Behold Look Come See

So how long does it take? How long does it take to be a Christian? You might say to yourself, “Well, that’s an easy question. It doesn’t take any time. Being a Christian means giving your heart to Jesus, identifying yourself with Jesus, accepting Jesus as your Savior. That doesn’t take too long.” For some folks it happens in an instant at a youth retreat or an altar call or a Billy Graham crusade. For others the process may have been more gradual, but surely when we joined the Church we were Christians, right?

O.K. Let’s accept that. We do call ourselves Christians and however long it took, we are Christ’s. But that’s really not what I’m asking. What I’m asking is – how do we know when we’ve made it? How do we know when we’ve really arrived? When we’re the real deal? I mean, we aren’t perfect yet, are we? Oh, some of us may think we are, but is there anybody in this room who has stopped growing spiritually? We may be on the road to perfection, but we haven’t arrived yet.

John Wesley…you remember John Wesley?...founder of Methodism?...John Wesley called this process of growing up in the faith sanctification and if you’ve ever been on an Emmaus walk you’ve heard a lot about it. When you are walking the path of sanctification you are growing in holiness, claiming the grace God offers and seeking to conform your life to that grace. Sanctification is the fruit of faith and it requires that we live out that faith and not merely profess it. Wesley felt that there was no such thing as a purely private faith. We have to risk that faith daily in our life in the world.

You know this. We talk all the time about walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Politicians get in arguments about it, even though most of the time it seems like they’re doing a lot more talking than walking. Hillary Clinton in a debate a few weeks ago took on Obama by saying, “It’s not enough to talk about hope, you’ve got to make things happen.” Obama’s response was to say, “Yes, but the words of hope can mobilize us to do something we have not been able to do before.”

We are all thirsting for something new. We look around at our country, our economy, our morals, our schools, our broken relationships, our hurting hearts, our leaders – and we ask, “Where are the people who will move us to a new place? Where are the politicians and the preachers who will open the way for change? Where are the artists who will give us new visions? Where are the administrators who will provide us with competence? Where are the people who will not just talk a good game when it comes to following God, but who will show us the way? How long does it take to become a real Christian? Sanctification. Living it out in the world. What a great word.

They were watching him walk by. John the Baptist was there by the side of the road and he saw Jesus walking by. Jesus didn’t say a word. He had not spoken to the crowds yet at all. He was walking the walk, so John started talking the talk. “That’s him,” he said to all who would listen. “That’s him – the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” An odd thing to say, especially since lambs were what the Hebrews led to slaughter. They killed lambs to atone for their sins. This is the first thing he has to say about Jesus? “This is the one who was here from the beginning of time,” John says. “This is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit,” John says. “This is the Son of God.”

Jesus just keeps on walking and we have no idea what the people around must have thought.

The next day John the Baptist in out again and once again Jesus walks by. John turns to two of his disciples who are standing there with him, Andrew and another one. “Look,” John says, “the Lamb of God.” As if everyone will remember what he said the day before. But no one else responds. Only Andrew and this other disciple. Like following a lamb to the slaughter, they set off behind Jesus.

Jesus knows they’re following him. He knows because he turns around to look and there they are. Finally Jesus speaks. Now that they’re already walking behind him, he speaks. The first words of the gospel that Jesus speaks are a question, “What are you looking for?” John the Baptist has told everyone who would listen who Jesus is, but Jesus wants to know what we are looking for.

What are we looking for? What are we looking for?! We’re looking for hope, Jesus! We’re looking for change. We’re looking for a way out…a way up. We’re looking for a golden parachute or a silver spoon. We’re looking for some affirmation that the way things are is not a sign of what is to come. We’re looking for assurance that the powers of this world don’t win in the end…that they cannot define who we are. We’re looking for peace. We’re looking for security. We’re looking for identity. We’re looking for acceptance. We’re looking for salvation, Jesus.

But, of course, Andrew and his friend are not going to reveal all that yet. So they simply say that what they want to see is where Jesus is staying. Jesus says, “Come and see.”

Over the course of the rest of the day, Andrew at least becomes convinced that John was right…that Jesus is the Messiah. He runs and tells his brother, Simon…soon to be known as Simon Peter. The point being that it was the witness of John and their own active curiosity that brought these two to Christ, but it was staying with Jesus and then living with him over the next few years that made them disciples. They had to live it to know it.

