“Come and See”

  January 16, 2005

Scripture Reading:   John 1:29-42

Rev. Dr. Carol Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

  

In the scripture passage, after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, John was standing with two of his disciples.  They saw Jesus walking by and John said, Look, here is the Lamb of God!  Then the two disciples followed Jesus and asked him where he was staying.  Jesus said to them, Come and see.

When I was preparing for this sermon I happen to be using The Spiritual Formation Bible.  In the margins of each page are suggested things the reader can do to deepen one’s experience of the passage.  For this passage it suggested that as Jesus invited the disciples to Come and see where he was staying, we invite Jesus to come and see our homes.  It instructed “Invite Jesus to come and see where you are staying.  Invited him into your living space.  Talk to him as you show him around.  Then ask Jesus to sit with you…” 

Now, I am person who likes philosophy and theology and big concepts.  The more abstract the better.  Asking Jesus into my home was not a big concept for me.  It was not abstract, in fact it was very concrete.  It seemed painfully literal to me and a bit childish.  But, not knowing what to write for today’s sermon, I gave it a try.  Why not, I said to myself.  After all, Jesus was real and lived in a real world.  If he was alive today, Jesus would have been able to come and see my house just as he was able to see Andrew’s house, or John’s house, or his mother’s, Mary, house. 

So I started with the mud room.  What a way to introduce Jesus to my house.  Our mud room is an avalanche of boots, coats, mittens, and hats.  There were heaps of jackets of my kids, and jackets of friends of my kids who left them there.  There are unclaimed sweatshirts from the fall.  There are muddy shoes and wet shoes.  A lot of things were mismatched.  One gray glove here.  One blue glove there.   An orange hat lay on the floor with an imprint a boot smeared on it, as someone obviously stepped on the hat rather than over it to get into the kitchen.  I didn’t know what to make of showing Jesus the mud room.  Other than the fact that Jesus probably knew rooms in Israel a lot like this one.  Places where things pile up.  The debris of life’s coming and going.    I also felt relieved at some level that I didn’t have to do anything special with my mud room for Jesus.  There it is, just as it is.   No great hymns sung in the mud room.  No great thoughts thought in the mud room.  Just a place from where we shout “Hello!”  and “Goodbye!” 

Then I took Jesus past our kitchen table.  We live in an old old farm house.  The kitchen table is a long rectangular and old pine with black windser chairs around it.  I thought Jesus would like it.  He loved eating with people.  I imagined Jesus suggesting we would invite some of my friends.  Anyone would do.  How about those joggers passing by.  Or, the UPS man who was coming up the driveway.  That was Jesus.

 

Then I took him into the living room where our Christmas tree is still standing.  “Tell my again” I imagined him asking, “How does everybody celebrate my birthday?”  Then I imagined going on … “Well we cut a pine tree down, bring it into the house and decorate it not with pictures of you, but with Santa and other silly things.  Then we put lots of presents under the trees mostly from toy stores, and ones that are brought by Santa who is suppose to come down the chimney……”  The longer the explanation goes on the more confused Jesus gets.  At last he says, “Well at least you are all together and that is good.”

Then I take him into my office at home.  This is the place where I write my sermons and do most of the work for this church.  My desk has my computer on it.  Pink, blue and green sticky notes line the walls and the edges of the desk, like leaves on a tree.  Large bookcases line the walls.  Suddenly it all looked so complicated.  I thought of Jesus walking in a field simply plucking a flower and saying how beautifully God adorns that flower, and how much more God adorns us. 

The Spiritual Formation Bible suggested that after we take Jesus through our house, we sit down with him.  I like my house.  I am happy in my house.  Like I said it is an old old farm house.  I like that because it gives me a feeling of perminancy and continuity with the past.  This is something I didn’t have in my childhood.  My father was transferred a lot from one part of the United States to another because of the company he worked for.  It seemed that each time we were transferred the strains in my parent’s marriage would become more and more apparent. Moving meant our family once again lost what support system might have helped us through the marriage problems.  Plus there were the ever present anxieties of living in affluent America during the sixties.  There was a war that split the country.  There were huge social upheavals happening daily.  I felt very rootless growing up.

So, I cling to my old farm house.  To me it represents roots.  I never want to leave.  I don’t expect to leave for many many years.  But, in my heart I know no matter how much I want it to last forever, it won’t.  Someday, I will have to move one.  It might be when we retire.  It might be when I die.  Or, it might be some completely unforeseen circumstance.  The truth of the matter is that we are all sojourners.  We are all temporarily here and some day we all will have to move on. 

