“I See You”

Sawubona. I recently learned this is an African greeting that means “I see you.”  It seems to transcend our typical greetings of hello, hey, what’s up, and so on. Sawubona – I see you -suggests there is more to our human connection than just a nod or a cheery hello. This morning’s scripture shows us there is far more to Jesus than the seemingly simple man from Nazareth.  Like Nathanael, it’s up to us; we are invited to “come and see.” (John 1:46)

The gospel writer John describes Jesus in different ways. He gives us many expressions for who Jesus is, far beyond just his physical, human appearance. But how would one explain that Jesus is both God and man? Jesus is called the Son of Man, the Son of God, the One of whom Moses wrote in the Law, and Rabbi. There is clearly more to him than one can see.  Is this man from Nazareth really God? Then John uses physically grounded verbs like found, follow, saw, seek, stay, find, and SEE many times to show us how the disciples came to know Jesus. What does this scripture mean for us?  One interpretation is we need to take action to get to know God.  We need to see, follow, and trust as disciples of Jesus.

Betsy and I recently saw the 2007 movie, The Great Debaters, a true story starring Denzel Washington as a professor of history and debate coach in the 1930s at Wiley College, a small black Methodist college in Marshall, Texas.  The debate team does quite well in its competition with small black schools.  Based on its success, the team gets the courage to take on larger integrated or all-white colleges and universities. In 1935, they defeat the reigning national debate champions, the University of Southern California.  For some reason, the movie version swaps USC for Harvard.  I guess Harvard is the metaphorical epitome of perfection. Regardless, the rest of the story about Wiley College and the debate team is true.

The debate team struggles not for skills and excellence, of which they have plenty, but for the opportunity to be seen and heard as who they are rather than for the color of their skin in a particularly difficult time in US history.  One of the key figures in the story is James Farmer, Jr, who grew up to be the founder of the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE) and one of the leaders in the Civil Rights movement with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.  In the final debate against Harvard, Farmer describes a night when he and the debate team drove through a lynch mob.  As he watches the scene unfold, terrified and ashamed, Farmer wonders, “What was this negro’s crime that he should be hung, without trial, in a dark forest filled with fog?  Was he a thief?  Was he a killer?  Or just a negro?  Was he a sharecropper?  A preacher?  Were his children waiting for him?”  He talks about the pain of lying there doing nothing, feeling shame and seeing shame in the eyes of his teammates.  He silences the debate hall describing his personal experience of the seeming impossibility of ever being seen, truly seen and deeply known, as a black man or woman in Texas in 1935.  Although the movie did not have an overtly spiritual theme, I watched that scene, heard Farmer’s words, and hoped and prayed that he relied on faith in a Jesus Christ who did truly see and know him.   

As an aside, James Farmer’s father is portrayed in the film as well. He was a graduate of Boston University in 1918, receiving his doctorate degree. In fact, Dr Farmer was the first African American from Texas to receive a doctoral degree. He also taught at Howard University and Wiley College. In spite of all his degrees and success, he, too, had a hard time being seen for who he was.

Our country at one point in its history didn’t think much could come from black colleges. In fact, there was a clandestine movement to deny accreditation to black colleges as an indirect method of discrimination and segregation. As a Boston University graduate, I am proud that BU chose to see the grace in all people. In fact, on this weekend, we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., another graduate of Boston University. Dr. King would have been 80 years old on January 15.  We know that Dr. King lived his life in the light of Jesus and was not intimidated by the darkness of the times. In the face of so much hatred, so much violence, Dr. King and millions of others stood to be seen as children of God, no matter what the consequences.  At this same moment in time, we are just two days from the inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama, the first African American in our history to be elected to the highest office in the land. President Obama will be the most influential leader in the free world. What a remarkable confluence of historic events.

Interesting that in today’s scripture Nathanael asks Philip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Does such a question as that sound at all familiar?  According to the media, nothing good can come from Chicago, or from Washington D.C. for that matter.  But does the media really see people with much depth?  Do we see each other with enough depth?  In this scene, Nathanael mistrusts Philip’s word.  We humans do tend to mistrust each other.  Nathanael had to first understand that he was seen by Jesus, and then truly see Jesus himself to get the message. Sawubona.  I see you. Deeply.  It is then that Nathanael responds, “Rabbi, Jesus, you are truly the Son of God.”  

Just last Sunday, Josh Crowell quoted another president, Abraham Lincoln, from his second inaugural address in 1865.  Lincoln is speaking to the pain of the country torn apart by a civil war fought over the issue of slavery.  He said, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to bind up the nation’s wounds [for] a just and lasting peace.”  Seventy years after Lincoln’s moving speech, the members of the Wiley College debate team were still trying to be seen as human beings. The only charity they needed was charity of spirit.  Then won their debates on merit – with firmness in the right. Their debate coach teaches them a call and response chant designed to help them project their voices in public, on stage in a debate.  What I heard in the chant is a prayer of trust and confidence in God’s Presence and Power and in the hope of firmness in the right. The call and response went like this: 

Who is the judge?

The judge is God.

Why is he God?

Because he decides who wins or loses.  Not my opponent.

Who is your opponent?

He does not exist.

Why does he not exist?

Because he is a mere dissenting voice of the truth I speak.

Perhaps it is this chant, this prayer, that gave young Farmer the courage to speak as he did in the final debate I mentioned earlier.

