John 1: 43-51   preached on Jan. 15, 2012

“A Very Short Script:  Come and See”

 In this short and vivid narrative we are confronted with a fundamental truth.  It is not enough to believe in Jesus, we must also follow him.  And we are faced with another fundamental truth, namely, each disciple who follows Jesus was initially invited by someone.   Apparently following needs an invitation.  Here’s how it worked for the earliest disciples according to John.

 John the Baptist had invited Simon and Andrew to be part of preparing the way for Jesus. This was before Jesus was even on the scene.   Then Andrew saw the Messiah and invited his brother Simon Peter to follow.   Jesus invited them both to go to the house where he was staying.  Then Jesus decided to go to Galillee, and he finds Phillip and invited Phillip to follow.  Philip finds Nathanael and invites him to follow.   And each time the invitation was three simple words, “Come and see.”

Think about the way that people get invited to things these days.  We almost never send a written invitation.  Instead we use email, tweets, Facebook.    And I guarantee you that those of us under the age of 40 in here today hear the term “follow” differently than those of us over 40 hear it.  In these days of social media, the term “following” has become synonymous with “twitter or facebook.” You see it in ads for various products and services—“follow us on twitter.”  Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”.   And I would say that virtually all of our young people follow their friends on Facebook.

 It’s a short, fast way to get a message across. Last December we had in our community the tragedy of  5 teens dying in a car accident.  All the kids knew about it before the school administration.  They heard on Facebook.   Social media is the way that Occupy Wall Street would get people to various meeting places.  It’s the way that teens and young people find out about parties that are happening right now and things that friends are doing and saying.

Let’s pretend that we’re following John the Baptist and Jesus on Twitter.    John sees his cousin walking by and tweets to his followers:  “Look, here is the lamb of God.”  Simon Peter and Andrew catch this tweet and head off in the direction of the party.   Jesus sees them following and tweets:  What are you looking for?”  Simon and Andrew instant message back…”Hey Rabbi, where are you staying?  Where’s the party?”  Jesus sends a tweet that is short and sweet:  “Come and See.” Philip catches up to all this excitement and tweets to his friend Nathanael, “Look, we’ve found him…the one we’ve been waiting for.”   Nathanael tweets back, “No way…nothing good ever came out of Nazareth.”   To which Philip replies, “Come and see.”

Evangelism 101…so simple any teen with a smartphone could do it.  Now you are probably expecting to hear Pastor Kim’s once a year sermon on the need to evangelize.  But maybe it would be better if we called it what it really is….inviting followers.  When I open a Facebook account, I am inviting others to be a friend, and to friend me.  I am inviting others to follow developments in my life and keep in touch in ways that might not be possible.

For example, this week one of our members sent me a great picture of their two grandchildren.  It was a shot of 3 year old Harper sleeping on the couch with her newborn brother.  It was absolutely adorable.  These members have been down in Virginia with their kids for quite a while.   So it was a nice connection to see the picture and feel included in this important event.  It gave me the opportunity to say a prayer for the new family.  I put the picture on Facebook and lo and behold, another member who is in Texas for the winter, saw the picture and made a nice comment about it.  We were all connected through this crazy social media, but able to draw closer in the Body of Christ.

It made me realize that how much I, and we, are underutilizing this powerful technology.  How many of us today are on Facebook?  Each one of us is probably connected to people who do not attend church.  Now coming up in about a month is our Ash Wednesday service…definitely an underutilized worship service!  What if prior to the Ash Wednesday service I sent out a status message…”going to church tonight to prepare for Lent. All are welcome.   Come and See!”  Or if after worship some of you sent out a quick comment such as “the anthem was so beautiful it made me want to cry.”   “Or, I learned something new today…Rabbi means teacher. “   Make your “status update” about the things that are guiding your faith life.  You send out enough of those and eventually people are going to wonder what is going on, and maybe they will “Come and See!”

This week I attended the monthly meeting  of our Gettysburg Association Committee on Ministry.  On the way to the meeting I drove through a nearby town and realized that the Lutheran church right there on the main street was now closed.  It was a sobering sight.  Then at the meeting, one of the committee members who attends a nearby UCC church shared part of a conversation with our new area conference minister.  This staff minister is an expert on church development and church renewal and has done much research on church growth (and death).  In this conversation,  she shared  that if she looked at the  attendance figures and the giving record of this particular church she could tell them how many years before their church would close.  Needless to say that was a scary conversation.   (The number of years was 17, by the way.)  And I would say that I was more than a little disconcerted, after doing our annual report, that our average worship attendance last year was 117.  A decade or so ago it was 140.

Churches do not have the right to survive just because they’ve been in existence for several hundred years.  Our number one reason for existence is to make disciples…and any church that has stopped doing that will not survive in this day and age.   Why we would not want to share the love and acceptance we have found?  It is never insignificant to simply say “Come and See. “  We’re not responsible for how people hear our invitation or the way in which they consider the source.  We’re just commanded by Jesus to extend the invitation.

Elton Brown[1] shares that Nathanael is honest enough to express amazement that God’s Messiah could come from an insignificant village.  Brown goes on to say that suggests two claims.  First, God can accomplish great things in unlikely places.  Second, God is perfectly capable of honoring ordinary people in those insignificant places by giving them the capability l to share the good news.    God reaches out to us and invites us to reach out to others.  That’s how Christianity has managed to stay in business for all these years.  God gives us the product but we’re the sales force.   How we do it, what technology we use, doesn’t matter.  It just matters that we faithfully share the message.

We have said yes, by virtue of our membership in the Body of Christ, to the responsibility for inviting others to follow.  We are always reluctant to do so, and such has always been the case with his followers.  Peter Gomes[2] says that none of the prophets took on their assignments willingly.  Moses complained he was not eloquent enough and people just wouldn’t believe him. Isaiah claimed himself to be unworthy and a man of “unclean lips.”  Samuel was just a little boy.  Jonah refused to go to Ninevah.  And yet God took these people and turned them into something for his purpose.  Gomes says that what makes the Bible compelling reading is the company of human beings who through its pages play their part in the divine and human drama. (The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, pp 185-186)

Are you playing your part?  It’s not much of a script to memorize.   Just three simple words, Come and See.