Come and See

Scripture:  John 1:29-42

It is estimated that the average person in the United States is exposed to at least 4,000 advertisements every single day.   Due to this ubiquity, without thinking about it we are all fairly good at filtering out the noise.  We are exposed to so many advertisements that we have learned to naturally ignore most of them, so we do not really register how many advertisements we see.   At the same time nearly every form of media- radio, television, social media- that we engage with daily uses advertising revenue as the primary business model.  This has created an arms-race of sorts where consumers get naturally better at ignoring advertising and advertisers get better at getting through to the people they want to buy products.  Advertisers use the cutting edge of science and technology to create the most effective advertisements.  For instance, if you use social media, you likely have had the experience where it feels like you start seeing advertisements for something just because you thought about it.  Advertising is also big business, and around $400 billion is spent on advertising every year.   Despite all the money spent and all of the algorithms used, the most effective advertising cannot be bought.  The best kind of advertising that a product can possibly hope for is word of mouth, where people tell other people about their positive experience of a product.  Marketing research has found that 92% of people trust recommendations from a friend, and word of mouth influences up to 50% of all purchasing decisions.

We see a similar principle at work in this morning’s scripture.  When it comes to sharing the good new of Jesus Christ, the most effective strategy is not a large advertising campaign, it is not a polished, concert level Sunday morning production, and it is not a finely tuned content that works the social media algorithms to generates likes and shares.  As this morning’s scripture demonstrates the most effective way to share the good news of Jesus Christ is the same as it has always been.  It is an invitation to come and see.

This morning’s scripture contains two small stories.  Each one gives us a glimpse of those early days of Jesus’ ministry, and each story shares with us how we can share the good news.  In the first story John the Baptist testifies about Jesus.  This scripture is an interesting one, because the gospel of John does not actually contain anything about the events of Jesus’ baptism.   Instead, what we get is the event recounted from the perspective of John the Baptist.  John knew that the whole purpose of his ministry was to prepare the way for the one who would take away the sins of the world, and at the baptism of Jesus it was confirmed to him Jesus is the One.   In this morning’s scripture he shares his testimony.   He shares his own experience with Jesus, where he saw the Spirit come down, where he heard God, the Father declare “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased.”   Based off his experience, John knew that Jesus was the messiah which is why he could confidently say, “I have seen and I testify.”

   Based off his personal experience John was able to declare that Jesus is the God’s Chosen One.  “I have seen and I can testify” is the first way that we can share the good news of the gospel.  Yet a lot of people are not too comfortable with this idea. One of the biggest objections that is given for why people feel they cannot share the good news with others, is they do not feel qualified to do so.  We have this mistaken idea that to share the good news we must be good at arguing or debating what we believe.   We got this wrong idea that the best way to convince someone to our point of view is to prove we are right by pointing out they are wrong.  It has been my consistent observation that this does not work.
  Perhaps you have been at big public events and have seen bullhorn guys, these are street preachers with a megaphone shouting into the crowd. I attend Gen Con in Indianapolis every year, and most years there is a street preacher trying to get people to listen to him. While I have no doubt about the faith convictions and genuine sincerity of these people, the message they are preaching is not great.  Often the message they are preaching is based on telling people how wrong they are, how evil their actions are, and how they need to turn or burn.  I do not think this is the best way to testify to the goodness of God.  Telling people, they are wrong is not terribly effective. I think the number of people who have been argued to salvation is close to zero.

I get the temptation to want to change someone’s mind by proving we are right.  We like to be right, and we imagine that we can “win a soul” through showing how right we are.  But that language reveals just how problematic the idea is.  The whole concept of winning a soul makes salvation something to be won or lost, it makes it an argument achieve victory in.   Jesus was not God’s chosen one to win souls, Jesus came to reconcile all people back to God.  Jesus did not come to conquer, but to restore.    In this morning’s scripture, John the Baptist does not try to win an argument or convince someone of his rightness.  Instead, he testifies to his experience with Jesus and how this experience pointed him back to God. 

