Come and See
January 20, 2008
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
There’s been a lot of talk over the past couple of weeks about the legacy of Martin Luther King – about his role in the Civil Rights Movement and how it ought or ought not shape and inform current political thought.
It’s not difficult to understand why contemporary political leaders – whatever their political bent – want to lay claim to the mantle of King’s legacy, so it’s not surprising that they make their claims when political campaigns and King’s birthday cross on the calendar.
Now I never expect any depth of theological reflection or understanding to emerge from any American political discourse – despite the fact that increasingly both Republicans and Democrats seem too often to think they are running for the office of “pastor-in-chief” rather than commander-in-chief. Nevertheless, the utter absence of any theological understanding of King’s role always disappoints me.
After all, before he was the “slain civil rights leader” that the media always refers to, he was a preacher’s kid, a seminarian, and a pastor. He always understood his role as that of prophet to the nation – a fundamentally theological self-understanding grounded in a deeply held conviction of personal calling and vocation.
So while it is rather simple and certainly a great deal of fun on the Sunday of the King holiday to seize upon King’s lofty rhetoric and sound a rousing call to let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, it is urgent that we recall the roots of the rhetoric and be shaped and formed by the timeless Biblical call rather than any contemporary political exigencies that reflect a widespread theological amnesia.
What has this to do with us? With you and me and the church at Clarendon in this particular season of our life? Moreover, what has it to do with the Biblical texts that the lectionary places before us this morning?
As I read the political news of the past couple of weeks, I began thinking about King’s kitchen table conversion – an episode from King’s life that he referred to often, but that rarely gets mentioned in contemporary conversations about him – especially not in the kind of stories that we’ve seen emerge from the current presidential campaign.
As he related the experience, King was sitting at his kitchen table late one sleepless night in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott. It was 1955, and King was 26 years old – fresh out of seminary and less than a year into his first pastorate. Thrust against his own desires into the forefront of the boycott, King was facing the first of the almost daily death threats that would accompany him for the remainder of his life. His home near downtown Montgomery had recently been firebombed – its front room destroyed.
The politics of the moment seemed hopeless. What we look back at across 50 years as the inevitable movement toward basic fairness looked at that moment like an impossible dream. King was at the end of his rope physically, mentally and spiritually.
He gave voice to his helplessness – literally – in a desperate prayer. He put it this way:
“One night toward the end of January I settled into bed late, after a strenuous day. Coretta had already fallen asleep and just as I was about to doze off the telephone rang. An angry voice said, "Listen, nigger, we've taken all we want from you; before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery." I hung up, but I couldn't sleep. It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point.
I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. […] Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born. I'd come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. I started thinking about a dedicated and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, "You can't call on Daddy now, you can't even call on Mama. You've got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way." With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory: "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now, I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone."
It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world."
In the quiet of the darkened house, King heard God speak.
No promises of success, nor even that the burden would become somehow lighter; rather, King heard a voice saying simply, “I will be with you.”
I have heard that same voice. Perhaps you have heard it, too.
You don’t have to compare yourself to King to share in that experience. Personally, I suspect I am living something much closer to the life that King wanted to live, as opposed to the one he was called to live. The world owes an unpayable debt of gratitude that he followed the calling of God rather than the selfish desires of his own heart for a comfortable and secure life of reading, reflecting and teaching. It takes a faith of unfathomable depth to follow such a call, and I, for one, surely prefer the lure of security to the risks of faith – to follow my own desires rather than God’s calling.
That calling from God comes in the same voice as that assurance of divine presence.
I heard it decisively the first time I truly took note of the passage from John that we just read, with its vague but compelling invitation: come and see.
“Come and see,” says Jesus; “I will be with you,” God echoes.
“Do I trust this?” asks the human heart.
The first time I attended to that invitation, I flirted with it for a long time – years even. I danced close enough to it to engage it at church camps and at divinity school; and then I ran from it as fast and far as I could, and avoided it altogether for many more years.
At the time I never gave it this much thought or analysis, but I suspect that somewhere in the depths of my soul I understood that this invitation to “come and see” was asking of me more than I wanted to give.