Most people in life get this one way or another.  For instance, the summer my father-in-law found out he had lymphoma.  The grandchildren were visiting them down in Florida.  We were all going on a boat trip down a river.  I commented to him about the jungle around the river.  It seemed so different than the manicured lawns, the neon blue swimming pools, the idyllic golf courses, of developed Florida. He said to me, “Yes it will all return to jungle someday.  All of this will return to jungle.”  With glimpse of his mortality on the horizon he understood, nothing is permanent.  No home is forever. 

Take, for another example, this letter from a traveling salesman.  In his early years Rev. Mark Buchanan’s dad spent a lot of time out on the road; lonely, barren stretches of road; eating meals in smoky diners, sleeping by himself in roadside motels.  In the deep of night he would sit down and write his mother letters.  One he wrote in 1967.  It was written from Stockdale Motel in Grand Prairie Alberta.  Part way through he said this:  I’ve lived so long in anticipation of something breaking for us, but if something ever did, my mind would break with it and I would wind up my illustrious career cutting out paper dolls.  The impetus of constant failure has propelled me to the verge of idiocy already.  The knowledge of my educational and personal limitations has all but destroyed my self confidence and has made me, I’m afraid very negative…  A traveling salesman is away from home for long stretches at a time.  And there can be this feeling of constant rejections before one small sale.   It is a good metaphor for so many who go through life trying and never feeling like they ever make it.  It is a good metaphor for depression - never getting home.  Always wandering.

I wonder if that is why at some level we have so much compassion for the Tsunami victims.  Their homes were literally swept off the face of the earth.  Pictures of people lost and orphaned wandering around with no place to go.  Thousands of years ago Psalm 69 was written.  “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.  I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.”  It sounds like it was written by a Tsunami survivor.    Although there was no great flood for the psalmist, still the feeling of flood and of being completely lost was one he also knew.  Homelessness is deep in the human psyche. 

In the end, showing Jesus my home led to accepting Jesus’ invitation to Come and see where he was staying.  As much as I love my home deep down I know that it is not permanent.   I know that I cannot stay in my home for ever no matter how comfortable it now.  Sometime I will have to leave.  So, if I have to go why not go to where Jesus is staying.  After all, “To whom shall we go?”  other than Jesus.  He has the words of eternal life.   He is the Lamb of God.

I tried to envision where Jesus was staying.  I didn’t see a mud room.  Or, a living room.  Or, any other room.  I could only imagine sitting around a table with him with others on either side of me, drinking out a simple cup.   I thought maybe my imagination was lame.  How come I couldn’t get any further with imagining where Jesus was staying.  Then I realized that it was enough.  Sitting with Jesus at a table with others was the point of Jesus.  He was the host of the banquet of God.  Everyone was invited to share in the messianic joy of the feast.  Home at last and forever.

Over the door at a church I once saw a sculpted image of a lamb, a lamb with a gash in its side, bleeding, yet with light streaming from its head.  John said while he saw Jesus walking by Look, the Lamb of God.  This is an echo of a theme that runs through the Hebrew scriptures.  It refers to the Passover lamb that was sacrificed when the Hebrews were in Egypt trying to escape the oppression of the Pharoh.  The Hebrews were to smear the blood of the lamb on the door of their houses so God would see it and pass over their houses and inflict the plague only on the Egyptians.  The blood of the lamb protected the houses of the Hebrews. 

It occurred to me that it was the blood of the Lamb that also protected my home.  Not that it makes my home any more permanent.  After all the Hebrews soon had to flee their homes across the red sea and into the wilderness.  Rather I realized that my concept of home and been too small.  The blood of the lamb protects my home by making my home  humanity itself.  My home is the street I live on.  It is the highway down the road.  It is Falmouth.  It is Scarborough.  It is Portland in between.  It is Maine.  It is Canada and the United States.  It is Europe.  It is Africa.  It is Asia.  As the Lamb is sacrificed for all of our sins, it is the home to which all of us go.  The dying, the lost, the victims of disaster…

As I finish writing this sermon, I do so in front of a fire lit in our old farm house fire place.  The flames warm the room.  It purrs quietly as my thoughts stream out onto the key board of my computer.  This is where I sit and talk with Jesus.  We speak of home and homelessness then home once more.  Finally, we seem to just sit together in silence.  Together we are at home now and forever.