Seeing is not just Believing, Seeing is Really Seeing

Epiphany 2B   |  John 1:43-51

Come and See

Andrew is a follower of John the Baptist. He’s the one involved. He’s the worker. The devoted one.

After John baptizes Jesus, he tells Andrew about it, about him. Who Jesus really is.

Andrew gets his brother, Simon Peter and takes him to Jesus. Jesus renames Simon, calling him Peter.

This is the day before the text begins with “The next day.”

Philip knows Andrew and Peter. Like Andrew, Philip brings someone to Jesus, who is brought into the fold.

There is something about these interactions that I find deeply significant. Not so much significant in the way that it bears the weight of historical significance; like the big moments in which history is made. This is not iconic. This isn’t Martin Luther King, Jr. at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Not defining moment significant.

Significant in a physical way, in an experiential way. These people hear about Jesus and need to see him. They need to sense Jesus.

This is much more than proof, this is living it. This is getting it, and knowing it in their bones. This is the Messiah. The one we’ve been waiting for. The one our people have been hoping for centuries would come. This is the one we’ve prayed for. This is the one who changes everything.

He is here. And he wants to be with us.

How We Believe

We struggle with the literal, the historical, the factual. I blame the Enlightenment. Before then, we didn’t confuse truth with fact. True was true regardless of how it happened. Then we started to obsess about how it happened and started to believe that there was an objective reality: that we could say this is how it happened. As if our experience of an objective reality didn’t make that reality subjective.

Now we’re in a post-enlightenment world, a postmodern world, in which such objectivity is quaint and near impossible.

Tony Jones describes this using an umpire analogy:

There are three umpires hanging out after a baseball game. The premodern umpire says, “there are balls, and there are strikes, and I call ‘em what they are.” The modern umpire says, “There are balls, and there are strikes, and I call ‘em as I see ‘em.” The postmodern umpire says, “There are balls, and there are strikes, and they ain’t nothing until I call ‘em.”

This confusion of truth and fact, how things happen are why we need to see something to believe it. Why belief so clearly involves seeing, not just hearing. The patron saint of the enlightenment ought to be Thomas, who at the opposite end of this gospel story isn’t satisfied with hearing about a resurrected Jesus, he needs to see it, needs to experience Jesus in the exact way his friends did. He can’t trust that it happened. He has to see it for himself.

Proving

There is something very natural about seeing, about the need for proof. When Philip tells Nathaneal about Jesus, Nathaneal doesn’t believe it is possible–this guy is from Nazareth, of all places–but Philip urges him: “come and see.”

Jesus sees Nathaneal and declares that he is honest.

How does Jesus know Nathaneal is honest? He saw Nathaneal under the fig tree.

But Jesus undermines this line of thought: of seeing to believing: by saying

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.”

And he describes what that will be that he will see: the heavens opening and the coming of the Son of Humanity.

But it begins with Philip who invites his friend: “come and see.”

I’d like to think that Philip gets the double meaning of his statement. That he is inviting his friend to come with him and see what all the fuss is about. Come and see if this really is the Messiah. And that he is inviting his friend to come with him and understand. Come and see the coming of the Messiah.

For Jesus, seeing isn’t only done with our eyes. And it isn’t only in believing. It is all tied up with honesty. Seeing may be believing, but honesty makes Nathaneal special.

What We See

It is natural to wonder what it is that Jesus saw–what it was specifically that made him know that there is no deceit in Nathaneal. Because Nathaneal’s response seems like he was caught doing something–but not something salacious. Something good. Something Philip and Andrew couldn’t know.

It is curious, like a huge chunk of text is missing. What really happened? we ask. But this isn’t important to John. What happened doesn’t matter. No need to describe it, no need to get that specific. Because we don’t need to see along with Jesus to believe that Nathaneal is honest or that Jesus knows that he is. We don’t need to see that Jesus called these followers or that Jesus lived and breathed or that Jesus was lifted up on a cross. We don’t need to see Jesus in the flesh again to believe he was raised. We believe without seeing.

For many of us, we come to see after we believe. When we have dealt with our doubts and self-deceits and we give GOD a chance to actually show up. That’s when we start to see.

That’s my experience. When I took to heart Jesus’s instructions to not “worry what you are to say” because GOD will provide the words and actually stood up in front of a congregation without a net, and the words came, I began to see. Only then did I know what trust was. Only then did I know what being honest to GOD and to my friends actually looked like.

Wherever we are on your journeys, may we be without deceit, may we believe, and may we see GOD here, in one another and in everyone we meet.