When, after long years of avoidance, I did eventually again attend to the invitation when hearing it, as if for the first time, in this very passage from John, I responded more out of curiosity than any conviction, I assure you.
“Come and see.”
“Well, why not? What have I got to lose?”
“Come and see,” was the invitation to the disciples. No details about what they might find, or what might be asked of them. Just the simple, “come and see.”
When I heard that in 1995 at the Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church, something in it was compelling enough to come and see. I certainly did not respond thinking that I’d wind up here, this morning. I never imagined a dozen years ago that I was embarking on a journey of faith that would involve any witness for justice or for peace. I certainly did not imagine there would be wounds or scars along the way.
But, like the first disciples, I was looking for something. Not necessarily for “him of whom Moses spoke,” but looking, nonetheless, for deeper connection to something that would draw me out beyond my own narrow concerns, my own small fears and limited hopes. None of that was, of course, anything on the order of the personal concerns, fears or hopes of a Martin Luther King in 1955. He was already a prophet living into God’s plan. But the point is precisely that no matter where you find yourself, when you come to the end of your rope, the end of your own capacities, precisely then you are open to this invitation – come and see; and precisely then you are open as well to the assurance, “I am with you always.”
That’s the invitation and that’s the promise that echo again for us right now. “Come and see.”
This calling is real and it is urgent. I am a witness here.
Beyond our narrow concerns, small fears and limited hopes God is calling us to live into a future of God’s own imagining. The world cannot wait. God will not be mocked.
So, whether it’s from courage and conviction, or out of curiosity, “come and see.”
God is calling us, right here and right now, to be the community of faith at Clarendon that will make a difference in the world. God is calling us right here and right now to stand up for righteousness wherever we find ourselves; to stand up for justice wherever we find ourselves; to stand up for truth wherever we find ourselves.
“I will give you as a light for the nations,” says the Lord. “that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
And the same God who invites us to come and see, the same God who calls us to stand and be light in the darkness, is the same God who promises to be with us always – even when we are weighed down by our own fears, even when we are at the end of our own capacity, even when our imaginations fail us and our hearts break open. Into those open hearts, then, God pours out this invitation: “Come and see.” Amen.
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
There’s been a lot of talk over the past couple of weeks about the legacy of Martin Luther King – about his role in the Civil Rights Movement and how it ought or ought not shape and inform current political thought.
It’s not difficult to understand why contemporary political leaders – whatever their political bent – want to lay claim to the mantle of King’s legacy, so it’s not surprising that they make their claims when political campaigns and King’s birthday cross on the calendar.
Now I never expect any depth of theological reflection or understanding to emerge from any American political discourse – despite the fact that increasingly both Republicans and Democrats seem too often to think they are running for the office of “pastor-in-chief” rather than commander-in-chief. Nevertheless, the utter absence of any theological understanding of King’s role always disappoints me.
After all, before he was the “slain civil rights leader” that the media always refers to, he was a preacher’s kid, a seminarian, and a pastor. He always understood his role as that of prophet to the nation – a fundamentally theological self-understanding grounded in a deeply held conviction of personal calling and vocation.
So while it is rather simple and certainly a great deal of fun on the Sunday of the King holiday to seize upon King’s lofty rhetoric and sound a rousing call to let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, it is urgent that we recall the roots of the rhetoric and be shaped and formed by the timeless Biblical call rather than any contemporary political exigencies that reflect a widespread theological amnesia.
What has this to do with us? With you and me and the church at Clarendon in this particular season of our life? Moreover, what has it to do with the Biblical texts that the lectionary places before us this morning?
As I read the political news of the past couple of weeks, I began thinking about King’s kitchen table conversion – an episode from King’s life that he referred to often, but that rarely gets mentioned in contemporary conversations about him – especially not in the kind of stories that we’ve seen emerge from the current presidential campaign.
As he related the experience, King was sitting at his kitchen table late one sleepless night in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott. It was 1955, and King was 26 years old – fresh out of seminary and less than a year into his first pastorate. Thrust against his own desires into the forefront of the boycott, King was facing the first of the almost daily death threats that would accompany him for the remainder of his life. His home near downtown Montgomery had recently been firebombed – its front room destroyed.
