Phil Kniss: Love—here, now, and in particular

The Rugged Commitment to Love
Presence: Commitment to be WITH the other

Psalm 139:1-12; John 1:14-18, 14:18-21; Romans 8:38-39

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50 years ago, in the summer of 1967,
during another troubling and violent time in our nation and world—
race riots in our cities,
the six-day war in Israel and Palestine,
a nuclear arms race spreading around the world,
less than a year before Martin Luther King, Jr would be shot dead,
a group of creative artists from 19 countries,
held the first-ever worldwide live TV event broadcast by satellite.

They called it “Our World.”
It’s intent was to bring people together.
No politicians or heads of state were allowed on the program.
Only artists.
As diverse as opera singer Maria Callas and painter Pablo Picasso.
The concluding act was a new song from the Beatles,
written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney,
and sung for the very first time—
to the world, on live TV: “All you need is love.”

After that, the song spent 11 weeks at #1 on the charts.
In the 50 years since, it has become an anthem for the masses,
sung on the streets, in coffeehouses, on marches,
to get people through other troubling times.

Now . . . Lennon and McCartney are legendary songwriters.
I have at least four Beatles albums in my vinyl record collection.
But I’ll be honest.
It’s hard to think of a Beatles song any more empty of substance
than “All you need is love.”

It’s fun to sing. But means practically nothing.
Yes, getting the world to sing together—that’s great in itself.
But even when we sing the line 20 times in a song, like they did,
we still don’t know what we mean when we sing it.
“Love is all you need.”

In fact, it’s hard to know what practically anyone means,
when they talk about the pleasures and virtues of love.

Love is one of the most squishy words in the English language.
It can be pressed into just about any shape,
and mean anything . . . or nothing.

But . . . love is at the very center of our scriptures,
and at the center of our faith.
There is no theological concept more robust and profound
and essential to our understanding of God,
than the biblical concept of love.

So, we can’t just dismiss love-talk as purely sentimental.
We must . . . we must . . .
do the careful and deliberate work
of giving love the theological depth and clarity
and power to shape us that it deserves.
_____________________

That’s the point of this 3-part series.
To think theologically and practically, about love,
especially as it pertains to love in the body of Christ.
I was inspired to do this series
after spending a few days with Scot McKnight last fall,
when we hosted him for some lectures in this community.
And after I read his book, Fellowship of Differents.

In that book he makes a powerful case that the church ought
not to define love by consulting a dictionary,
which tends to focus on emotions,
on feelings of affection.
Rather, he suggests, we consult our scriptures,
and define love by watching how God loves.

God is the one who gets to define love.
1 John tells us “God is love.”
The nature of God = the nature of love.
1 John also says the proof of whether our faith is genuine,
is whether we love each other,
the way God loves us.

Which takes us straight to the question, “How does God love?”
Well, the biblical foundation of love is covenant.
And Scot McKnight suggests,
another way to say “covenant” is “rugged commitment.”
There is nothing casual about covenant.
We enter into covenant with great resolve.
We assume it will be hard work.
We assume we will change in the process.
But the covenant to love remains.

When the human side of God’s covenant with us failed—
miserably, and repeatedly, according to the Bible stories—
God kept reaching toward us in love,
keeping faith, keeping covenant,
making a rugged commitment to love.
That’s basically the whole story of the Bible,
God reaching toward us to close the gap,
to restore the relationship with us,
where love is freely given and received.

God takes initiative to express covenant love in three ways.

First, God promises to be WITH God’s people,
to move toward us, and join us in our muddled mess.
Even in the Garden of Eden,
God is portrayed as one who comes
and walks WITH Adam and Eve (Gen. 3).
In the Exodus, God is WITH Israel,
in a cloud by day, and fire by night (Exo. 13).
Long after the Sinai covenant, God says to faithless Israel,
“I will never leave or forsake you” (Deut. 31).
God is WITH God’s people
in the tabernacle, in the ark of the covenant,
in the prophets, and ultimately, profoundly WITH us,
in Jesus of Nazareth, who is called Emmanuel,
meaning “God with us.”

