedly with Christ--who finally tilted me from doubt to faith. They were ordinary, humble people who lived with the same daily struggles, hopes, challenges, and joys that are the common lot of the human race, who were nonetheless empowered to cope and hope because of their relationship with Jesus Christ, made me willing to let Jesus into my life. They also encouraged and supported me as I posed my questions, owned my struggles, and invited Jesus to be my God and Savior.

Most of you here this morning and maybe many listening on the radio today know that these are five good ways to come and see Jesus. You may even have found it good to be reminded of these ways that you can see Jesus. I hope so.

But, there’s another reason I talked about them with you this morning. Just a few verses beyond our lesson from the Gospel of John this morning, a follower of Jesus—Philip—seeks out a friend of his—Natahnael—and says, “We’ve found the Messiah: Jesus, from Nazaraeth.” “Nazareth,” Nathanael says, “Can anything good come from there?” Philip doesn’t argue the point with Nathanael. He just tells him, “Come and see.”

When I saw Colorado for myself, I knew that what people said about its beauty was true. Your friends, neighbors, and others may wonder why you bother going to church. They may wonder why you take the time for Sunday School, women’s group, Lenten services, or giving food to CHAP. You could tell them that it’s because of Jesus. You could tell them that Jesus is your Savior. And I hope that at the right moments, you will tell them just that.

But the best thing you can tell them is what Jesus told those curious disciples of John the Baptist and what Philip told Nathanael. Come and see!

Come and see Jesus in the New Testament, in time spent in prayer, in letting Christ convict us of sin and reveal His forgiveness, in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, and in the fellowship of Christians.

If our spiritually disconnected friends will only come and see Jesus in these places, they will see a new and everlasting way of life. They will believe. And their lives will be changed forever!