While many may not feel confident enough in their knowledge to debate Christianity, all of us who know Jesus, should have a story to tell.   We can all testify to what we have seen and how we have experienced God at work in our lives.    We should be able to tell of how God protected us, how Jesus healed broken hearts and shattered souls, or how the holy spirit empowered us in the most miraculous ways.   We should be able to speak about the all surrounding, all-consuming, never-ending love of God and how experiencing that love has changed our lives for the better.  We should be able to testify to the blessed assurance we have that even if we are great sinners, Jesus is a greater savior- and best of all God is still with us!  In order to share the good news of Jesus Christ, we do not need to have all the answers, nor do we need to be a world class debater.  It is far more effective to tell others how we have personally experienced God’s love and how we have been impacted by grace.   Like John we should be able to say “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s chosen one.”

The second story we get in this morning’s scripture is Jesus first encounter with the people who would become some of his first disciples.  The scripture tells us that these two were already people who were following John and they had heard John’s testimony of who Jesus truly is.  The scripture tells us that it was Andrew and unnamed disciple that tradition identifies as John himself.  They spot Jesus and out of curiosity begin following him.   Jesus calls them out on this by asking what they are doing, and they very awkwardly answer with “where are you staying?” 

That was not what they truly wanted to know.   That is what they asked but they truly wanted to know is “who are you?”  “Is it true?  Are you the Messiah?”   Jesus answered their questions, both the one they asked, and their unasked ones with one of the best and perhaps most Jesus-like answers ever, “Come and you will see.”  They spend the day with him, and these two people become part of Jesus twelve disciples.     The scripture does not share with us what happened during that day they spent with Jesus, but whatever happened it made believers out of them.    It all started though with the invitation to “come and see.”    Jesus did not just tell them the good news, he showed it to them.   

 Now we should acknowledge up front that it is easier for Jesus to show someone the good news, after all he is the Good News!  However, if we kept reading on in the gospel of John, then we see the same strategy is used when Jesus calls his next disciples.  When Phillip goes to tell his friend Nathaniel about Jesus the way he convinces Nathaniel is he tells him to “come and see.”
 
It is one thing to tell people about our faith.  It is quite another one to show them.  Telling people are experience with Jesus is good but showing them how our faith is actively changing our life is better.  We all know the common platitude; actions speak louder than words.   This has always been true, but perhaps it hits harder today.  If we want to share Jesus with an unbelieving world, then telling people Jesus loves you is not as effective as showing them that Jesus loves you.  We are going to need to go to where they are with open hands and extend the invitation to “come and see.”

  If we are going to invite people to come and see then we need to make sure we have something to show them.   There are two primary ways that we can do this.  The first way is we live differently.   Catholic author Brennan Manning got to the heart of this when he said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.  That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”   As Christians we should live as “little Christs”.  The way that we live our lives, the way that we talk, the way that we treat others, and the way that we conduct ourselves (even when no one else is looking) should reflect Jesus.  In this morning’s scripture Jesus did not tell Andrew and John he was the Messiah he showed them through his actions.  In the same way our desire to follow God should be seen in how we live, in how we love, and in how we serve.  We should not just tell people we are forgiven, loved, and new creations in Christ.  Through our commitment to living as individuals transformed by grace, we should be able to clearly show them that through Christ we have been made new. 

 The second primary way that we can make sure we have something to show is that we can be the church.   The bible describes the church as the body of Christ.  It is through the church reaching out, serving others, and meeting needs that the world can see Christ at work in the world.   Church cannot just be a building we spend an hour in once a week, because the church is not the building, the church is the body of Christ made up all who seek to follow him.  When we gather to worship on Sunday morning, we are the church.  When we go to work on Monday morning or watch the basketball game on Thursday night, we are still the church.   Church needs to be the people of God doing the work of God for the glory of God.  Through our collective commitment to seeing the needs of this world and meeting the needs, then we can show that Jesus’s love is transformative.  We will not just be stating that we will be demonstrating it, we will be giving people something to come and see.

If you consider yourself a disciple of Jesus, then you have a holy responsibility to share the good news of Jesus with others.   I know it is easy to put Christian in our social media profiles or put a bumper sticker on the back of the car, but those statements will get ignored like the thousands of advertisements we ignore daily.   Even if it requires us to share our story or put in the time to serve others, may we be willing to share the good news of Jesus Christ.  Friends, the world needs a savoir, so may we be willing to testify to how we have experienced the Lord.  People need Jesus, so may we be able to say “come and see”.  May we show others the body of Christ and may they experience the love of Christ through how we love and care them.  May we testify to our experience with Christ, may we extend invite, and may we give people something to come and see.  May we let the world know that our lives have been changed by the Lord of love.   May we pass it on.