January 19, 2014 – John 1:29-42
John 1:29-42
The Power of Invitation
Second Sunday after Epiphany – January 19, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
This is how the ministry of Jesus begins in John’s Gospel.
Not with a big whoop but with some simple invitations.
This is how the world begins to change according to John: through the power of invitation.
In the other three Gospels, we get an account of Jesus’ baptism.
Here, though, in John’s Gospel, John the Baptist simply relates what he saw.
“I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.”
That’s it.
He notices stuff about Jesus – and then he shares it.
Jesus goes walking by and he says to two of his own disciples:
“Hey! Look! There goes the Lamb of God! The one who will make this world right!”
As a result, the two young men start to follow Jesus.
Jesus turns around and says to them, “What are you looking for?”
When they ask Jesus where he is staying so that they can come and stay with him,
he just issues the powerful invitation: “Come and see.”
So they do.
Then they notice stuff about Jesus too.
So one of them goes and finds his brother Simon Peter and says to him,
“Come and see this Jesus we just met:
he’s the one through whom God will make this world right.”
So Simon comes, and Jesus names him Peter, or “Rocky,” and the rest as they say is history.
It doesn’t look like much, these small beginnings of Jesus’ ministry.
It all starts with someone noticing stuff about Jesus and then telling others about it.
It all starts with an invitation to join in, to simply come and see.
This is how God chooses to change the world.
Through the simple and powerful invitation to come and see.
When Paul was starting up churches in very unlikely places in the Roman Empire,
I’m pretty sure this is how it worked.
To people who were surely tired of the exclusion, and discrimination, and hierarchy,
and prejudices of life in the Roman Empire, Paul and his associates surely preached and
told people about a very different way of life in Jesus.
“In Jesus,” Paul preached, “there is no longer Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free,
but all are one in Christ Jesus.”
And to those for whom this was a nearly incomprehensible but enticing ideal,
I’m sure they simply issued this invitation:
“Come and see. We gather Sunday mornings before work. Come and see.
You will see Jews and Greeks, males and females, slaves and free gathering together,
greeting one another in peace, sharing their food and possessions together,
and even (unthinkable in the ancient world) sharing a meal together.
Come and see if God is not changing this world in ways you never thought possible.”
That’s the power of invitation: it doesn’t sound like much,
but God completely changed entire communities through
these invitations to come and see.
John is telling us that noticing what God is doing and inviting others to simply
come and see what God is doing is how lives are changed and
is in fact how the world is changed.
This morning I have a little audience participation exercise for you.
If you were invited to First Lutheran Church by someone – if that’s how you came to be here –
whether that was 5 days ago or 50 years ago, I want to ask you to stand up.
The invitation could have been through the Sunday School, or a parent, or a grandparent,
or the Youth Group, or a friend, or a neighbour, or a co-worker, or the pastor.
Okay: this is the power of invitation.
Over 50 years ago, one of our very beloved members Pearl was invited to First Lutheran Church.
Pearl had a difficult upbringing and, although she had been baptized, there was really
no religion in her life.
In fact she was dismissive of religious life.
But one day, while she was still a young woman, a neighbour on Victor Street invited her to
First Lutheran Church, to come and see what was going on.
So she came.
She recognized that she’d been searching for something,
and let’s face it this invitation was a small beginning.
But still: as we know from the Christmas story, small beginnings are how God chooses to work.
She began to come once in a while and hear about this person Jesus.
And saw how he was at work in this community.
Eventually she attended confirmation classes and was confirmed.
Then she was invited by long time music director Snolaug Sigurdson to join the choir.
Now she was having to be in worship every Sunday! And that really began to change her.
And now she was sharing her gifts for the benefit of the community!
And Pearl will tell you that that small beginning with an invitation changed her entire life.
And because of her presence here, countless other people’s lives have been changed by
her graciousness, and humour, and warmth, and steadfastness, and faithfulness.
Yeah: she may have been searching for something, but I think it turns out that God
was searching for her, so that God could be at work in her.
And it all started with a simple invitation to come and see.
And so it goes.
And lest you think this invitation thing is just something that happened in the deep past,
I have another much more recent story for you.
One of our newest members Lisa Kelly was invited here by our own Melinda Pearce and
Sue Sorensen: she got a double whammy!
She was not a Lutheran, but feeling God was inviting her to explore other churches than the
one was she was part of, Lisa saw a video of the new Lutheran poster person for hipness,
ELCA Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber.
In the video Pastor Nadia talked about her faith and about Lutheran faith in particular.
After seeing the video and finding the preaching compelling, Lisa fired off an e-mail to
Melinda with a link to the video.
She asked her to watch it and then asked Melinda,
“Is this what being a Lutheran is? If so, I want to be one!”
Melinda affirmed that yes indeed it was!
And then Melinda took the next crucial step of simply inviting her to First Lutheran Church to
come and see – or, in Lisa’s words, to check it out!
Sue invited her too, and once here – well, she’s been her ever since.
She found welcome and meaning and beauty here – and I think she found Jesus was here too.
According to Lisa, the invitation was a small part of her overall journey –
and yet it is an essential part.
And in some ways that is the point: God loves working through the small and everyday.
For it is through the small and everyday that God changes people – and changes the world.
When we invite people to come and see, we are inviting them to come and see Jesus.
We affirm that we are the body of Christ, and so when people look at us they should see Jesus.
When you invite people to come and see what’s going on at First Lutheran, what do they see?
They see strangers welcomed like long lost sisters and brothers.
They see the excluded included.
They see the sinner forgiven.
They see the broken healed.
They see the hungry fed and filled with very good things.
They see the vulnerable children of this neighbourhood cared for and nurtured.
They see the lonely embraced and visited.
They see the homeless hatted.
They see children embraced and loved.
They see everyone accepted without judgment.
Now if that’s not Jesus and his Spirit at work, I don’t know what is.
The good news is that God wants to be at work in us – and is! God invites us into that life!
And the good news is that God wants us to extend the invitation for others to
come and see – so that God can be at work in them too.
At this table the invitation is extended to all:
to come and see love broken and poured out for all.
to come and see sharing,
to come and feel what it is to love:
to put real tangible food into another’s tangible hands.
To receive forgiveness, to receive inclusion, to receive hope, to receive new life.
To taste and see that God is good, and that God can be trusted, that God is dependable.
From this table you will be sent out changed: in order to help God change the world.
The invitation to come and see,
the invitation to this life,
the invitation to this table,
the invitation to be sent out as God’s people in the world:
this invitation is powerful.
This invitation is small: but it’s how Jesus ministry begins –
and it’s how God intends to change the world.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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