"Come and See"
January 15, 2012

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”


John 1:43-51

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

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Back in the 1980s, in the very last days of the Communist-run Soviet Union, there was a Russian comedian named Yakov Smirnoff, who emigrated to the United States. You might remember him. He had a pretty funny act, comparing his new life in America to life in Russia. He actually pioneered an entire style of joke that’s come to be called “the Russian Reversal.” He’d offer up jokes like, “In America, you can get this card, American Express – “Don’t Leave Home Without It.” In Russia, you get Russian Express – “Don’t Leave Home.” or, “In America, comedian can say to a heckler, ‘Your mother wears Army boots!’ In Russia, she probably does, and she can beat you up.” or, “In America, you can always find a party. In Russia, the Party finds you.” In his routine, he’d often make fun of Cleveland, the first city he lived in when he came to America, but then he’d explain, “No, really, every country has a city they make fun of. In America, it’s Cleveland. In Russia – it’s Cleveland.”

He was onto something with his humor, especially with that last example. We do seem to be wired to need something, or some place, to focus our ridicule or our scorn on; to be able to point to some place where the people are lower down on the totem pole than we are. If you live in New York, you look down your nose at – well, everyone, I suppose, but let’s say, for example, Chicago. If you live in Chicago, you look down on Columbus; if you live in Columbus you look down on Chillicothe; if you live in Chillicothe you look down on Frankfort, and if you live in Frankfort, you look down on, I don’t know, maybe Lattaville. It just seems to be human nature to do that. They did that in Jesus’ time, too. In those days, the people of Judea, and the city of Jerusalem, looked down on the people to the north, in the land that was once the Northern Kingdom of Israel – the regions of Samaria, and beyond that, Galilee. In this passage from John, we hear about Jesus wandering around in the region of Galilee, at the beginning of his earthly ministry, and calling his first disciples – first Andrew, who tells his brother Peter to come and see Jesus; then Philip, who goes and tells his friend Nathanael to come meet this Jesus, from Nazareth, who Philip says tells him is the Messiah that they’d been waiting for and whose coming had been foretold. And when Philip heard this, he practically snorts, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?!” Now here’s Nathanael, who’s from a city in the looked-down upon region of Galilee, looking down his nose at a still smaller town in the same region. Could anything good come from there? Still, despite that, Philip coaxes him to come and meet Jesus, and when he does, Jesus doesn’t get into some petty argument about whether Bethsaida or Nazareth is a better place, but he tells Nathanael he’s an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. A good man, a respectable man, someone worthy of respect and goodwill. And Jesus tells him that he saw Nathanael under the fig tree when Philip first called him. Some scholars say that that’s a figure of speech, sitting under a fig tree, that means someone is a scholar of the scriptures, that there’s some historical evidence to that effect. I don’t know if that’s true, or if it just meant that Jesus saw him sitting under a fig tree; either way works fine for me. The real point of it is that even with his cynical outlook, Nathanael saw something different in Jesus. Philip saw it in Jesus, and since he knew Nathanael, and probably expected his sarcastic first response, but he still told Nathanael, come and see. And there was something intriguing about Jesus that disarmed Nathanael’s cynicism. When Jesus spoke, Nathanael listened.

We’ve all known people who seem to have that special something about them that makes people pay attention to them, that draws people toward them. We see it in some politicians. We see it in some professional athletes. I suppose we see it in Tim Tebow now. We definitely saw it in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who our nation recognizes tomorrow. Whoever it is, we can all think of someone who has this special “something” that disarms people, attracts people, not just to them personally, but to their thoughts, their understanding of things. Jesus apparently had this same kind of aura about him, but on an even grander scale. He certainly wasn’t anything flashy, but when you met him, when he spoke – when he said, “Come and see,” it spoke to your soul.

Last week, we highlighted the fact that there are some of us who have been called by Jesus to specific, particular ministries within his church. But of course, we’ve all been called to be ministers within the church in some way or another, whether ordained or not. Jesus says to each of us, “Come and see” what kind of a different, transformed life God offers us. A life where we aren’t held captive to our past, whatever was there. A life where we can feel the burden lifted off our shoulders, where we can simply accept that God loves us, right now, just as we are, not as we might become. A life where we can feel that communion, that fellowship with God, and where that relationship will form and shape every part of our lives, without even thinking about it. A life where we can feel how that relationship makes our lives absolutely better, here and now, than we would have without that relationship. It’s a kind of transformed, new life that would be worthwhile and wonderful to us, even if there were no such thing as life after death. That’s the kind of life that Jesus wants us to experience, to see – that he calls us toward, saying “Come and see.”

And because we know how wonderful this new life is, we can call others to come experience Christ, too. Not beating them over the head, not threatening them with hell, not trying to convince them that they have to come to faith in Christ. We can’t do that; only God can enable someone to come to faith. No. All we have to do is be willing to honestly tell our friends, our family members, our neighbors, just why our faith is important to us. Why coming here to church means anything to us. Why we think its important to support our church financially, more than other charities that we might support. All we have to do is be willing to explain to them what faith in Christ has meant to us, how it’s changed our lives for the better. All we have to do is say, “Come and see.” And let God do the rest.

Thanks be to God.