Second, the God of the Bible is FOR us.
God identifies with Israel, says “I am on your side.”
“I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
God is our advocate.
Over and over, God fights FOR Israel.
And in fact, passes judgment on Israel
when they reject God’s advocacy,
and try to win on their own terms.
And ultimately, Jesus expresses his solidarity FOR us on the cross.
Taking on himself what would have been ours to bear.

Third, God’s covenant love is directed TOWARD our transformation.
God’s love is a transforming love,
intended to move us TOWARD a particular end,
a telos,
an aim,
a direction TOWARD Christlikeness,
as loving, holy, God-glorifying, other-oriented
citizens of the Kingdom of God.

So . . . in love, God is WITH us, FOR us,
and inviting us TOWARD a transformed life,
living into the fullness of God’s intentions for us.
It’s God’s action, laid out in three prepositions—
with, for, and toward.
Or . . . we could say it this way:
God loves us with presence, with advocacy,
and with pointing a direction.

That is the love we are called to emulate in life.
If God is love,
then that is what genuine love looks like.
And that is the way we are invited to love each other.
As God first loved us.

And, as Scot McKnight points out, the order matters:
First WITH, second FOR, and third TOWARD.
First presence, then advocacy, then direction.

If I am willing to be WITH someone,
it gives credibility when I act FOR them, as their advocate.
And the combination of being WITH and FOR someone,
let’s them internalize our love,
so that when we offer DIRECTION
it can be received as an act of genuine love.

So often, we want to jump straight to giving direction,
and call it love,
without establishing any WITH-ness or FOR-ness.
A parent who truly loves their child,
will not try to shape the moral direction of their child,
without having established a relationship of love and trust,
by being WITH and FOR their child.
Direction,
without being preceded by long-term presence and advocacy,
will not be experienced as love, but as coercion.
_____________________

We’ll have two more Sundays to focus on advocacy and direction.
For now, let’s think about presence—
the rugged commitment to be WITH the other.

It’s harder than it seems, truly being WITH another.
Especially when that other, is profoundly other—
truly outside our tribe, outside our way of seeing the world.
Sometimes, we have to travel a great distance to be with someone.
And I’m not really referring to miles.
Sometimes, our neighbor next door, who we are called to love,
lives a great distance from us,
culturally, politically, religiously.
Sometimes, a member of our own church family,
sharing our pew, or small group,
or voice part in choir,
lives a great distance from us, in one way or another.

Being genuinely WITH another
is not something that happens by chance.
It is a choice.
Just as all acts of love are.
This is not the kind of love that anyone
falls into or falls out of.
We choose whether or not to love
by choosing whether or not enter into
someone else’s life and experience,
and be with them in it,
so we can find out what their life is like.

To love us and pursue is God’s choice.
As we heard in Psalm 139,
God chooses to follow us, wherever we go—
to the heights, to the depths, to the far side of the sea.
No one travels a greater distance than God.
God chooses to enter into the messiness of our humanity,
and be with us in it,
to even co-suffer with us,
for the sake of our salvation and restoration.
That is love—
a rugged commitment to travel the distance,
to close the gap,
to offer the gift of deep and lasting presence.

Hear me now!
A rugged commitment to be WITH another
is not just showing up long enough
to listen to someone’s side of the story,
it’s not just being quiet while they make an argument,
or explain why they think or act as they do,
as we rehearse our response or counter-argument.

No, being WITH another, in love,
is a choice to open our heart and mind to the other,
to place our physical bodies in their neighborhood,
to actively move toward them,
willing to share life with them long enough,
to know, viscerally, what life is like in their shoes.
It is not something to be taken lightly.
Love never is that. It’s costly.

The rugged commitment to be WITH another
is what makes an intimate relationship—
like marriage, or any deep friendship—work.
It is radically living out our basic human need
to know and be known.

In family life,
it’s choosing to stick together even when we disappoint each other.

In church life,
it means not walking away from conflict or tension
or painful misunderstandings.
It means a willingness to do the hard work of maintaining presence.
Talk about loving our neighbor is cheap.
Actually loving, by being WITH, is a precious thing,
that often comes at the expense of something else . . .
such as . . . our treasured preconceived notions about the other,
that we might need to let go of.

