Check this out!

This sermon was delivered to the people of the Lutheran Church of the Nativity on January 5, 2014. The text for the sermon was John 1:35-51

“They said to him, ‘Rabbi, (which translated means teacher where are you staying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Come and see.’” - John 1:38b-39a

My friend Sarah and I love to share music with one another.  At least once every couple of days I’ll text her or get a text from her with a song to look up online as soon as possible.  Sometimes these songs are silly, because we know they’ll make the other person smile, like when I texted her “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities a couple of months ago.  Or maybe it’ll be a deep song, like “A Drop in the Ocean” by Ron Pope, because we’ve been thinking about each other.  Just a couple days ago, Sarah texted me “Farewell December” by Matt Nathanson for me to look up.  I know that I look forward to sending these texts, because I love sharing whatever earworm has been stuck in my head for a few hours.  But really, I think I look forward to sending these texts because it’s a way for me to share one of my passions with a close friend.  

It makes me think about some of my other passions, good food, good movies, good books, good beer, and how frequently I share them with the people I’m close to, whether they want to hear about it or not.  What are your passions?  What are those things that you love to share with the people in your life?  How long was it since you shared one of those things with someone?

If you’re like me, I’d guess it hasn’t been too long since you’ve shared your love for something on whoever’s closest.  We love inviting people to participate in something that we are passionate about.  We’ve loved it since show and tell when we were in elementary school and now that we’re older we love sharing with whoever, whenever.  We can’t resist talking to our co-workers, family, friends, strangers in line at the grocery store about whatever book we’ve just read, whatever movie we’ve just watched, where we had dinner last night, what particular craft has our attention, or which political ideology we align with.  We even share online, using with the heading, “Check this out!”

And that’s exactly what happens in this text this morning.  Philip has been waiting for the Messiah.  And he figures the best place to wait for the Lamb of God is with a prophet, John the Baptist.  And sure enough, Jesus walks by and John proclaims that “here is the Lamb of God.”  So Philip goes to Jesus to find out more.  It only takes Philip the better part of an afternoon to realize that he has, in fact, found the Messiah that he’s been waiting for.  His life project, his passion, has appeared right in front of him, and he runs back home to tell his friend Nathanael about it.

He goes to Nathanael, saying “I’ve found him!  I’ve found the Messiah!” And Nathanael, understandably says back to him, “Really?  I don’t believe you.”

Nathanael reveals the greatest flaw in our strategy to invite people to share about our passions.  We don’t actually want to pick up other people’s hobbies.  We don’t want to have to invest time and energy into something that we don’t really care about.  We’d much rather just talk and talk and talk about whatever we’re really excited about.  We don’t want to have our everyday lives disrupted with something new.

As much as I love swapping songs with my friend Sarah, I must confess that I’m not always as good about listening to her recommendation as she is to seeking mine.  I know that her song for the day is going to be wonderful and awesome and prophetic for a given moment, but I always seem to find an excuse for why I can’t listen to it when she invites me to.

Like Monday, when she texted me about “Farewell December.”  It was completely appropriate for the end of the month, and the beginning of the new year.  But I was playing video games, and so I texted back that I’d check it out later.  It was closer to 3 or 4 the next afternoon before I finally listened to that song, though.  Everytime she’d text me, I’d think…Oh, yeah, I need to listen to that song.  But then I’d have to go into a meeting.  Or I’d have to finish up whatever I was working on.  Or I’d have to take my dog for a walk.  Or I’d have to cook lunch.  Or whatever.  I managed to keep her good taste in music from disrupting my daily life.  

Like all of us, I kept refusing an invitation into something new and awesome by making excuses.  We avoid accepting an invitation when we know that it means our lives are going to be disrupted, even if it’s momentarily.  Even Nathanael makes an excuse when Philip invites him to come see where God is working.

We especially avoid accepting God’s invitations to experience something new, because God’s invitations are the most disrupting.  When we accept God’s invitation to come and see, we learn where God is staying, or to be more faithful to the Greek, where God is abiding.  As we will see through the next few months, where God is abiding is in us, with us, and through us.  God abides with us from the moment we have been baptised like Cleo/Davis were not that long ago.  

And there is nothing more disruptive than having God abide with us all the time.  You see, God has a way of pulling us out of the routines of our day-to-day life and inviting us to come experience God’s work in our lives and the lives around us.  We become invited to participate in God’s work in our neighbors, and very seldom are our neighbors our friends.

When God abides with us, we suffer when we watch the injustice of those whom we would like nothing more than to ignore.  God cries out to us, pleading for us to go to the homeless person and help them get treatment for whatever physical or mental illness is keeping them on the streets.  God cries out, begging for us to go to the person who lashes out in the workplace, to help them cope with whatever’s been going on at home.  God cries out when entire peoples are persecuted because of the color of their skin or because of their religion.  God cries out to us when people are reduced to objects, used by those in power.  God cries out to us time and time again, asking, begging, pleading for us to allow our lives to be disrupted so we can experience another place that God abides.  

But instead, we tend to make excuses.  We say, “It’s not my fault, I don’t have to fix it.” Or “I’ve got to go to work now, I’ll get to it later.” Or “There are hundreds of people nearby, why can’t one of them fix it?”  Or my personal favorite, “I’ve got my own problems to deal with, and no one is helping me with them.”  We keep saying our excuses over and over again, and eventually we believe them.  We let the sin that ruins our relationships with each other and with God drown out God’s shouts to “check this out!”  And we let the fear of having our lives disrupted get in the way of actually experiencing for ourselves where God is abiding in us, and those around us.

And we should be afraid.  God’s disruptions mean experiencing something new.  God’s disruptions mean dying to sin.  God’s disruptions mean being raised to new life on the cross.  But, even though it’s scary, it’s worth it.  It’s worth it to recognize where God abides in our neighbors, in the strangers, in that person we can’t stand.  When we start to pay attention to where God abides in those people, our lives become transformed.  It becomes exciting.  It becomes a passion that we can’t wait to share with the people around us.  And it becomes easier to see that God has been abiding within our hearts the entire time as well.  Amen.