October 2, 2016 – LWML Sunday Text: John 1:43-46
Dear Friends in Christ,
Have you been surprised or been part of a surprise? You as a congregation surprised me when I turned 40. “Toni, why are all these cars at church on a Saturday morning?” Toni and I surprised my parents, when Toni became pregnant with Karson. We set “baby things” around our condo until they figured it out. I still remember the excitement of my mom. I got to surprise a friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years. Toni surprised me with a golf outing with friends. Surprises can be quite enjoyable.
Surprises can also be heart wrenching. Being blindsided by a divorce. Hearing news from your child about a lifestyle choice. A doctor with news that will completely change your life or mortality. Being sure you are getting a job after a great interview and then being crushed again.
All surprises by definition are unexpected. People can have different reactions to the same surprise. How will you react the morning of November 9 after the election? Surprise? Depression? Apathy? Same surprise. Different responses.
This is what we encounter with Philip and Nathanael in our text and they see and hear of Jesus for the first time. Same surprise. Different responses.
“COME AND SEE”
After calling Andrew and Peter, Jesus found Philip and called him to be His disciple too. “Follow me!” Philip learned about this man from Galilee and shared his good news with Nathanael. He was surprised and excited.
How does Nathanael react? He is not excited at all. In fact, he has suspicions about this Galilean Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael does not have a joyful attitude but a guarded posture. Cautious and doubtful.
Can anything good come out of Nazareth in Galilee? It’s too close to unclean Gentiles and too far from holy Jerusalem. These people speak with strange accents and they are not very learned people. Can God work out His plan of salvation for a place such as this?
God surprises us as He always does. We look for His power and wisdom in all the wrong places. We usually look to ourselves, our holiness, and purity, and righteousness. I’ve got a handle on this God, but you know I may need an assist from you. We need to turn away from our inward selves and our perceived holiness and look to the holiness of Jesus. You and I are not the light; Jesus is the Light of the world.
Jesus invites the surprised and perplexed, the cautious and the guarded, the unbelieving and doubting: “Come and you will see.” If you follow this story beyond the words of our text we see that Jesus knew things about Nathanael that even surprised Nathanael. Nathanael made his confession: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Good things do come out of Nazareth.
God works out His plan of salvation in the most unexpected place. In Galilee with the Galileans. Who are the Galileans of today? Who are people in our neighborhoods who speak differently from us? Who do we know that doubts so much about Christ and His work that they could never come to faith? If we think like this we live in the darkness. We only see with the eyes of the flesh. We close our hearts to the surprisingly gracious ways in which God reveals His great love for all people, near and far through His Son.
God surprises us again and again to see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit what mighty deeds He can do in the most unlikely places and among the most unlikely characters. Our invitation to those around us is the same as Philip, “Come and see.”
We are Galileans. Marginal people called out of darkness into the light of the Son. A people once dead raised to new life through faith in God’s Son. Through strangers in our midst, God reminds us that the church is a bunch of strangers in a foreign land. To the world, we are complete strangers, speaking with strange accents, walking and living our lives to a strange beat. We speak the language of Holy Scripture. We initiate people into the church by sprinkling them with water at our fonts. We eat the body and drink the blood of God’s Son at our altars. Our Pastors forgive us our sins. We even love our enemies. How odd! How surprising!
On this LWML Sunday, we rejoice in Jesus’ calling and invitation to come and see once again what He has graciously done in our lives. We extend God’s Kingdom to the strange Galilean neighbors in our midst. We ask the Lord to open our eyes to more opportunities with brothers and sisters in Christ from different ethnic and language groups in the United States and abroad, so that together we might invite even more neighbors to meet Jesus, the man from Galilee, our Light and Life.
Hey Philip! Can anything good really come out of Nazareth in Galilee? Yes indeed, Nathanael, Jesus, God’s greatest gift has surprisingly come out of Galilee for our salvation. Hey Philip! Can God work out His salvation in lowly places and among strangers today? Yes, indeed, Nathanael. “Come and See!”
Amen.