It was a rollicking night at the theater. A young actor named Tom Key was playing the part of Jesus in the play Cotton Patch Gospel and he was clearly bringing the house down. The play, a romping, bluegrass musical which depicts the ministry of Jesus as if it had occurred in the cotton fields and Baptist churches of rural south Georgia, was in its final performance run, and Key was feeling confident and even inventive with his lines. His spontaneous enthusiasm was contagious, and he had forged between himself and the audience a rare bond of mutual exchange and appreciation.
During the scene depicting the Sermon on the Mount, Key, as Jesus, suddenly turned from the group on the stage toward the audience, pointed to the blank auditorium side wall, and said, "Look at the lilies in that field ..." He stopped, almost as if he had forgotten the next line, peered around at the disciples, focused again on the audience and repeated, "Look at the lilies in that field ..." Once more he stopped and seemed to be searching for the next words. The audience began to shift uncomfortably. His hand extended yet again to the blank wall, and this time he spoke the words slowly and deliberately, "Look ... at ... the ... lilies ... in ... that ... field ..." Now he turned to the disciples, shrugging his shoulders, and said, "I can’t get them to look." The room filled with laughter as it dawned on the audience that he really wanted us to look. And sure enough, when he gave one more try, "Look at the lilies in that field ..." every head in the audience turned toward the side wall.
I do not know whether old John the Evangelist was present in the theater that night, but, if not, he should have been. It was his kind of show. Indeed, he spends his entire Gospel trying to get people to look, really to look, at the life of Jesus. Light and darkness, vision and dimness, "once I was blind, but now I see," these are the materials of John’s Gospel. Chapter after chapter, John’s finger points toward his Lord and his voice sounds the refrain, "Look ... look ... look."
The willingness to look and to see stands at the center of this story about Nathaniel. According to John, Nathaniel is approached by Philip, who tells Nathaniel that they have found the one Moses and the prophets wrote about, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. Nathaniel crosses his arms, closes his eyes, and plays the pre-recorded tape of a blind prejudice which sees nothing but knows everything, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Philip responds with three words which embrace everything the church knows to say in its evangelism: "Come and see." Like children who have seen a meteor shower lighting up the night sky and have run breathlessly into the house to beckon their parents, the church runs toward the world, pulling it gently but urgently by the hand, "Come and see. Come and see. There are wonders beyond imagining to behold."
"Come and see," says John’s Gospel, but the actor playing Jesus, shrugging his shoulders, said, "I can’t get them to look." Sometimes people do not see the grace at work in the world through Christ because they will not come to the place where they can see. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it, but the light is not visible from every vantage point. One must come and see.
A few years ago a church located in a large city decided to turn its gymnasium into a night shelter for homeless people. Every winter there were reports that some of these people, condemned to sleep out in the open, had frozen to death, and so the church made the warmth and safety of its building available without charge. Each evening during the winter, volunteers from the church would spend the night in the shelter, providing food, clothing, and lodging for as many of the homeless as the building would hold. Almost without exception, the volunteers reported that the experience of spending the night with these people from the streets had been far more than an act of dutiful charity. The volunteers had found their own faith strengthened, their own reliance upon the grace of Christ reinforced by the experience.
Several months after the shelter was opened, one of the pastors of the church was being interviewed on a radio talk program. The interviewer was an opinionated fundamentalist whose biases were quite strong. It became clear during the interview that he felt that the church ought to stick to the business of preaching the old-time gospel and stay away from meddlesome activities like shelters for homeless people. "Now just tell me," he jeered at one point, "where is Jesus in all this?" For a moment the pastor considered silently how to respond, then said calmly, "You just have to be there."
"Come and see," said Philip to Nathaniel, and some people do not see because they will not come to those places where one can get an angle of vision, where one can see the grace of Christ at work in the world.
"Come and see," calls John’s Gospel, but the Jesus of the "Cotton Patch Gospel" shrugged his shoulders and said, "I can’t get them to look." There are other times when people do not see the grace at work in the world through Christ, because, even when they come to the place where Christ is at work, they will not look ... really look. Like bored tourists in an art museum, they glance at everything but see nothing ...
• worship becomes a "nice ceremony" full of pleasant music and sweet-sounding words rather than the arena for encountering the living God.
• marriage becomes a contract between self-seeking partners, rather than a place of holy intimacy.
• sex becomes the warm cuddling of mutual gratification, devoid of all mystery.
• human striving toward freedom and dignity becomes "merely political," rather than a sign of God at work in the world breaking all forms of bondage.
Some peer at everything, but see nothing.
Come and see. In some ways, this is all that can be said to us ... all that needs to be said to us. Nathaniel went, and Nathaniel saw. Jesus gave him new eyes, and with them he saw the true light. "Rabbi," he exclaimed, "you are the Son of God!" To which Jesus replied, in effect, "Keep looking, Nathaniel. There’s even more to see." If we do come with a willingness to see, then, like Nathaniel, we will find a Christ who will open our blind eyes, clear the dimness of our vision, and show us more wonders of grace than we ever dreamed were there to see.
In her book Becoming Human, Letty M. Russell, describes the new sense of vision which was given to her, ironically, when she lost one of her eyes in a freak accident. Things which had once loomed large for her now became small in the light of the more important realities of sight, health, and the compassionate care of others. Moreover, her personal pain heightened her sensitivity to the pain of others and deepened her awareness of her own need for God’s care. In other words, though she had lost an eye, she could see more. She wrote:
This discovery that I was becoming at one and the same time both stronger and weaker was a small sign that God was patiently helping me to become more human.1
In a certain church in the midwest, the officers were debating whether to join several other churches in their sponsorship of a local family health clinic. The clinic had been established for the families of migrant workers because the public health resources were inadequate and burdened with red tape. In the debate one of the officers spoke forcefully against supporting the clinic because, as he put it, "Most of the patients are illegal aliens, so we’d just be supporting illegal activity."
"But they’re people," said another in the group, "and they need medical care." Back and forth went the discussion, with much passion but without resolution. Taking a vote would have been bitterly divisive, so the matter was tabled until the next meeting.
On the following day, the pastor of the church called the officer who had spoken in opposition and made a date for lunch. During lunch the pastor asked him if he would be willing to take a few minutes on the way back to work and visit the clinic in question. The man agreed, and the two of them found the waiting room at the clinic bustling with activity, full of pensive young mothers and squirming children. The pastor and the man sat down to observe for a few minutes.
A nurse appeared at the door and called to one of the children, a little boy, about four years old, who marched bravely toward the nurse, already apprehensively rubbing his arm where he knew he would soon receive an innoculation.
A few minutes later the little boy reappeared at the door, now rubbing his pained arm in earnest, poking his lower lip forward, fighting the tears that were pushing out of his eyes. He searched the room for his mother, but she had taken another child to the restroom and was not to be found. The boy, finding what looked to him like a kind face, walked over to the man, crawled onto his lap, and rested his head on the man’s chest.
First hesitantly, then willingly and lovingly, the man wrapped his hands around this fellow human being in need of care. When he did so, he was amazed by his own spontaneous compassion. Almost as amazed as were the other officers when he made the motion at the next meeting to sponsor the clinic.
"Come and see," said Philip to Nathaniel. And what did he see? ... Well, you just have to be there.
1. Letty M. Russell, Becoming Human (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982), p. 103.