When I lived in England back in the early 90s and serving a church there, one of the things that absolutely mystified me was cricket. It was on TV all the time and it went on forever. Some matches lasted five days. There was big cricket field near our house and we’d walk by there and watch it every so often. I would ask people the rules and they would say, “Oh, it’s so simple!” Then they would rattle off a bunch of rules that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

We have a tea towel with the rules on it. It reads: You have two sides: one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not out, that’s the end of the game. Got that?

What I eventually decided is that cricket, like baseball, is one of those things you have to live with for many years to really understand. You can’t anticipate all the things that need to be said about it because each match develops differently and different skills are required at different times. The rules may even be fairly simple to grasp, but you can never really describe the spin that is used by the bowler or the angle used by the batsman to hit the ball—at least not to a novice.

It’s the same with parenting. Who can tell a new parent everything they need to know before the child is born? It’s a matter of experience and trial and lots of error. It’s the same with marriage. Who can tell a young couple, or even an older couple, all that they need to know?

Well, I think being a Christian is the same way. We come into the Christian life not knowing everything. Hopefully we know the essential things, but knowing more is a lifetime’s work. That’s why Paul uses the language of growing up so often. Those who are new to the faith are babes not ready for solid food, he says. It is only as we grow and develop that we are able to understand all the mysteries, and even then it is only in part.

Because when you get right down to it—how do you describe the difference Christ makes in your life? How do you explain to the harshest skeptic how bread and wine can represent Christ’s offering of himself for us? How do you explain what happens in baptism? These are things that seem very simple on the surface—it’s just food, it’s just water—but when you get right down to it, they are deeper than any words can explain.

In the end we have to say what Jesus said to Andrew, “Come and see.” He had no way of telling them what they were getting into. He had no way of describing for them what it would require. Perhaps if they had known at first they would never have taken that first step in his footsteps. They had to learn over time, every day, one day at a time, walking daily with Jesus.

Becoming a disciple of Christ is what we are all asked to do as Christians. That requires that we leave old understandings behind and give ourselves over to a new way of life, a new lifestyle. It requires that we follow Christ. That journey is the journey of sanctification. This journey moves us to prayer and contemplation. This journey moves us to involvement in the world. This journey moves us to take seriously the challenges caused by sin in the world.

I want to call you to take this seriously in your own life, but I also want to challenge you today to consider how God might be asking you to lead someone else to Christ, too. Especially I want you to think about how a young person might need you to invite them to “come and see” what this Jesus thing is all about. Somebody is waiting and watching and you can help them claim what it is about this Christian life that excites and moves and saves you.

Tomorrow we recognize the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King took seriously the call to sanctification and he knew that following Christ for him meant fighting against the sins of racism and injustice in this country. It’s a story we know very well. We read about it in history books and we study it in school and we celebrate it in TV programs, but King’s journey was not just about changing history, it was primarily about living out the implications of his faith. King challenged others to walk with him out of their own calling as people claimed by God.

King knew what we often forget—that faith is not something to be guarded like a porcelain figurine that we set on the shelf to be dusted off on regular occasions. Faith is something to be lived and used for God’s continuing work of creation. If we truly believe that God is present even in the least of our brothers and sisters, they we follow Christ by accompanying our brothers and sisters in their journeys. And as we go we continue to discover new things about God and ourselves—we come to see ourselves as chosen by God and changed by God’s grace.

How long does it take to become a Christian? How long have you got? What difference does Christ make in a person’s life? Come and see. Because it’s only by taking the risk of living a Christ-like life that we can hope to participate in God’s kingdom, which is coming…soon.

John 1:29-42
On the next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, the One taking away the sins of the world. This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who comes ahead of me because he was before I was.’ And I did not know him but, in order that he might be revealed to Israel through this, I cam baptizing in water.”
John witnessed saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove from heaven and it remained on him, and I did not know him but the One who sent me to baptize in water then said to me, ‘The one upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him – this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
On the next day, John and two of his disciples were standing and as he watched Jesus walking by he said, “Look, the Lamb of God.”
The two disciples heard him saying this and they followed Jesus. Now when Jesus turned and saw them following he said to them, “What do you seek?”
They said to him, “Rabbi,” (which, translated, means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come and see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying and remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard Jesus and followed him. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah,” (which is translated Christ). He brought Simon to Jesus.
Looking at him, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of John. You will be called Cephas,” (which is translated Peter).