Sermons from Upper Dublin Lutheran Church

Come And See

• Upper Dublin Lutheran Church

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We reflect on John 1 and the simple invitation that shapes a life of faith: come and see. From website edits to unscripted ministry, we trade over-explaining for encounter and discover how attention turns ordinary moments into grace.




SPEAKER_00:

Our gospel this morning comes from John chapter 1. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel. And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the chosen one of God. The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, Look, here is the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi, which translated means teacher, where are you staying? Jesus said to them, Come and see. They came and saw where Jesus was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter, brother Simon Peter's brother. Andrew first found his brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated anointed. Andrew brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, You are Simon, son of John. You are to be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. Please be seated. Let us pray. Dear God, we pray that your grace and mercy would fall upon us like the snow gently falls upon the earth. Give us your peace, give us your rest, and give us your hope. And open to us your word. In Jesus' name. Amen. Over the last several weeks, we've been in the process of updating our church website, giving it a little New Year's glow-up, if you will. And if you haven't visited in a while, I encourage you to take a look, and many of you who are live streaming might be on it right now. And I'm grateful to our communications team for overseeing the building of the site last year and for my son Finn, who is helping us with this update. Twenty years at each church I've served, I built the website myself, along with sites for other other projects and ministries. Thinking through the structure, the language, the images, the navigation, and especially the user experience, how someone finds their way in, what they see first, what questions they might be carrying with them. And that work really matters. Last year alone, our website received 12,000 visits from more than over 8,000 unique visitors. For many people, it's the first way they engage with our church. The only way that I know to work on websites is obsessively. Formats, details, refining language, learning something new, implementing it across the site, looking at other church websites, a new tool, a new idea, and yes, lately, a little help from AI. And at one point in this updating process, I even asked ChatGPT to scan our site and give us some feedback, which it did very helpfully and very honestly. One of the things it pointed out was that the site sometimes errs on the side of over-explaining, reflecting what it called an older instinct to anticipate every question, spell everything out, and make sure nothing is left unsaid. And I read this response and I thought to myself, did AI just tell me that I'm old? Ouch. And then I realized it wasn't wrong. I mean, about the website, of course. Because that instinct comes from a good place, right? From care, from hospitality, from wanting people to feel welcomed and informed, but even with the best of intentions, you're reminded how easily explanations multiply and clarity becomes complexity. It leaves little room for wondering and discovery and exploration. It begins to favor information rather than action and connection. Which is what makes today's gospel feel almost startling in its simplicity. Our reading takes place the day after Jesus was baptized, and he's near the Jordan River, and John the Baptist is there with some of his disciples. And when Jesus walks by, John points to him and says, There goes the Lamb of God. And two of John's disciples hear this and begin to follow Jesus, and he turns and asks them a question. He says, What are you looking for? And they answer with a question of their own, Rabbi, where are you staying? It's a reasonable question. They want information. They want orientation. They want to know what they're stepping into. But Jesus does not give them an address. He does not explain the plan. He simply says, come and see. And they do. They spend the day with him, and that's enough. Almost immediately the invitations begin to spread. Andrew grows and finds his brother Simon, and later Philip invites his friend Nathaniel, and again and again the words echo, come and see. Come and see. In our godly play lesson for Advent, there's a line that stayed with me that says, Sometimes people can walk right through a mystery and not even know it's there. Sometimes people can walk right through a mystery and not even know it's there. And that feels exactly right in this moment. The disciples are standing there right next to the mystery and they don't even know it yet. They could have walked right past, but instead they stay, they follow, and they enter in. They had wanted information, but Jesus offered them an invitation. They asked for a location, and Jesus offered them a relationship. And so to come and see is an invitation to discovery, discovering who this Jesus is and what he's about. It's an invitation to experience God's presence in ways that can't be fully explained and advanced. It's an invitation to openness grounded in the promise that God will meet us along the way. You could say in his life that Jesus only had one fixed destination to go to Jerusalem, to confront the powers that be, to die and to rise again. And that between this moment on the Jordan River at his baptism and the cross, everything else was unscripted. They moved from place to place. They didn't know where they would stay or what they would eat. They met all kinds of people, curious and suspicious, faithful and hostile insiders and outsiders. They fed crowds because it was dinner time and they needed it. They healed because somebody reached out. They were interrupted constantly, and those interruptions all became moments of grace. Jesus and the disciples show us how ordinary moments met with attention and love can become extraordinary moments, how strangers can become teachers, how uncertainty can become faith. And I think that's true of the faith of this place too. And for all the care and thought that goes into a website, and it does matter, it can only take you so far. Faith in life in this community normally don't unfold as a step one, two, three, and four. It's much closer to a come and see, more like a choose your own adventure rather than an instruction manual. People don't arrive with everything figured out. They show up, they worship back later. And the strange and beautiful thing is that in that choosing, we discover that we are also chosen. Long before we turn to Jesus, Jesus has already turned toward us and says, Come. That's also true of the invitations that are beginning to circulate now for our newcomers gathering this spring, the welcome lunch, the journey groups, the social deparsonage, and in April welcoming new members. There's a structure to all of that, of course, times and places, hosts and plans, but what those gatherings are really about are discovery, meeting people, sharing stories, listening, paying attention to where God might already be at work. They're not steps to complete, they're spaces to enter. They're another way of saying, come and see. Between baptism and resurrection, between calling and fulfillment, this is how faith is lived. We walk into the mystery, sometimes not even realizing it at first. We follow without knowing everything in advance. We trust that meaning will come even if it doesn't appear the way that we expected. And along the way, we discover what Andrew discovered and what Philip discovered and what John the Baptist already knew. We realize what we have walked into. Not an idea, not a program, not a carefully explained faith. Rather, we find ourselves in an encounter with Jesus. The one who the shepherds and the magi sought and found, the one the disciples stayed with and followed, the one whose presence drew people close and whose words opened hearts. This is Jesus, the light of the world, the revelation of God's love, who keeps breaking into our ordinary, complicated and unfinished lives. We come and we see, and what we discover is that God has already been looking for us. And so the invitation keeps echoing. Each day, in ordinary moments, in unexpected circumstances. Come, Jesus says. And as we do, we become witnesses, not because we understand everything, but because we've seen enough to invite other people along. Just come, we say. Come and see. Comment.