This principle of presence,
as the first layer of learning to love our neighbor,
applies in many other areas of life,
beyond intimate friendships
or relating to other church members.
It also has to do with loving our neighbors in everyday life.
_____________________

The plight of refugees and immigrants
is certainly high on our radar these days,
with President Trump’s order to temporarily suspend
the refugee program
and the on-again-off-again ban at the border
affecting thousands of Muslims around the world.

Of course, sincere Christians can disagree
about what a good immigration policy should look like.
But we cannot disagree that a central commitment for us all,
according to our scriptures,
is to welcome the stranger,
care for those in danger,
and to love all our neighbors . . . even our enemies.

But in this case, how do we love?
I suggest there are cheap ways to love, and there are costly ways.
The easy and inexpensive ways to love are fine, as far as they go.
We should probably do them.
Like putting up signs in our yard.
Maybe calling our elected representatives.
Attending some rallies.
All good, no doubt.

But how might we love our neighbor
by choosing to be WITH them in their suffering,
not in the abstract,
but here, now, and in particular.
It’s not enough to read about them,
or think we know what they are going through
because we saw it on Facebook.

Do we know what it’s like, right now,
for some of our Muslim neighbors in Harrisonburg?
or Iraqi Christian refugees, for that matter,
whose families are in a refugee camp somewhere,
caught between one kind of suffering, or another?
When was the last time we chose to travel a distance,
even if it was only across town,
to sit with one of our neighbors,
to let them know we are thinking about them,
to ask them what life is like for them right now,
to ask about the welfare of their families back home,
to ask them how we can be good neighbors to them?

That’s only one small example.
Certainly, in a divided political climate,
in a divided church,
we can do the same kind of active, stretching toward the other,
to be with them,
to ask what life is like, and take time to listen, over time.

Even if we ourselves aren’t under any immediate threat,
or don’t feel ostracized, or condemned by others,
or unsafe, or unwelcome . . .
Even if we are in a secure place . . .
especially if we are in a secure place,
we are called to love those who are not.
And the first step of love, if we take God’s love as a model,
is to pay the price to travel the distance,
and to be WITH the other—
not just in Spirit,
not just in thought and prayer,
but also with them in the here, in the now, and in the particular.

As we reflect on what that means for us,
let’s remind ourselves, in song,
of the God who, from great distance, comes to us in the silence,
and calls us each by name,
and says, “I claim you as my choice.
I love you and you are mine.” (STS 49)

—Phil Kniss, February 5, 2017

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Adam Blagg: Unity

Epiphany 4: Unity

Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

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In conjunction with the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity," Park View Mennonite Church participated in a community "pulpit exchange" with Otterbein United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. Today Otterbein pastor Adam Blagg preaches at Park View on the subject of Christian unity, drawing on today's lectionary texts, especially 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12.

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Moriah Hurst: Reflections on Psalm 28

Epiphany 3: Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday - “My cry is heard”

Psalm 28

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I woke up on Friday morning to read the first post in my news feed saying: “stay safe people”. As I kept reading, I saw that a man had driven into a pedestrian mall in the middle of Melbourne, the city I used to live in, killing 4 people and injuring over 20 others. As I continued to scroll I saw that some of my friends were there witnessing this tragedy that happened just blocks away from where I used to live.

This is just one story among so many of violence and pain in our world today. On this World Fellowship Sunday we recognize that at least 875 people have risked their lives to reach Europe by sea so far in 2017. The numbers of drowned or those who are dead or are missing from attempting this crossing, range in numbers from 11 to possibly 230. The UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) says “Increasing numbers of refugees and migrants take their chances aboard unseaworthy boats and dinghies in a desperate bid to reach Europe. The vast majority of those attempting this dangerous crossing are in need of international protection, fleeing war, violence and persecution in their country of origin. “The simple truth is that refugees would not risk their lives on a journey so dangerous if they could thrive where they are.” http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php#_ga=1.40114603.86130248.1484917995

Like the Psalmist we call out to God. We join with the world lifting our hands and calling out for help.

