Come and See

1 Sam 3:1-10           Psalm 139:1-5,12-18     1 Cor 6:12-20          John 1:43-51

Are you the sort of person who needs to see something in the flesh before you go ahead and invest… Despite my capacity to be click-happy with internet shopping, resulting in things arriving that look nothing like they did in the picture, really I am someone who needs to see it first before I know if it is for me.  When I had to choose a college to train for ordination I visited more than half of the institutions, until I just knew where I should go.

When I was offered my curacy parish, I didn’t say yes until I had been to the town and the churches and had literally touched the stones walls. I didn’t say yes until I had stood underneath the enormous statue of Christ on the reredos and whispered ‘I would like to serve you here’ and got the sense God agreed it could work out.

And then I moved to the other side of the world, and there was no chance to ‘come and see’ at all, because, well, covid. How was I supposed to know what this place felt like if I couldn’t come and see?  How did I know if I would sense the spirit about her business if I didn’t take my shoes off and connect with the ground?

Sometimes God is just incredibly faithful and makes everything work out, without us being able to see at all. We just hear the call and we go, like Philip.  Not because we are good, but because the God who calls us is. And sometimes we really do want to come and see. Sometimes we won’t commit to something without seeing and touching and tasting and engaging all our senses. Like Nathanael.

And then there are also times when the reputation of the place goes before it; Can anything good come out of Nazareth??

Now I am not saying our reputation here goes before us. I’m not saying people would say ‘can anything good come out of Beaconsfield?’ At all. But, when I first arrived and was new to the diocese I would meet my new colleagues across the diocese and even before I got to the end of my name they would say ‘oh you’re the one from St Paul’s Beaconsfield…… how is it???’ in that deeply inquisitive, kind of way.

And I would say, even back at the beginning, and more so now…it is great. It is a great place with amazing people. And I mean it. And oftentimes I also say ‘you should come and see!’ and I kept thinking about that this week when reading this dialogue between Philip and Nathanael.

And what it made me think is you have to be pretty careful making blanket invitations like that, because people might come. They might come and like it and stay and fit in and add to our growing tapestry of family life here. And they might come and not like it and they might say mean things about the stuff we hold dear. Or they might come and really like what they see and they might stay and they might not be like us. And they might sit in your seat and their children might make a mess and a noise – or they might. And they might move in with all their worldly possessions and set up home in our favourite bit of the grounds and they might be hideously inconvenient. We might invite people to come and see and they might have ideas for improving things – which means changing how things happen around here – and we said come and see but we didn’t mention change. And yet, we still keep extending our invitation, don’t we, because we want this to be a place where everyone is welcome.

Extending an invitation – meaning it – and going with the flow with whoever the spirit blows in – is risky. Don’t mistake me – there isn’t an alternative. Its what we must do, but we can also recognise the cost of this kind of radical hospitality.

But the other thing I have been thinking about this story is, it’s all well and good inviting people to come and see, but the more important consideration is what do we want people to see when they come.

And I can think of several things I want people to see; I want them to see a warm and friendly welcome, a happy and real bunch of people who like being community together. I want them to see a place that is simply stunning, well-loved and where love seeps out of the walls and up from the ground. Those things are important, but I guess the local AA meeting or the bowls team or book club might want those too.

Of course, the thing we want people to come and see isn’t a thing at all. We want people to come and see the Christ and meet the Divine and encounter that unending grace and mercy and that deep deep unquenchable unfailing love. And they might do that through our community and our grounds and our welcome, but it is so much more than that.

When we invite people to come and see, we invite them also to take and eat and take and drink. We invite people to leave behind the things, the resentments, the darkness they’ve been dragging around with them for decades and we invite them into the freedom of confession and forgiveness. We invite them to come and see the one who is higher than themselves, greater than their biggest fear, deeper than their deepest doubts, the one who formed their inward parts; and knit them together in their mother’s womb.

And we invite them to say yes.

Our invitation is not to a place or a service, it is to an encounter with life and love and truth and goodness. It is an invitation to belong, just as they are, and not to stay that way but to be changed and moulded and remade. And it is the same invitation for us.

We already came here. We have already seen.

And yet that unconditional welcome and invitation and call continues to be extended to us too.

Jesus still says follow me. Will you come and see? Amen.