Come and See!

1-15-17 (Epiphany 2A)

Psalm 40:1-11; John 1:29-42

Come and See!

There’s something particularly compelling about the excitement and persistence of a young child when there’s something they want you to come and see.  It doesn’t matter what, exactly, it is - whether it’s a new picture they’ve drawn or colored, a particularly interesting leaf somewhere in the yard, or the pile of flour, broken eggs and gallon of milk all over the floor that came about as they tried to make you cupcakes, there’s a kind of urgency, even a desperate need that you drop whatever you are doing, take their hand, and follow them to see what it is that they want you to see.  There’s no logic on earth that can dissuade them, no door they’re not willing to keep knocking at, no conversation that’s not too important to interrupt.

It may seem strange to take the image of an excited child and compare it to the account in John’s Gospel of the calling of the first disciples, perhaps even stranger to apply it to the 40th Psalm… but I think that when we put all three of these images together, when we take our cues from the examples that the Scriptures give us this week, we suddenly have a profound insight into the work of evangelism that God calls us to through the Holy Spirit.

For a lot of us, evangelism may come across as a word that makes us uncomfortable - it’s not one of the first words that comes to us in our Presbyterian vocabulary.  In fact, we find it easier many times to set evangelism aside in our churches, to give that task over to the missionaries that we support with out mission money, or to the special initiatives in our church that seek out those who have been called specifically into evangelism or church planting.  We’ve seen too much bad evangelism in our lives, too many crooked television preachers fleecing their flocks, too many street corner preachers holding hateful signs or passing out hellfire and brimstone tracts, too many Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on our doors trying to get us to invite them in to talk to them about their church’s understanding of Jesus.

But if we consider the readings for this week, we can quickly come to understand that evangelism is so much more than that - in fact, it’s so much more simple, so much more effective, and yet so much more transformative than the misconceptions we’ve built up for ourselves around it.  It doesn’t require us to buy and hand out tracts; it doesn’t ask us to wear a cardboard sandwich sign with a handwritten apocalyptic message.  We don’t have to be classically trained preachers, tent-revivalists, foreign missionaries, or televangelists; we don’t need a special formula or nine point plan to follow and lay out in front of people.  Truth be told, all we need to do to be effective evangelists are two very basic things: we need a story to tell and an invitation to “come and see!”

Let’s look first at the Psalmist this week as he tells us his story.  Ascribed to David, the psalm opens up by telling everyone what God has done - he heard David’s prayers, lifted him up out of the miry bog, put his feet upon the rock and a song on his lips.  When we look at the larger Psalm, we see that the story isn’t over; even in the midst of David’s praise and proclamation, he is still lifting up prayers to God for deliverance.  And yet in the midst of all of this, David nevertheless recognizes that he has a story to tell!  David says “I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.”  David tells the story of what God has done in his own life, and in so doing, David shares God’s message to God’s people in a very personal and special way.  Evangelism isn’t just about pointing people to Christ in the Bible; it’s about showing people that Christ is still at work in this world, making a difference in peoples’ lives and transforming the world, preparing it for the Kingdom that is yet to come.

John also has a story to tell, for anyone willing to hear him - as Jesus walks past both times in today’s Gospel passage, John starts telling his story, and what I found interesting as I read this was that both times, John’s story serves solely to point toward Christ.  Where David points to God through telling his own story and how God has been his salvation, John tells his own story, but only for the purpose of proving his statement that Jesus is the “Lamb of God,” the one of whom God had given John so many visions and prophecies.  John tells his story solely with the purpose of getting out of the way so that Jesus can start making his own story.  

And yet John’s story, his excitement, the passion with which he points to Christ… these things aren’t the final factor that make believers out of Andrew and of Simon Peter.  John plants a seed, an idea, a sense of curiosity in the two soon-to-be Jesus disciples.  When Jesus stops the second time and asks them “What are you looking for?” They don’t immediately look at him and ask if he is who John says he is.  They don’t ask him any kind of deep, theological questions… they recognize him as a teacher and want to know where he is staying.  It’s Jesus’ answer that is the second piece of all of this, that moves them from curious men to disciples - and all Jesus has to say is “Come and see.”

And this is what evangelism is - as simple as that.  We tell our stories - we point to Christ at work in our world and in our lives.  We share our excitement like a little child who just painted a new picture, and then we invite others to “come and see.”  Come and see what God is doing in our lives.  Come and see what God is doing in our church.  Come and see the table that God has set for you, the story that God wants to tell through you.  What if we were to catch that excitement together?  What if we were to go out and tell our stories?  And what if we were to invite people to “come and see” with us?  What kind of story could God be calling us to be a part of together?  Let’s go and see.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.