            On the UNHCR’s website there are 6 regions or countries listed as emergencies: Europe, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and the Central African Republic. Refugees are fleeing in massive numbers and flooding into countries around them putting pressure on places that might not have been stable in the first place before receiving thousands of desperate, frightened people. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/emergencies.html

The theme for Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday is: My Cry is Heard. The problem is we don’t hear them, don’t see them, we don’t feel connected, we are so far away and there is so much pain. Or we hear their cry but it fills our ears along with the cries of so many others and we cover our ears and duck our heads because we are overwhelmed and want to silence the shouts of pain.
Then there are natural disasters: Earthquakes, avalanches, winter storm warnings, floods, bushfires – the clamor of disaster and devastation sweeps over us in a cloud. How can we possibly hear God’s still small voice in all of this?
In the USA already this year there have been 16 mass shootings, that means a shooting where 4 or more people were involved, these shooting have resulted in 23 deaths. With 795 people killed already this year by gun violence in the USA. That’s just in the 22 days we’ve had in 2017. And this may seem brutal but to bring those numbers home that would be like all the people in our church and those attending Community Mennonite Church being killed in gun violence in 22 days. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

At this point our eyes glaze over and we start to zone out and think about what we are having for lunch or the cleaning that needs done at home, or anything that numbs us from the flood of pain and cries that our systems can’t handle. It is overwhelming. Where is God’s peace? The psalmist called it a pit that we need to be saved from– well I think we’ve worked up to a gigantic gapping cavernous hole.

How can we continue to be present when we see and hear these heart wrenching stories and statistics. So many of us feel compassion fatigue and withdraw to be able to cope.
What does it mean to be in world fellowship when this is our world?
Oh Lord, you are our rock – do not refuse to hear us.


Let’s bring this closer to home. Our politicians like to tell us that we need to work at our economy, get out of debt and make America great again. But most of us in this room are in the top 5% of richest people in the world. “Unless you are homeless, you are far wealthier than the average person, and you live in the richest time period in history.” http://www.worldwealthcalculator.org  At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1

We also have the status that comes with the color of our skin, the country on our passport and the education we have been provided.
But we don’t always feel that privilege and power. In this election season and two days after inauguration many of us are feeling scared, maybe not for our selves, but for our communities and the vulnerable or marginalized around us. Hundreds of thousands of people reacted to this fear and resisted this marginalization yesterday by taking to the streets and giving voice to those that our society has too often silenced. In these next days, months and years can we see our new president as both an opportunity and a challenge? Will we respond to ugly public rhetoric by retreating into ourselves, will we react with attacks on others or can we find ways forward that draw people together in a world that so quickly moves towards division?

            We are fearful. Fearful about what will happen after inauguration. Fearful of people with Trump or Hillary signs. There is fear of walking to the grocery store, of deportation, of losing health care, of being assaulted, of being stopped and searched because of your race. How do we trust in God in the middle of this fear?

            When we first read this Psalms passage in our worship planning meeting Ken said, “That could be ok minus all the vitriol in the middle bit where people will just blame the other or everyone else who doesn’t agree with them.” But I kept it in. Because we need to hear this bit. Need to face the fact that we have come out of a season of finger pointing. We know who the bad guys in the Psalms are…You, you out there, not me, you, you are wrong. We want to read the enemy in the Psalms as those other people that we don’t agree with who are making the world a bad place. But we need to know that there are Christians who read these Psalms and are pointing at us too, Ouch! And all of us follow a Jesus who told us to love our enemy and to pray for those who persecute us, not to finger point and condemn the other who stand in front of our pointing finger. The psalms invite us to confess our own baggage and admit that not all brokenness is just out there.

Our own Mennonite conference in Virginia is struggling, people wanting to leave on different sides of an issue that we don’t want to talk about. Petitions being signed. A report coming out this week names work that needs to be done around abuse that was perpetrated in a church community and our denominational school. We are not sheltered from the pain of the world, it is present here, we have it in the stories of our lives.
We cry with the Psalmist: Do not drag us away with the wicked, with those who are workers of evil.
In some of the bleakness in our world the psalms are raw and itchy in our throats.

            What holds us together with our fellow finger pointers? Who are we as this international body of Christ? What are we called to in these times? While the church is struggling to find relevance and is shrinking in North America and Europe, the church in Latin America, Africa and Asia is growing.

