Come and See

Whenever you hear a refrain, a callback, a repeated reference—this is when you know you’re supposed to be paying attention.  The words should stick with you.  It’s like when someone dies, someone you really loved, especially if their death was unexpected, or maybe you weren’t ready to say goodbye—you might not remember the last thing you said to that person.  You might not remember their last words, the last thing they said to you. 

But you’re likely to remember the things they said most often, their catchphrases, or the way they answered the phone, or the sound of their laugh.  The stuff that gets repeated. 

And Jesus had a few catchphrases in John’s Gospel.  I don’t think I ever really noticed this, probably because of the way we read little sections of the Gospel every Sunday, which is great in the sense that you get to focus on one thing at a time, but it’s also not great to read the Gospel in tiny chunks because you lose sight of the scope of the message, maybe miss some themes, that you’d be able to keep up with if you read the whole thing in one sitting or listened to the entire story at one time. 

So you might not remember back to the start of John’s Gospel, back before Jesus’s teachings, before the miracles, even before the sign of water turned to wine—when Jesus called his first disciples,[1] the first words he speaks in this Gospel—remember Jesus did not write the Gospel, nor any other Gospel. 

And actually, Jesus did not exactly call these first disciples—these were two disciples of John the Baptist and they just started following Jesus .  And we imagine the scene like these two men are literally walking behind Jesus, physically in his footsteps, because the next line is “when Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them”—remember these are Jesus’s first lines in this whole production, the first thing he says is a question: “What are you looking for?” 

What are you looking for?  Jesus isn’t selling anything, not promising wisdom or enlightenment or meaning, just an invitation to be really honest with your self. 

And the disciples kinda stumble over their words, almost as if they weren’t ready for a question like this, and they ask Jesus, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  That’s when Jesus says “Come and see.”  Just “What are you looking for?” and “Come and see.”

Most of what these disciples could possibly know about Jesus is what they learned from John the Baptist, who said, “Here is the Lamb of God!”  Whatever that means.  But at this point, Jesus isn’t confirming nor denying anything.  It’s possible that titles and statuses mean less to Jesus than a relationship built on honesty. 

What are you looking for?  Meaning?  Wisdom?  Hope?  Forgiveness?  Peace?  Any of these things could be acceptable but only you can answer truthfully: what are YOU looking for?  And if you’re interested in finding whatever that is, well, then: come and see.  See for yourself.  You be the judge.  Only you can find what you—in particular—are looking for. 

Well these disciples, it turns out, are looking for the Messiah—maybe Jesus is the one?  So these disciples are the ones to go to their friends and invite them to follow, with those same words, Jesus’s first catchphrase: “Come and see.”

And the crowds grow, following Jesus, learning the way.  God’s light shines through Jesus to illuminate injustice and pain—God isn’t scared of human pain and doesn’t diminish it but shines light and heals people.  People believe because of their experience of being healed, because of what they witness, having their own eyes opened to God’s goodness, even to the point of restoring the sight of a man born blind. 

Jesus even travels through Samaria and has such a powerful conversation with a woman at the village’s well that she tells her neighbors, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  There’s that catchphrase again—come and see—and it’s about the Messiah. 

We wanted a Messiah to accomplish political power but instead we got a God who sees us, who sees right through us, sees through the walls we put up around our vulnerability, sees through our emotional baggage, sees through our occasionally impure motives.

So it’s when Jesus’s friend Lazarus dies, while Jesus is away from town, and both of Lazarus’s sisters tell Jesus, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died,” that Jesus sees the people weeping for their dead friend and Jesus is so moved with grief and asks where Lazarus’s body has been put to rest that the catchphrase comes up for the fourth and final time in John’s Gospel. 

But this time, the invitation finally comes full circle, right back around to Jesus, when they answer Jesus’s question.  The people who are mourning the death of Lazarus say, “Lord, come and see.” 

Jesus did come and see.  He came and saw.  And that’s when Jesus wept.  A God who cries.  A God who grieves over human life.  God isn’t about the binary categories of life or death.  God isn’t about cold transactions and “What’s in it for me?”  God weeps for the dead. 

And furthermore, when you are weeping and when you invite God to “Come and see,” God will show up and weep with you.  Because this relationship is a two-way street—God isn’t giving you complicated instructions or hoops to jump through, just a mutual invitation to “Come and see.”  The way is made by walking it.  Life’s a dance, you learn as you go.[2] 

Oh, and after all of that, Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead, demonstrating God’s power over death. 

People came and saw, and they believed too, because Jesus did the things he said he would do and proved himself trustworthy.  God is still inviting us to come and see, to experience abundance of life for our own selves.  And we are still calling out to God in prayer: come and see our pain.  Come and see our sickness.  Come and see Iran, and Gaza, and the unholy mess that humanity has made of Palestine and Israel and all the Holy Land. 

God does not turn away but grieves with us and continues healing our brokenness.  God keeps finding ways to bring new life. 

What are you looking for?  May God grant you the grace to take action and show up, and may God open your eyes as well, that you would see how God meets you where you are. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl

[1] John 1:35-39

[2] Lines from a song by John Michael Montgomery.