Come and see...
Forty-three years ago on January 15th it was snowing in Washington, D.C. It was a light snow, falling gently through a gray sky. A co-worker and I were walking across the National Mall at lunchtime. Just past the Washington Monument we came upon a small gathering – small by National Mall standards.
There were thirty or forty thousand people standing in the snow, listening to Elihu Harris and other representatives from Congress, to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to remind us what he meant to our nation and the world.
Stevie Wonder was there too and he sang a new song to Martin, written for the occasion: “Happy Birthday.” We can still sing the song – and now we have a holiday – Martin Luther King Day.
But why talk about Martin on a winter Sunday in Tucson, Arizona, forty-three years later?
The gospel reading for the second Sunday after the Epiphany, John 1:43-51, is about the calling of Jesus’ first disciples … and that is exactly why! On this Sunday we hear how Jesus met Philip and Nathanael, and invited them into his ministry.
“Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me’ … Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’” (John 1: 43, 45-46)
Nathanael was from then on the quietly faithful one – we only hear his name again in the accounts of the Resurrection. Philip is the one who broke the news of the Messiah to the nations, by teaching the Ethiopian eunuch, vizier to the queen of the Ethiopians, all about Jesus, and baptizing him then and there. For all we know that the Ethiopian, who went on his way rejoicing, was the first to bring the gospel to Africa. Well done, Philip. Good and faithful, Nathanael.
What does this have to do with Martin – and you and me?
Well, in 1955 Martin was a fairly successful preacher, who had recently taken a pretty good job at a nice church in Montgomery, Alabama. Maybe the disciples Philip and Nathanael had pretty good lives too. But they seemed to be searching for something – or someone – more. So, as Philip told Nathanael – “we have found the one – the one we have been searching for.”
I suspect Martin was searching for something too. And it found him!
Rosa Parks in 1955 was a faithful, church-going lady, who rode the bus to work in the morning, and rode it home again at the end of the day. If you have ever been sitting on a crowded bus late in the evening, ready to go home, when one of these ladies comes down the aisle looking for a place to rest her feet, you know what tired looks like.
But back then, in Montgomery, Alabama, you had to move to the rear of the bus unless you were white. And if you weren’t white, and a white person wanted your seat, you had to get up and give it to them.
But this time, in December 1955, something happened.
Mrs. Parks sat down. She sat down in the front part of the bus. Even though she was black.
The driver told her to move. A white person wanted her seat. She did not get up.
Soon it was all over town.
“Everybody can sit anywhere on the bus – or we won’t be on it at all.”
This caused some consternation – throughout the community.
And Martin Luther King, as a respected local pastor, was asked to speak – to say why. Why justice needs to roll down like a river just as much as buses need to roll down the street.
Since that day things began to change – for Martin, who was called to something more than Sunday-morning piety, more than success, to preach good news to the poor and justice to the mistreated.
And things began to change – for the people of Alabama – and for us, too.
What had happened? Martin had stood in his pulpit in front of the church facing his congregation. But now he and his church were facing outward – toward the world, where they were needed, where their witness was needed: their hearts, their hands, their faith, their prayers, their walk with the Lord hand in hand with the people of their city.
Like Philip and Nathanael, we seek something more, we are called to something more, than simply to be “Israelites” of no guile.
Like Martin we are called to something greater than our own success.
Even – like Rosa we are called to put aside our own quiet life – and join something larger. We call it the Kingdom of God. So the calling and the challenge come to us in our time:
What is the Kingdom of God to look like here and now? How will we seek it?
JRL+ Come and see….