We are one body but hold different understandings. “We all read the same Bible, but we interpret it differently and find differing degrees of relevance in its various parts. We all claim the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, but experience very different manifestations of that same Spirit. We have all joined the same peace church tradition, but military service or policing roles are alternatively tolerated or resisted. We have all received the good news, but some are much more likely to evangelize than others.” https://www.mwc-cmm.org/sites/default/files/website_files/wfs_2017_final_-_en-small.pdf

We believe in things together – Jesus, God, the bible, and that God’s Spirit is with us. We believe that we are not alone. God is in and through all, goes before and behind all – never leaving or forsaking. We are part of rituals and actions that my non-Christian friends find weirdly wonderful. Singing together and hearing stories from an old book. Finding deep meaning in a loaf of bread and some juice. Dipping people in a river or splashing them with water. Closing our eye and reaching out to something beyond ourselves. These are things that help to hold us together in this broken body of Christ.

When relating to the international church we in the West need to be mindful. Christena Cleveland a social psychologist and theologian spoke at the seminary this week. Cleveland reminded leaders of the church that we do have a place at the table in this upside-down kingdom of God. And our place is uncomfortably clear, the first shall be last and the last shall be first – we who live lives of privilege are welcome at the table but we will be last.


The Psalms are great at not leaving us in this place of fear. And we move with this Psalm to a place of good news and praise. God hears and helps. God is a saving refuge.

How do we deal with the flood of stories about our broken world? How do we connect our lives and experiences to the lives of so many others without drowning in the vastness and false connection that globalization and social media invites us into? When teaching about organizing over the last few years we used to ask our students – “How do you eat an elephant, how do you tackle something that seems that big and impossible?” You eat an elephant one bite at a time, you have to break it down into small pieces. We have to attend to one story at a time, truly hearing and letting ourselves care.

On this World Fellowship Sunday we can look to other Anabaptist brothers and sisters around the world. To a church in the Netherlands that sheltered Armenians and Tamils in the back rooms of their church in the mid 80s. Even though they didn’t get everything right or agree on how they should do this, they worked through their fear and with other churches to hide these people from deportation and the police. They even celebrated orthodox Christmas with their guests. One member told of the experience “Our normally simple Mennonite Church got a metamorphosis that (Christmas) morning for the two-hour- long service with many rituals (water, oil, candles, icons, painting). Afterwards, we celebrated with a big meal.” Just as they were finishing the service they received word that their guest would be allowed to stay.

Another Mennonite church in Germany was founded by refugees after WWII. Then they integrated Christians from Croatia and South America in the 1960. In the 1970s they worked to include Mennonites from the former Soviet Union even though their traditions were different and this changed the culture of the church. Then a few years ago they were asked to start a youth club for 12-17 year olds from immigrant backgrounds.  30 young people from Muslim and Yazidi background found a home in (their) church building.” The youth claimed the building as their own and would show up whenever the church was open and hang out in the space no matter what activity was going on. This caused some conflict that they had to work through. Eventually they started welcoming more refugees and asylum seekers and started a Bible study group in Farsi and later another in Arabic. When a brother from Iran was baptised these orderly German Mennonites were a bit surprised by the jubilant response from his friends and have since learned to integrate spontaneity and a deeper hospitality into their church.

            A group of plain dressing Hutterites in Manitoba, Canada have welcomed a Syrian refugee family and found that they have surprising similarities and common ground. The mother in the Syrian family “Najwa, who wears a hijab and felt nervous about arriving in a new country with unknown customs, was relieved when her sponsors came into view. “When I saw their dress – preserving their heritage and their origins – this made me happy,” she says. She loved that the Hutterites still spoke German as their first language and that minorities in a large country could keep their identity and traditions.” http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/stories/2017/1/5857bcef4.html

