Come and See

I am looking for people who are brave enough to go into some of the worst schools in this country, who will risk physical and emotional harm, and who will work for peanuts.

And I can tell that none of you would be interested in a job like that.

Yet, if you are by some chance interested, then I've got some brochures here and I would be glad to talk with any of you who might be interested.

That's all I have to say to you.”

With that, the assembled group of students rose as one body, began pushing one another, crowding the aisles, rushing the podium, fighting over the brochures, each trying to get a word with the speaker.

Yes, the students were perhaps not as disinterested and bored as they posed, but indeed are ready to give themselves to something bigger than a paycheck.

The Lord Jesus is out to give exactly the same kind of invitation to us today.

“I can see just how busy you all are with so many many things,” he says to us.

“You rush here and there, building up bank accounts and stocking larders.

I've seen the traffic at 7:45 when nice people suddenly change lanes aggressively.

I've seen the arguments over the last Christmas sale item in the store.

I know it is all Very Important Stuff.

What I have to offer isn't so exciting.

Conversation with the Father, companionship with the Son, by means of the Spirit, accompanied by the derision of the world, and enmity of the forces of evil.

It will be the most difficult and yet the most joyful of situations you can imagine.

It will connect you with the people of every time and place who have also heard this invitation and accepted it.

It is going to begin right now, and will continue forever.”

And all over the world, all over the centuries, people get up and rush the podium to get in on that invitation.

“Come and see” is the invitation, and we do.

Come and see Jesus, and all that we ever need to know.

Come and see Jesus and be commissioned to invite others.

Step One is a bath, with a memorable amount of water.

Step Two is starting to pattern our lives on those who walk this way before us.

I remember walking up across the snow-covered fields from the school bus, making a track with my boots for my younger brother and sister to follow.

We all need those pattern-people; that's why we have mentors for our catechetical students and for our folks on The Way.

Step Three is checking the guidebook regularly.

Scripture has several different functions: to reprove us when we are wrong, to encourage us when we are right, to strengthen us to continue, and to remind us of the goals of the whole enterprise.

Step Four is sharing in Holy Communion, food for the journey, medicine of eternal life, comfort from the One who took on all of our pain.

Step Five is all the rest of life: inspiration: breathing in the Spirit, and expiration, giving up those wastes which lead only to death for ourselves and for others.

Would you be interested in this?

O Lord, let the answer be Yes!

Let me assure you that I know that I feel most alive when I am engaged with folks wrestling with the big questions, with students honestly puzzling over what Jesus is asking, with folks exchanging parts of the faith in The Way group, with a young couple timidly asking the first questions of Jesus.

“Come and see Jesus” and they are!

Would you be interested in this?

I hope so, because this is not the sole preserve of the pastor.

This is for each and every one of us.

Invitation-giving is the most exhilarating part of Christian life for everyone.

We just don't know what might happen.

Parents soon learn that there is no guarantee about how their kids will turn out... will they take up the invitation of the Gospel, or not.

One of the civil rights leaders from the 1960's was raising a daughter, and was pleased to note that she was in fact growing step by step in the faith.

But when she passed through the college years, there came the day that she announced to her parents that she was hearing a calling to be a part of the Habitat for Humanity movement...in Uganda.

This was not too long after the fall of that brutal dictator Idi Amin, and Uganda was still a very violent place.

She could not be dissuaded: “It is the place where I am needed the most”, she said.

You don't know and I don't know what will happen when a person hears the invitation “Come and see Jesus” and heeds it.

The folks were deriding John Heyer at a church meeting down in Reading 150 years ago.

Who's going to worry about a mission all the way across the sea in India?

Who would go there? Would you?

Yes, I'll go. I'm ready to leave right now.

And he did...at age of 65... cross the Pacific and serve several more years in India to reorganize that mission.

Some will remember Pastor Schmitthenner who served here at St. Mark's in the year before I arrived.

He served in India in the very place that Father Heyer saved and reorganized a century earlier.

I'm thinking of Betty, a lady in my home congregation who came to see Jesus.

She never traveled particularly far like Father Heyer, but what a positive influence she had on so many persons.

In worship leadership, Sunday School leadership, in groups, and activities, in offerings and interest in the work of the wider church, in schools and community organizations...she was always calling people out from their narrow self-interests to what the gospel might be asking us to say and do together.

And I'm guessing that many here today can think of persons who have been especially good examples of those who make invitations on behalf of Jesus.

A dozen years ago, William Willimon was speaking with a college student.

“You did what?”

“While I was in Australia last year I took a bungee jump down a 300 foot deep ravine.

“Are you nuts?”

“No more than you.”

“How so?”

“”Well, look at you on Sunday morning, walking around up there, in front of God, speaking about God, helping God get messed up in people's lives.

Isn't that something like a bungee jump?

At least I use a cord”! concluded the student.

So then, I guess I need to issue the invitation this way: Come and see Jesus...I double-dare you...and bring someone else along too, for the greatest adventure imaginable.

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.