"Come and See"

John 1:29-42

The next day [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 he 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, ‘He 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 Son 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?” He said to them,“Come and see.” They came and saw where he 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’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He 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).

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Thursday night was midterm exam night for our Bethel Bible Study class – you may have heard some weeping and gnashing of teeth from them in recent weeks because of it. I haven’t graded the exams yet, but they’re always more worried about it than they need to be. So, in an attempt to remind a very anxious class about what we’re really doing here – and about what really matters in all of this – I asked them a question for “Extra, Extra Credit” on their mid-term exam. And their answers ended up being excellent sermon fodder for this morning.

The question was simple: “Unrelated to the Bethel Bible Study, share something meaningful you have experienced or enjoyed or been inspired by as part of our life together at Cross of Grace.” As I’d hoped, the answers moved me and inspired me and turned out to be a great connection to this week’s gospel.

Someone said it feels like home here…where kids are loved, family is supported, God’s grace and mercy are witnessed and love is felt. And they said how moving and meaningful it has been for their kids to see their dad serving here.

Someone said that, because of what we do here, they have grown to be more open and accepting and comfortable having hard conversations with people and that they can show love and compassion to people who struggle in ways they haven’t always been able to do.

A couple people said something about the overall feeling of warmth and welcome at Cross of Grace that matters to them.

Another person explained how they hadn’t ever been particularly involved at Cross of Grace until one Sunday morning when someone asked them to fill in for someone who didn’t show up. All it took, they explained, was for someone to ask. And ever since, this person has been as involved as anyone in what we’re up to around here.

Someone else remembered how deliberately and kindly they were welcomed the very first time they showed up – and how they continually feel welcomed, acknowledged and seen here.

Lots of people like how involved and connected kids are allowed to be, some mentioned the bells, the band, the friendships; others mentioned our outward focus on mission and ministry; some talked about relevant teaching and preaching; one person mentioned a card they got in the mail and a very specific invitation to serve as a Stephen Minister; someone else said that we “choose life” around here in all the ways – spiritually, mentally, mindfully; worshiping, serving, giving, empowering.

That’s all great stuff… holy stuff… moving things that remind me of how and why it’s good to be the church around here. But for me, what was mentioned in those answers to my “extra, extra credit question” was just as telling as what wasn’t mentioned.

No one said anything about doctrine or dogma or denominations. No one said a word about the abstract rules and self-righteousness that so many Christians fight about out there in the world. No one said a thing that had to be thought about or reasoned or rationalized in too many ways. It was all stuff that had to be experienced, witnessed, seen, heard, felt in some way.

It’s why it all connected so mightily with what the disciples of John the Baptist were hungry for when they first saw Jesus and started to follow him, for a change, in this morning’s Gospel. John points them in the right direction, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” And they just follow.

They meet up with Jesus, and they call him Rabbi, which means “teacher,” like maybe they were expecting a lecture or a reading or a sermon or a midterm exam, perhaps. But Jesus doesn’t do any of that. He says, “what are you looking for?” and then “come and see.”

“Come and see.” And that’s what they do.

And, who knows what happened that afternoon at 4 o’clock when they went to stay with Jesus. But ultimately, as they followed him around Galilee, they saw him heal and forgive and tell great stories. They watched him live and move and breathe among the people. They watched him touch lepers and be touched with the oil and tears and hair of a sinful woman. They saw him love others, purely and plainly. They watched him suffer and struggle and sacrifice and die – and they suffered the sting of that loss as a result. And they felt the joy of his redemption, on the other side the empty tomb, even more.

And all of this moved them, transformed them, and changed the world around them, too, by the grace they learned to receive and share because of all they experienced. And that’s still God’s hope for us as followers of Jesus on the other side of Christmas: that we would come and see – which so many of us have, based on the simple, holy, profound experiences we can share about our time here. And God’s hope is that, once we’ve come and seen, that we will go and show, too, so that others might be changed by the same grace we have known.

Rob Bell, has a great way of explaining this. He says, “Jesus shows us that ultimate truth and mystery are located in bodies and matter and lips and arms and music and grass and water and eyes and relationships.” In other words, God is in what can be tasted, touched, heard, seen, felt and shared. Not so much in what can be read about or described with all the right words. Or passed on by way of a midterm exam.

And one of my favorite things Rob Bell says is this: “It’s one thing to stand there in a lab coat with a clipboard, recording data about lips. It’s another thing to be kissed.”

“It’s one thing to stand there in a lab coat with a clipboard, recording data about lips. It’s another thing [altogether] to be kissed.”

It’s one thing to stand here in our white robes or our fancy clothes, with our hymnals and our bulletins in one hand and our best intentions in the other. It’s another thing altogether, to be loving and forgiving, to be sacrificing and sharing, to be tasting and offering up the fullness of God’s kind of grace and mercy with the world.

Whether it’s the bread and wine of communion; or the excitement of a kid, overjoyed to get “The Box” (you should have seen and heard Jackson Hall last weekend at second service); or whether it’s the water that runs down the cheeks of a baptized child; or the tears that fall from the eyes of a proud parent; or the sound of a song that hits, just so; or the fullness of grace that “just is” – or should be – in places like this … the stuff of life and faith that matters most, just has to be experienced and shared to make a difference. You just have to come and see it – as much as anything – in order to believe it, or buy it, or be changed by it in some way.

This life of faith is meant to be felt – which God proved by showing up in the skin and bones of Jesus. This life of faith is meant to be practiced – not just preached about. This life of faith is meant to be shared through worship, learning and service. This faith matters most – for us and for others – when we come and see it in flesh and blood, through sweat and tears, in laughter and love and when we go and show and become it, too, in all of those ways, for the sake of the world.