            In our own church there are families that have opened their homes and their lives to the stranger in so many ways. Inviting someone in for a meal, for Christmas day, helping them learn English, helping them shop for school supplies, teaching about dressing for cold weather, playing soccer with new immigrants and partying together in new ways.
            I’ve been asked multiple times over the last few months if we have been having Sanctuary Church conversations here at Park View. Are we ready for those conversations? We don’t know what the weeks and years ahead might hold. Are we ready to extend radical welcome and to act out our faith even if it contradicts the leaders of our land?
            One thing I have started saying we have to do is to start a kids club here at Park View. A kids club will help us to learn to know our neighbors and learn who lives in the streets around us. Welcoming kids from the community into our church will open a space for the spirit to make connections in us and with them. I look forward to learning about hospitality in this new way as we think globally and act locally.
            Maybe we will find additional ways of moving towards the other, maybe even the other in our own church? This may feel awkward or be disorienting, like coming in a different door to church and sitting next to different people.
I believe God goes with us as we take one small step towards the other – that God guides us in being brave as we take the time to listen.

How do we work against the de-personalization of our world? We take a step towards the other. We unstop our ears long enough to hear another's story. We stand up with a million other women or with one person experiencing abuse, and we say no, not in my name. I will stand with you, hear your story and together we will ask for a better way forward for us all.

As you hear statistics and stories of our world and global church family, may we not be shut down by our own guilt but may these stories lead us into an openness to listen, lead us to curiosity, and to an ability to welcome the other.

Jesus often asked questions that created space for marginalized people to tell their own stories. Jesus used his power to empower their voices and elevate their lives. May you use your privilege to elevate the voices of others.

God is our Shepherd showing the way. May we know God as our strength and our saving refuge.

Stories taken from: https://www.mwc-cmm.org/sites/default/files/website_files/wfs_2017_final_-_en-small.pdf

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Phil Kniss: Putting down the remote

Epiphany 2: Come and see

John 1:29-46

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We live in a complicated world,
where we are called to “follow Jesus.”
But our world—
6000 miles and 2000 years away
from the world of Jesus of Nazareth—
is just . . . so . . . different.
When we set out to follow Jesus in our world
we have to do some translation . . . a lot of translation.
It makes following Jesus a complicated task.

So when we are faced with a complicated task,
we do what comes natural—try to simplify.
We take what seems un-manageable,
and try to make it manageable.
Naturally so.

Of course, the ever-present danger in this, is over-simplifying.
And we are all prone to this danger.

I mention this at the outset,
because I think today’s Gospel reading can help us.
In this ancient Gospel text,
we can find some clues for living today,
in our chaotic and complicated and globalized world.
We get these clues directly from Jesus and those who walked with him
in his relatively contained (and maybe . . . simpler?) world—
a world of Palestinian Jews
congregated on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire.

These clues come from the dialogue in this story—
or more precisely, series of short stories.

This narrative from John 1 takes place over a three-day period,
in four different scenes.

And if you look at the dialogue—
between John the Baptist and the crowds,
between John’s disciples and Jesus,
between Andrew and Simon,
Jesus and Philip,
Philip and Nathaniel—
they all have a common thread running through them,
summed up in three words, “Come and see.”

So here is my sermon in a nutshell:
the way to navigate the complexities
of a life of following Jesus today,
is to stubbornly commit ourselves to always “Come and see.”
To show up. See for ourselves.
To look. Take in. Observe.
To explore. Dig deeper.
And at the same time,
to stubbornly refuse to come to conclusions from a distance,
to resist, with all our might, the temptation to oversimplify,
and take the quick and easy path to reaching judgement.

That’s my singular point.
Now, let me try to flesh it out.
And this is my take on it.
You’ll need to tell me if you have a different take.
_____________________

So how many times has someone run up to you wide-eyed,
talking a mile-a-minute,
trying to tell you something amazing . . . or scary or funny
that they saw happen with their own eyes.
And you don’t quite get it,
your face registers confusion,
they’re disappointed, and say, “I guess you had to be there!”

It’s a cliche, but it’s true.
There is no substitute for “being there.”
You only get the full impact of something
when you’re right there,
where it’s happening, when it’s happening—
seeing, hearing, participating.

Second-hand, and third and fourth-hand accounts,
don’t have enough emotional holding-power, typically,
to keep our attention for more than a few minutes.