In this morning’s scripture, Nathanael’s doubt and cynicism disappears when he is in the company of Jesus. Can you imagine the light that emanates from Jesus’ Presence? Might Nathanael have been shading his eyes? Light really does penetrate darkness. Nathanael learns about Jesus from Philip, but the real change comes when Nathanael is seen and known by Jesus. This meeting changes Nathanael’s life forever, we are told. He is open to the light, aided by the Light in Jesus, the son of God. The same thing happens to us, as we are seen and known by God and others. But sometimes it is not so easy, not so immediate.

There was a young woman in the 1970s who had prepared herself for life in the business world. She studied hard and was ready to go. She had a series of interviews with major firms on Wall Street. In fact she had 14 interviews with the members of the leading firm on Wall Street before they finally admitted they didn’t hire women, and certainly not black women.  But this young woman had been taught by her father, through Dr King’s words, to let herself be known by the content of her character, no matter how others chose to define her.  In time, she became the first female African-American trader on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange and a member of the board of directors of NASDAQ. The strength she maintained was a result of her faith, she said. She lives her life knowing that she is seen by God as God’s child – not only as a woman, or an African American woman. For those of you who haven’t heard Benita Pierce’s story, feel free to ask her about it.  Her very smile is full of the energy she savors as God’s Grace in her life. Thank you, Benita, for helping to lead worship on this remarkable weekend. 

We need people in our lives like Benita.  Part of the depth of this gospel message is about Philip’s willingness to bear witness to Jesus as the Incarnation of God. Philip’s world was just about as hostile to the declaration of faith as is ours. People were threatened by the life and teachings of Jesus. Our calling, our commitment to faith is, like Philip’s, and like Benita’s, and like so many others’ in our lives, to authentically represent God’s presence as followers of Jesus, the light of the world.  When we do that, others see it and are able to be open to Jesus themselves.  

This Tuesday is the traditional day of the Inauguration of our newly elected president. It has been so for 72 years, since 1937.  It just so happens that it’s the same week during which Martin Luther King was born in 1929.  This inauguration is an historic event in many ways. President Obama is a man of both African and American heritage.  Like Abraham Lincoln, he is from Illinois. President-elect Obama, like President Lincoln, takes office in the midst of turmoil – in Gaza, Darfur, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Iraq – not to mention economic strife in the U.S. and in the world at large.  Although his world was somewhat smaller, I doubt Lincoln’s sense of urgency was any less than Obama’s is today.

In some ways, the inauguration of Barack Obama is about as remarkable in our time as the notion that the word and truth of God would come in the form of a common man in Philip’s time.  Don’t get me wrong – I am not suggesting that Barack Obama is the second coming of Jesus Christ, despite the media hype.  Of course, it is true that virtually no one believed at first that Jesus was the son of God – and today virtually no one would have predicted, based on our country’s darker past, that an African American man would become President of the United States in 2009.  But what’s important here is that in an open and free election in the United States, millions and millions of voters saw Barack Obama – truly saw him – as a man, ready to lead our country, and nothing more.  Sawubona.  We see you.

So how do we approach Tuesday?  In Henri Nouwen’s daily journal, Bread for the Journey, he encourages us to pray for enough light for the next step – not to get too far down the road. We all want to see into the future, says Nouwen, five or ten years.  What will be there for us, our kids, our families, our country?  Nouwen advises that “the art of living is to savor what we can see and not to worry about what remains in the dark.” We live in faith when we are able to take the next step trusting we will also have the enough light for the next step, and then the next, and the next.

As we analyze, reflect, and dream on Martin Luther King’s birthday tomorrow and on inauguration day on Tuesday, maybe we can move, as Nouwen encourages us, from “unceasing thinking to unceasing prayer.”  Prayer for the future, for President Obama, and the extraordinary tasks before him and us.  Let us pray that the One who lives within us, the One who enlivens our hearts and souls, the One who awaits our prayers, continues to light the road ahead of us, step by step. We can see the way because we are seen by God as the children of Creation and disciples of God’s Son Jesus Christ.

President-elect Obama will take the oath of office with his hand on the very same Bible that Abraham Lincoln held as he took the oath of office in 1865. President Obama will say, as have all the preceding 43 presidents. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  The history of slavery and oppression in the United States will never be forgotten, but the presence of Barack Obama in the White House brings light to a dark past.

We profess our belief in God and a commitment to our faith, our own oath, each time we say the words, “I believe in God the Father almighty, the creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord.”  Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of God our Creator.  Jesus is the Light of our lives. We are alive in Spirit because we are seen and known by God. 

This past fall, an anonymous “get out the vote” message that appeared on the Internet said the following:  “Rosa sat so Martin could walk.  Martin walked so Obama could run.  Obama ran so our children can fly.”  Jesus lived and died for us that we may all be seen and known as children of God’s Grace and love in Creation.  These are amazing days in which we live – quite a time for thanks and celebration.

And the gospel says, “Come and see.” Off we go, step by step, following Jesus.

Will you pray with me?

Loving God, we are standing in the light of Jesus Christ. We pray to see clearly the road ahead for our world, our country and our church family here in Dennis.

We hold up to You our new president Barack Obama and all who are called to serve our nation in so many ways. We will follow the road ahead, trusting in your love and looking to see your presence in those who walk with us.

Amen.