The politics of the moment seemed hopeless. What we look back at across 50 years as the inevitable movement toward basic fairness looked at that moment like an impossible dream. King was at the end of his rope physically, mentally and spiritually.
He gave voice to his helplessness – literally – in a desperate prayer. He put it this way:
“One night toward the end of January I settled into bed late, after a strenuous day. Coretta had already fallen asleep and just as I was about to doze off the telephone rang. An angry voice said, "Listen, nigger, we've taken all we want from you; before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery." I hung up, but I couldn't sleep. It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point.
I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. […] Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born. I'd come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. I started thinking about a dedicated and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, "You can't call on Daddy now, you can't even call on Mama. You've got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way." With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory: "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now, I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone."
It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world."
In the quiet of the darkened house, King heard God speak.
No promises of success, nor even that the burden would become somehow lighter; rather, King heard a voice saying simply, “I will be with you.”
I have heard that same voice. Perhaps you have heard it, too.
You don’t have to compare yourself to King to share in that experience. Personally, I suspect I am living something much closer to the life that King wanted to live, as opposed to the one he was called to live. The world owes an unpayable debt of gratitude that he followed the calling of God rather than the selfish desires of his own heart for a comfortable and secure life of reading, reflecting and teaching. It takes a faith of unfathomable depth to follow such a call, and I, for one, surely prefer the lure of security to the risks of faith – to follow my own desires rather than God’s calling.
That calling from God comes in the same voice as that assurance of divine presence.
I heard it decisively the first time I truly took note of the passage from John that we just read, with its vague but compelling invitation: come and see.
“Come and see,” says Jesus; “I will be with you,” God echoes.
“Do I trust this?” asks the human heart.
The first time I attended to that invitation, I flirted with it for a long time – years even. I danced close enough to it to engage it at church camps and at divinity school; and then I ran from it as fast and far as I could, and avoided it altogether for many more years.
At the time I never gave it this much thought or analysis, but I suspect that somewhere in the depths of my soul I understood that this invitation to “come and see” was asking of me more than I wanted to give.
When, after long years of avoidance, I did eventually again attend to the invitation when hearing it, as if for the first time, in this very passage from John, I responded more out of curiosity than any conviction, I assure you.
“Come and see.”
“Well, why not? What have I got to lose?”
“Come and see,” was the invitation to the disciples. No details about what they might find, or what might be asked of them. Just the simple, “come and see.”
When I heard that in 1995 at the Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church, something in it was compelling enough to come and see. I certainly did not respond thinking that I’d wind up here, this morning. I never imagined a dozen years ago that I was embarking on a journey of faith that would involve any witness for justice or for peace. I certainly did not imagine there would be wounds or scars along the way.
But, like the first disciples, I was looking for something. Not necessarily for “him of whom Moses spoke,” but looking, nonetheless, for deeper connection to something that would draw me out beyond my own narrow concerns, my own small fears and limited hopes. None of that was, of course, anything on the order of the personal concerns, fears or hopes of a Martin Luther King in 1955. He was already a prophet living into God’s plan. But the point is precisely that no matter where you find yourself, when you come to the end of your rope, the end of your own capacities, precisely then you are open to this invitation – come and see; and precisely then you are open as well to the assurance, “I am with you always.”
That’s the invitation and that’s the promise that echo again for us right now. “Come and see.”
This calling is real and it is urgent. I am a witness here.
Beyond our narrow concerns, small fears and limited hopes God is calling us to live into a future of God’s own imagining. The world cannot wait. God will not be mocked.
So, whether it’s from courage and conviction, or out of curiosity, “come and see.”
God is calling us, right here and right now, to be the community of faith at Clarendon that will make a difference in the world. God is calling us right here and right now to stand up for righteousness wherever we find ourselves; to stand up for justice wherever we find ourselves; to stand up for truth wherever we find ourselves.
“I will give you as a light for the nations,” says the Lord. “that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
And the same God who invites us to come and see, the same God who calls us to stand and be light in the darkness, is the same God who promises to be with us always – even when we are weighed down by our own fears, even when we are at the end of our own capacity, even when our imaginations fail us and our hearts break open. Into those open hearts, then, God pours out this invitation: “Come and see.” Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
12:36 PM
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