It’s the reason TV stations label their news shows
Eye-Witness News.
Action News.
News Now.
It’s why camera crews find any excuse to come to you live,
from the scene of the action,
even for weather reports.
An NBC report on the California flooding last week,
showed a close up of the face of the reporter holding his mike,
talking about the high water.
Then the camera zoomed out,
you saw the reporter in that water, up to his waist.
It zoomed out more, and you saw the whole street full of water,
and his small figure in the middle of it all.

The producers know,
news is only partly about communicating facts.
A big part of it, is grabbing your emotional attention,
pulling you in,
making you feel like you’re there.
In less time, with less money, and less risk to their personnel,
they could easily give us more detailed and accurate data.
They could tell us the water on Main St.
is 37 inches at the center,
flowing 5 miles an hour,
and rising a foot every six hours.
They could get that data from local authorities,
and report it from a dry studio.
But no, they have to have someone wade out in the middle of it,
and come to us live,
for no good reason,
except they want that information to grab us emotionally,
and stay with us tomorrow and the next day.

John the Baptist had already told the crowds about Jesus,
many times.
He told them someone would soon appear
who was the anointed one, the promised Messiah.

But when Jesus finally showed up,
was there in the flesh,
then John said, with excitement, “Here he is.
Look! Behold the Lamb of God!”
This is the one I meant, when I said,
“I saw the Spirit descend on him as a dove.
I have seen and give witness that this is the one.”
John the Baptist, reporting live for Eye-Witness News.

The next day again, Jesus passed by,
and John said to two of his disciples,
“Look! Behold! The lamb of God.”

That’s Part 1 of this scripture reading from John 1—
the Gospel writer has John the Baptist urging us
to look, to observe, to see.
And John describes what he himself saw.

Then the narrative shifts to Scene 2.
John’s disciples, full of curiosity, start to follow after Jesus.
They want to learn more.
They ask where Jesus is staying.
And Jesus replies, simply, cryptically,
“Come and see.”
They went. They saw. They stayed.
They interacted with Jesus.

Scene 3. One of those disciples was Andrew.
He goes off and fetches his brother Simon.
“We have found the Messiah,” Andrew tells Simon.
So Simon comes. Sees. Observes first hand.
And Jesus gives him a new name, Cephas. Peter. The Rock.

Scene 4. Next day, Jesus invites Philip to follow him into Galilee.
And Philip goes and finds Nathaniel,
tells him basically the same thing Andrew told Peter.
“We have found him; the promised one.”
Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph.
Nathaniel is skeptical. Nazareth? Really?
A Messiah from a backwoods place like that?
And Philip answered, with these now familiar words,
thick with meaning,
“Come and see.”

Come and see.
Be there.

Disciples don’t learn to follow their master by memorizing data,
by ensuring they digested the key points of their master’s teaching.
They learn to follow
by showing up,
by observing,
by noticing,
by paying attention,
by asking questions,
by experimenting,
by asking more questions,
by trying again,
by listening to their master,
by replicating what they see their master doing.

Being a true disciple begins with showing up.
In person.
Learning the truth about anyone, really,
especially about a group of people,
requires real presence,
requires us to Come and See.

If we disciples today—
trying to navigate a complicated world,
and be faithful followers of Jesus—
if we make a stubborn commitment to always Come and See,
before we Decide and Declare,
we will be in a minority position
in our 21st century American society.

That is true especially now,
in this anxious and fearful social climate,
where we are both hyper-connected and deeply divided,
where technology allows for,
and social patterns encourage,
immediate judgement,
and immediate response to that judgement,
delivered from a safe distance.

We are besieged by a rapid rise of outright Fake News,
and . . . news that gets leaked and broadcast and reacted to
before any normal, common-sense standards
of verification and balance and nuance gets applied to it,
only to find out later it was either entirely false,
or wrongly interpreted.
Now, we could write this off as political tricks and gamesmanship,
par for the course these days,
when people get passionate about one ideology or another.

Or . . . as disciples of Jesus, as people of Judeo-Christian faith,
we could see it as part of a larger moral crisis we participate in,
in which one of the Ten Commandments,
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,”
is routinely ignored, and laughed into irrelevance.

