Can anything good come from Christians?
Sermon on John 1:43-51
Can anything good come from Christians? Many people in the US have been asking this question for years and especially since January 6th. The day white, Christian Nationalists tried to insurrect the Capitol and therefore this entire nation.
“Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus.”
“The group, [..] prayed for God to bring ‘reformation and revival’. They gave thanks for ‘the wonderful nation we’ve all been blessed to be in’. They asked God for the restoration of their ‘value systems’ and for the ‘courage and strength to both represent you and represent our culture well.’ And they invoked the divine protection for what was to come.”
And yet, many of those prayers sound quite familiar, don’t they? They aren’t that different from our prayers of intercession. Sure, we know that we mean something else when saying similar words. We ask for a different kind of reformation and revival. We thank God for this nation meaning that we love the diversity of its people. But to others who don’t know much about us, Lutheran Christians in the US, we don’t necessarily sound that different from the terrorists. Or, at least they don’t sound that different from us quite often. I know it’s hard to sit with this awareness, it’s disturbing. And it’s important for us to realize. Because others have long seen this. Non-Christians who wonder where we are and why the radical, right-wing Christians are the loudest ones to be heard. Is it because they actually say what the majority believes? Or does the actual majority just keep silent most of the time?
And then they moved toward the Capitol. [1] They had come to see what they perceive as God’s will prophesized by so many of their leaders. That Trump is the Chosen one to renew America. That God will make miracles happen to keep him in power. That they just have to pray enough to overturn any democratic election. And so, there have been 24/7 prayer vigils all over the country for Trump to remain in office. The bottom line here is clearly: They want a King anointed by God, not an elected president.
It’s no surprise that they often refer to the Old Testament, to leaders like Moses who couldn’t do what he needed to do without God’s intervention of parting the Red Sea. They seldomly refer to Jesus’ style of leadership though. Except for the one day when he overturned the tables in the temple, of course. That’s a favorite story on all sides of the theological spectrum when it comes to holy anger. I am not immune against it, I admit it.
Yet, when looking at Jesus there must be a reason why God didn’t make his son be the greatest of all kings. Let’s look at Jesus’ leadership style in today’s Gospel. He walks around asking a few people to follow him at first. Really just a handful. Among them is Philip.
And Philip tells Nathanael about Jesus being the Messiah. Nathanael has his doubts and insultingly asks: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And Philip just asks him to come and see. And because Nathanael seems to be a close friend of Philip, he does. Yet, with the greatest attitude.
And then, Jesus greets the guy Philip drags along. Nathanael whose looks tell Jesus from afar that he is not to be easily fooled into a new movement.
I imagine Nathanael walking towards Jesus with at least one raised eyebrow and the most skeptical look he could possibly come up with. And Jesus isn’t offended. He sees Nathanael, looks beyond his facial expression, and praises him: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
Nathanael takes the compliment as the truth about him. Humility is clearly not his strength. Finally, someone sees how outstanding he is, how flawless, simply perfect. “Where did you get to know me?”, he asks.
“I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you” is Jesus’ simple answer. Referring to the book of Zechariah where it’s prophesized: On the day the Lord will remove the guilt of this land in a single day, “a man shall call his neighbor under the vine and fig tree.” (Zechariah 3:10) And Nathanael gets the hint and replies: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” So, what does this short encounter that ends in a high-profile confession tell us about Jesus as a leader? Do people just have to come and see him to believe?
Come and see! That’s the catchiest phrase from today’s Gospel. And it’s been used a ton in every kind of evangelism and outreach effort. Because it seems to give an easy answer to the question “How do we invite other people to church or to love God or at best to do both?” Come and see. Easy enough. Come and see for yourself how great we are, how fun our worship service is, how amazing our musicians are.
There is obviously a problem though. And that’s our lived experience. That A) it’s not easy to invite others to church because we don’t want to intrude on anybody and because they might think we are weird that we even go to church and because, well, church isn’t the most exciting place to be on a Sunday morning. We, of course, respectfully disagree and love going. But that’s because… well, we all have our own reasons. And even if we take the step and invite someone to join us, most often our offer gets rejected. Which feels awful. And so, we stop. But that’s not where I want to go today. I mean I am sure you have heard many sermons on this passage encouraging you to ask your friends and neighbors to join you for church. Asking you why you are more hesitant to invite someone to church than to recommend a restaurant or hairdresser. Telling you that statistically, most people join a church because of someone they know there. Not because the church is awesome. Well, as I said, I am sure you have heard enough sermons on this before.
So, I will go to problem B. Even if someone decides to come to church with us, we have so often experienced how they didn’t come back. How they came but didn’t see what we saw. Many of your kids and of my friends who grew up in church with me are the best example for this. If it was enough to come to church and see, if that was all it needed to believe in Christ, congregations could never shrink. Instead, they would have been multiplying with every single generation ever since Jesus. Which is obviously not the case.
So, something is at odds here. Or, maybe, we just tend to simplify this story and miss out on an important detail. First, Philip invites his friend Nathanael to come. He knows him well and seems to sense that Nathanael is looking for something or somebody to have faith in. Secondly, Jesus saw Nathanael way before Nathanael saw Jesus. Which basically means that Jesus called Nathanael first, took an interest in him first.
To me, that’s the heart of the story. Come and see because God has seen you already. Because God knows you already. Sounds rather churchy? It is and it will stay frivolous to Non-Christians if we don’t adopt Jesus’ leadership style. To say “God sees you” will only have meaning to people if we actually see them. If we actually care for them and show a real interest in their lives. By the way, that’s what cults are usually pretty good in and which makes them so successful and dangerous at the same time.
Can anything good come from Christians? Especially out of a church that’s the whitest church among all the mainline denominations? If our answer is yes, it will have to mean more than saying “Come and See”. More than “come and see, we are not like them”. It will have to mean: We see you, your struggles, the injustices you face, the burdens you carry. We see your fear and your anger and your pain. We see you, we listen to you. And we acknowledge where we have failed you, sinned against you, judged you. It will have to mean that we put our money where our mouth is. That we act like we mean what we say. This is not about the question whether we are good people. To be good is not enough. The question is whether we are good people who choose to look at our world with God’s eyes. With eyes that see the truth, that see what is right and what is wrong.
This weekend we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. His work is far from finished and the last year has clearly shown it. He reminds us: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve… You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
So, let’s make this America great. For the first time. To become a place where we see each other, serve each other and gracefully love each other. And people will be seen and see who we are and come to see more of this. One day. Amen.