Amen

Weeping Rachel

Matthew 2:13-23

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because

they are no more.”

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead. Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”

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This Gospel is always a buzz-kill when it shows up so soon after Christmas – and on New Year’s Day this time around, no less. This story of Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents,” as it’s known, is a fly in the ointment of our Christmas celebrations. It is a turd in our New Year’s Eve punch bowl. It is rain on our parade, all the way around. And it’s a story we might wish we would have stayed home from on the first day of 2023.

It is Matthew’s Gospel moving straight from the story of Jesus’ birth, told in just a handful of sentences that say nothing about shepherds in fields, mangers in Bethlehem, angels singing “glory to God” or “peace for those whom he favors.” In Matthew’s version of the story, Mary takes no time to ponder or treasure any of that in the glow of candlelight, like we did on Christmas Eve.

In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, Mary and Joseph are engaged, there’s going to be a baby, his name will be Jesus – “because he’s going to save his people from their sins” – and that’s that. “That’s the tweet,” you might say, according to Matthew.

And then, some wise men show up, raise the ire of King Herod by tipping him off that this “king of the Jews” has been born, and before you know it, the first family is on the move again – on the run, suddenly – refugees to Egypt – so they can spare their son from the mass murder of children – infants and toddlers, two and under – in Joseph’s hometown. Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!

So, in keeping with the theme…

Did you know that there’s a war going on over in Yemen that’s been raging for the last eight years? And did you know that tens of thousands of children have been orphaned there because of it? From what I can tell, the ugliness in Yemen is barely on our radar in the U.S. I suspect the reason that war doesn’t make the news, like the one in Ukraine does … the reason their president doesn’t get to speak in front of our congress … the reason their plight doesn’t make it into our consciousness is two-fold. First, because they are brown and because Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. And second, because smarter people than me call it all a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. We like the oil we get from Saudi Arabia and don’t want to have to pay too much for it. Anyway, all of that is another story.

Some call what’s happening in Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and it’s been going on since 2015. And it made me think of Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents” because in addition to all those orphans the war has created, 10,000 children have been killed or maimed, and up to two million more have been displaced – just like Jesus – since it all began.

Merry Christmas.

And did you know there were more mass shootings than there were days in 2022? (Almost twice as many mass shootings as there were days, according to one source I saw.) And did you know that this has been a true statistic every year since 2019? But, I digress. It’s Christmas and our theme today is children.

Last year, just in the United States, 3,597 children died by gunfire, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths involving children — 2,279 — were homicides, which have increased by more than 73%, just since 2018. Most of these involved Black children, even though they are a numerical minority in our country. Last year, suicides made up almost 30% of gun deaths among kids, to the tune of 1,078. Unlike homicides, it’s white kids – mostly white, teenage boys – who die by suicide using guns, but that’s growing among Black and Hispanic kids, too.

One last thing. The United States is the only country among our peers – which means, supposedly, that we are “advanced” in terms of industry, technology, standard of living, and what not – we are the only country among such leading nations where gun violence is the number one cause of death among kids. In other countries like ours, kids are more likely to die from car accidents and cancer/diseases.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 kids under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In Australia, there were 10.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 children under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In the UK, there were 8.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 boys and girls under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In Japan, there were 5.

Merry Christmas.

But, to bring this back to something more closely related to Mary and Joseph and Jesus, on the run, remember, from Herod in Bethlehem to safety in Egypt, it’s interesting to know that nearly 130,000 migrant children entered our own government's shelter system in 2022, which was an all-time high thanks to a record number of minors who show up unaccompanied – alone – by themselves – without a parent or a protector or a guardian to claim them. That’s 8,000 more than last year – and a statistic that’s more than two months old already. Can you imagine how desperate and dangerous things much be for a child to be sent or taken to or left in a foreign land, without a parent, protector, or guardian to claim them? I know kids who won’t go to summer camp on their own or children who won’t spend the night at a friend’s house.

Merry Christmas.

We are generations away from Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents,” but all of this is why Matthew invokes Rachel as part of his version of the Christmas story. She weeps for the children – her own and for others, and for ours, I imagine, too.

See, when Matthew, by way of the prophet Jeremiah, invokes the notion of Rachel, weeping for her children, he was referring to the people of Israel being banished to exile and captivity in Babylon, and having to pass by the grave of Rachel, one of their matriarchs, whose grief cried out from the ground on which they traveled. That was the weeping and loud lamentation they heard at Ramah.

While God promised them hope and deliverance and salvation, in the end, much like the Good News of Christmas means to be for us now, Rachel was the mother who wouldn’t let the people forget about the children – her children, their own children, or any of God’s children for that matter. Rachel’s tears were the rain on their parade.

And I think we’re supposed to listen to Rachel, still, as we hear this hard, holy story about Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and see it happening among us, still, in so many scary, shameful, sinful ways.

Rachel is every mother weeping for her children, even while living with hope for what has come – and for what is coming – in Jesus.

Rachel is every father weeping for his children, even while searching for the joy that has been born – and that will be born again – in Jesus.

Rachel is every parent – and she would/could/should be all of us, together – weeping and wailing and refusing to let our own comfort and joy, our own silent nights, our own peace and prosperity allow us to neglect the reason for Christ’s coming, in the first place…

To bring good news of great joy to ALL people…

To save God’s people from our sins…

To shine light into the darkness in a way that the darkness cannot, has not, will not … ever … overcome it.

Amen. Merry Christmas.