But that’s just one small example
of how we all continually fail to “come and see.”
The seeds of our short attention span and distraction,
as individuals, and collectively,
those seeds were planted long ago,
and they are bearing fruit in nearly every part of our lives.

We are getting out of practice,
in one of the core spiritual disciplines:
showing up.

Our culture certainly doesn’t encourage us to practice it.
Life isn’t structured in a way that pushes us very often,
toward active direct engagement,
toward patient listening and observing,
toward thoughtful analysis,
toward hands-on collaboration,
toward face-to-face dialogue with our neighbors,
much less our opponents.

Technology has done wonders at making certain tasks easier.
So we can also get away with paying less attention.
It’s not just distracted driving that’s a problem.
It’s distracted walking.
It’s distracted talking.
It’s distracted living.

Maybe it started with the infrared remote control.
Some of you are too young to remember not having a remote.
I recall, in one of my very early sermons,
back in the mid-80's, actually making light of TV remotes.
We had a TV with a turn-knob and rabbit-ear antennas,
which was good enough for anybody.
To refuse to walk across the living room,
to change the channel or adjust the volume,
was the height of laziness, it seemed to me.
We were being sucked in by one of the 7 deadly sins—sloth.

Today, we’ve gone from zero, to an indeterminate number
of remotes in our household.
We recently replaced a car radio,
and the new one came with a remote. Really?
I’ll draw the line there.

The remote, to me, is not the epitome of evil.
But it is symbolic of how we approach life.
We want to remain at a distance.
We want to remain at ease.
We want to maintain control of our environment,
without actually engaging it very directly.
With as little effort expended as possible—the push of a button—
we’d like to turn down, or mute, that which disturbs us,
we’d like to switch channels, turn aside from,
anything that doesn’t immediately grab us.
We have developed . . . to perfection . . .
the art of impatience.

Remember the theme at our church retreat three years ago—
“Slow Church,”—the planter from that retreat
is still thriving in our foyer.
What I’m talking about here—
our addiction to remote control of life and relationships—
that is the opposite of Slow Church.

Slow Church is about patiently cultivating community
in the Body of Christ.
It’s about not even wanting to rush to judgement
or make a quick decision,
but to enter into the process
of listening and relationship-building,
of long conversations,
of choosing to live with tension,
rather than rushing to resolve it,
of moving toward those who are different,
and sitting with them, over time,
of allowing time for the Holy Spirit
to grow the fruit naturally,
instead of us trying to mass-produce it.

Speaking now in metaphor, the remote control is an addiction
from which we need to break ourselves free.
We need to put down the remote.
We need to swear off using this device to take the easy route,
the push-button approach to changing the world around us.
Maybe we should even lock it away in a cabinet,
along with other dangerous devices,
that we pull out only in the event of a true emergency.


Maybe, instead of deciding based on ideology—
who we ought to condemn and disassociate from, and
who we can embrace as part of our tribe—
maybe we should “come and see.”

Maybe, like Philip of Bethsaida,
we should invite the Nathanaels in our lives—
those who can’t believe anything good can come from Nazareth—
and gently, without argument or condemnation,
invite them to “come and see.”
Or maybe, if we are Nathanael,
we should listen to the brothers and sisters in our lives
whose witness we find it hard to believe,
and invest the time and energy required
to truly “come and see,”
to observe up close, and carefully, and over time,
to ask the questions, and listen to the answers,
to open our heart and mind
to what the Spirit may be saying.
That kind of openness is needed,
in all sectors of our society,
and . . . on all sides of virtually every debate
going on in the church today.

I think very little good
will come from depending on remote control,
to manage the tensions and discord in our environment.
We cannot mute or channel surf our way around them.
We must come and see and touch and interact.
We must learn from our master Jesus,
who sat at table with both tax collectors and Pharisees.
We must attend to what Jesus may be doing and saying today,
in our midst.
Where is Jesus, the Christ, at work in our world today?
In more places than we might imagine.
Let’s come and see.

And let’s sing from STS, #39, a wonderful song by John Bell.
There is nothing resembling a remote control in this invitation,
“will you come and follow me?”
It’s direct. It’s intimate. It’s interactive. It takes us places.

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?
Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

—Phil Kniss, January 15, 2017

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