Come and see...

21st Week OT (Wed): John 1.45-51
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert Priory, Irving


Why do you believe? Why are you here in this chapel giving yourself to the service of the common good in Jesus’ name? Surrendering your will to the Father’s? Saying “Amen” to the truths of a story told for 2,000 years by farmers, princes, weirdoes, prostitutes, and thieves? Why do you believe? Why do you think any of this is true?

Someone must have made a very persuasive argument! St. Anselm’s ontological argument? Or maybe Aquinas’ Five Proofs? What delicate combination of evidence, argument, and rhetoric drew you into the fold and keeps you coming back? Maybe you witnessed a miracle? Touched a holy person? Or maybe you cried out in fear, loneliness, despair, cried out for help from your darkness need and a small still voice answered? I AM here. Why do you believe? Why are you here? By what good reason do you think any of this gospel-church-Jesus stuff is true?

Imagine the scene with me: Philip, eager to his limits to tell of the Messiah, goes out to find his friend, Nathanael (Bartholomew, btw), and says to him, “We have found the chosen one, the Messiah promised by Moses and the prophets, Jesus of Nazareth!” Nathanael, knowing that Nazareth is this little podunk, one-stop bump in the road, says, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” And then Philip utters the ringing words of apostolic witness: “Come and see.” And then Nathanael believes that Jesus is the promised Messiah? Not quite. But he is intrigued enough, curious enough to follow Philip to Jesus. And here the story gets interesting b/c it is not Nathanael who acknowledges Jesus first, but Jesus who acknowledges Nathanael: “Here is a true child of Israel.”

Taking the story at this point, what do we know about why you are you? What persuaded Nathanael to follow Philip to Jesus? Neat, logical syllogisms? No. Bribes. No. Threats of eternal fire and lakes of blood? No. Nathanael is persuaded by the force of Philip’s own convictions and by the simplicity of his faithful witness: “Come and see.” Almost a dare, a challenge to Nathanael’s prejudice, the temptation to go and see entices, charms, it even seduces the wary soul to give it a try, just once. The very act of moving toward Jesus in some vague sense of possibly believing that He might be the Messiah, this act of basic curiosity and trust, ends with the Messiah greeting him first and calling him service.

I will hazard a guess that you are here this morning in this chapel b/c you received an apostolic invitation to Come and See. You heard the weighty voice of our faith’s long history call your name and dare you to come out of the darkness, to move away from the shadows of death and see, truly see, the Son of God, the King of Israel—Jesus Christ. You came to see the Lord and he recognized you b/c in you is a heart made to love him for eternity. Arguments, miracles, evidence are all invitations in their own right, but it is the apostolic witness, the faithful teaching of what Jesus taught that will seduce the wary, humble the cynical, and, finally, persuade the stoniness heart to come and see Jesus. And once that small step is taken, the Lord will reach out and say, “Here is a true child of Israel!”

We believe, you believe b/c we came, we saw, and the work of the risen Lord is not yet done.