The Rev. Jeunée Cunningham
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
January 20, 2002

Come and See
John 1: 29-41

 Lord, take our eyes and see through them. Take our ears and hear through them.
Take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts, and fill them with your fire. 

Today, I have the pleasure of worshipping with you all because my family and I stopped on our way down from Leesburg, Virginia to Orlando, Florida to visit our good friends the Logues.  

If you were to make a wild guess as to why we are heading to Orlando, you’d probably guess right. We are going to Walt Disney World! This will be the first time for any of us to go there. 

Of course, Disney has always been held out as a great vacation spot, we but never really put much thought into getting down there until now. I’m sure the millions of dollars they spend on advertising didn’t hurt, but what really made me want to come was the stories so many of my friends had about the place. The priest I work with had taken his family two years ago. Other friends have just went last October. We decided we wanted to go for ourselves.  

So, ever since we got the tickets for Christmas, we’ve been reading the travel guides and listening to friends’ advice. At a recent party, two of my friends became very animated as they started telling me about which rides were the most thrilling. Several of my friends said that they really enjoyed the shows. One woman at coffee hour last week confessed that she hated Disney, although she admitted that she could understand its attraction to the younger set.   

Obviously, hearing about other people’s experiences only go so far.  So this afternoon we are heading south to check out Disney for ourselves. 

I guess that’s the way it is with much of life.
We hear something about someone or something, and it peaks our interest.
Depending on what we are looking for, we decide whether to make the effort to learn more or try it our for ourselves.
The experiences of people we know and trust can help us determine if this new thing is something we could benefit from.  

What is it that we are after? Do we think this new thing will offer it? Finally, we need to decide if it is important enough for us to check it out. 

I can see some of this dynamic in the Gospel story today. John was with two of his followers when he sees Jesus walking by. “Look!” he says, “Here is the Lamb of God.” That may not sound like much of an endorsement to us, but for John’s Jewish disciples, the image of the Lamb of God was very strong.  

Certainly, the image brought to mind the Passover lamb, the lamb whose blood saved God’s people from death and led them to deliverance.  

The image of the lamb also brought to mind Isaiah’s words concerning the Suffering Servant.  

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent so he did not open his mouth.” (Is 53:6-7)  

John may have had this image of the lamb in mind when he says at the beginning of our Gospel today, “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  

So John’s disciples, as people who were preparing the way of the Lord, are no doubt intrigued by John’s words, “Here is the Lamb of God.” We can imagine the thoughts….  

“The lamb of God? “I wonder what makes him think so?
(These two disciples obviously weren’t around when John saw the Spirit descend on Jesus like a dove. )
Does John think Jesus is the Messiah? The anointed one? The savior of Israel?”  

John recognizes that Jesus’ has a special place in God’s plan. But the two disciples don’t just take John’s word about who Jesus is, they want to find out more for themselves. So the two disciples follow Jesus.  

Jesus sees that they are following him and he turns around. He then speaks the first words we hear from him in the Gospel of John. With these first words, Jesus asks a simple yet profound question. “What are you looking for?” 

“What are you looking for?” It’s a question that could be asked of many of us. “What are we looking for?”  

What are these two men looking for???
They are looking for answers. They are looking for the Messiah. They are looking for the truth. They are looking for a way to understand the trouble times they lived in.  

But they aren’t sure about who Jesus is yet. They don’t know yet if they can trust his answers. And somehow, it doesn’t seem right to ask for answers to these big questions in the middle of the road.  

So they ask a simpler question. “Where are you staying?”  

But even that simple question doesn’t get a direct answer from Jesus. Jesus doesn’t give them directions. He issues an invitation. He says, “Come and See.” And they do. They go and stay with him the rest of the day.  

We don’t know how Jesus and two disciples spent their time. We don’t know what the conversation was like. We don’t know if they shared a meal. We don’t know what it was that convinced these two men that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one. We don’t know if they had any of their questions answered, or whether simply spending time in Jesus’ company did it.  

But obviously something convinced them. Just after this visit, one of the two, Andrew, goes to Simon Peter, his brother and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.”  Peter, and later others, come and see and follow.  

It’s not so different for you and me. Perhaps one reason the name of the second disciple remains anonymous is so that we can put ourselves in his place.  

Jesus’ question applies to each one of us.
What are you looking for? We are all looking for something.

We are looking to make sense of the troubled times we live in.
We are looking for a way to order our lives in a complex world.
We are looking for truth.
We are looking for joy.
We are looking for healing.
We are looking for meaning.
We are looking for love.
We are looking for God. 

You may have had others point to Jesus and say, “He’s the one. We have found the Messiah.” Maybe your parents or a Sunday School teacher, or a friend.  But at some point, you decide to move beyond the opinions of others and begin to discover Jesus for yourself.  

So we ask Jesus the question, “Where are you staying?” “Where can I encounter you more fully?” Some of you found your first answer to that question before you even knew you were asking it. You grew up in a Christian home, were baptized as an infant or young child, and have abided with Jesus ever since, knowing that he is the One who saves us.  

Some of you can look back and remember a particular time and place where you decided to follow Jesus’. Some of you only recently and tentatively have become interested in spending time with God and may still not be sure that what others say about him is true.  

But no matter where you and I are in our faith journey, Jesus says, “Come and See.” Jesus invites us to Come and See him here in this place. You may have thought your invitation to come to King of Peace came from Frank, or a friend, or an advertisement. But your invitation to be spend time with God comes from the Spirit of Christ himself, through those others.  

So we gather in this place. We spend time with God. We share a meal of bread and wine. We open up a conversation with God in prayer.  

I don’t know the substance of the conversation going on between you and God. What draws you to meet God in this place may be different than what drew the person sitting next to you.  

I don’t know what you are looking for, or what you have already found.   

But notice that the story does not end there, with what you find. It does not end as you decide that Jesus is the Messiah. It does not end as you decide how to follow Christ or how to continue to follow him.  

The story is only complete when you go out and invite others to “Come and See” as well. Maybe you can eloquently describe to others how you have encountered God here in Word and Sacrament, in the people and in the prayers. And then again, maybe not. It doesn’t matter.  

God wants us each to be his agents of invitation. All you need to say is, “I’ve found something good. Come and See.”  

That simple invitation is one that grew a handful of disciples into the millions of Christians around the world.  

That simple invitation, given by each of you to others is one that will grow this church from a congregation of 50 worshipping in a house to a large community of Christ followers worshipping in a new church and ministering to the community with a school and outreach.  

That simple invitation is one that draws each one of us into deeper relationship with Jesus himself.  

God is here because God is in the invitation. Come and See.