Sermon - January 20, 2008: Second Sunday after Epiphany

Pastor Heisley

The story goes: Certain French monks had a longstanding exchange program with certain Japanese Zen Buddhist monks. After a particular Buddhist had been a guest in a Benedictine monastery in France for a month, he had one question. It seemed to him that the Christian monks did not live very well. They worked hard, their food was neither good nor plentiful, and they did not get enough sleep. “Yet you are joyful,” he said, “and I want to know: from where does this joy come?” 

Come and see. 

This story, told by Kathleen Norris, points to the hidden obviousness and the obvious hiddenness of our faith. Come and see. 

Today’s gospel reading begins with John the Baptist testifying to what he has seen: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” But then he points back, back to the need to come and see. Twice he says, “I myself did not know him.” “I myself did not know him.” “But I came, baptizing with water.” 

John learned to know Jesus, learned to know the power of God working in and through his life for all of humanity, by coming to the water and leading others to come with him. It was obvious to John that he should baptize, that he should evangelize, that he should testify, but all was not clear. Clarity came in the doing, as he baptized each one. One by one, clarity came. Yet, there was hiddenness. Just what does this baptism mean? How does it change us? The obvious splash of water –what does it do to the rest of my life? Come and see. Engage in a life lived in witnessing to others and the hidden will become obvious and the too obvious will remain richly hidden. 

Hugh of St. Victor was a German mystic whose main work was done in Paris in the early 12th century. He contemplated the problem of the depth of God’s hiddenness and the constant invitation to the world to come and see. Why should this seemingly mean-spirited invitation exist? If we cannot fully see when we respond to the invitation to come, why is it offered? 

As he thought about this problem he came to believe that if God were so open, so obvious that all doubt was washed away, there would be no merit in faith. There would be no use in believing, in witnessing. And faith, an understanding that in the power of God there is so much more to life than we can now understand, faith in the hidden future that God holds for us, faith is the gift that God longs for us to celebrate, making our lives joyful, even in the midst of hard work, bad food and too little sleep. Come and see. 

John the Baptist does not shout from the mountaintop that all the world should come and see. One by one he baptizes. He helps people to come to the hidden power of God in the presence of the Holy Spirit. He stands with two disciples and points to Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” Andrew hears him. He goes to his brother Simon Peter and says, “We have found the Messiah.” Come and see. One by one, two by two, the story of God’s obvious presence, hidden in human nature, spreads. 

This might sound strange, but I believe that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a stunning proponent of Jesus’ ‘come and see’ attitude. You don’t think that non-violent protest can work? Come and see. See that people are freed and peace enfolds the earth. It was never clear how things were to end, where things were going to go in the civil rights movement. 

From his divinity studies in suburban Philadelphia to his first ministry in Montgomery, Alabama, to his most famous speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King had a dream of wholeness and peace and unity, that is, all people living together as God’s people. He had a dream of tranquility for individuals and for society as a whole in the midst of the chaos of the wrenching transitions of the 1960’s. 

And he understood that these things must happen one by one. Two by two. Coming and seeing that peace and respect and human dignity are part of the essence of the hidden power of God in our world. And his legacy of martyrdom and wisdom and gentleness and profound faith –faith in what is God’s hidden nature and faith in believing what is shown to us –Dr. King’s legacy can help us to come, to see. 

So how do we do these things? We have been baptized. We are here singing and praying and eating and drinking. We are here in the midst of God’s obvious hiddenness, seeking the gift of faith, faith that will give us the joy of monks living with lives that shine. We are here –we have come to Jesus and we continue to come to Jesus –so that we might see the hope that he brings to humanity. We want to see and To be changed. 

Last week Dr. William Cavanaugh gave two lectures at our annual conference on liturgy. He said that in the Holy Eucharist we are drawn into the center of God’s love for us. We come and see as we eat and drink. We have Jesus in us. 

But there is more. There is so much more. Cavanaugh said that in the Holy Eucharist Jesus consumes us. I take this to mean that Jesus takes our sins and our shortcomings and our failures to see, and converts them to love and to the ability to say to the person standing next to us, “Behold the Lamb of God!” While it might seem obvious that in the Holy Eucharist we are drawn into the heart of God, into the center of the breath of the Spirit, we are also de-centered. We are taught that wherever we are, away from the altar that centers us in Christ, wherever we go, we are in Christ. Jesus has consumed us. It thus becomes our duty and delight to say to others, “Come and see.” 

This is a deep truth: people come to church because they hear the invitation, “Come and see.” They come because they are hungry, yes. They come because they have deep longings to know the hidden nature of God and God’s will for their lives. 

But they also come because you say to them, “I know where your hunger can be sated. Come and see.” You say it in your words of invitation, in the ways in which you live and love, and in the ways in which you work for peace and justice in the world, standing up to evil and proclaiming the good. 

People have questions like the Buddhist monk did. They sense God’s power working one by one, two by two like John the Baptist. We understand that somehow a better world is possible through God’s hidden, obvious power, just as Dr. King taught. And people need to hear, we need to hear from each other, the world needs to hear, Jesus’ invitation. Now we can say to them, “Come and see.” Amen.

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