2nd Sunday after Epiphany (B): Come and See!
By: Charles Lane Cowen
News travels quickly. In our world where my iPhone gives me a push notification from The New York Times every time something newsworthy happens, this seems even more true. but even outside the world of the 24-hour news cycle, news travels quickly. If you’ve ever worked in an office on a day when someone brings cupcakes and leaves them in the break room, you know what I’m talking about. News travels quickly, and good news travels faster.
The Gospel of John from start to finish calls us to hear, believe, and share the Good News of Christ. John affirms this in writing that his Gospel was “written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31.) John’s poetic and memorable prologue, which we heard on the first Sunday of Christmas, uses beauty and imagery to call us into the Good News of Jesus, and today’s lesson uses the witness of the Apostles to pull us in.
If we read back a bit before today’s appointed lesson, we see a pattern emerging which begins with John the Baptist. Upon seeing Jesus, John cries out, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36.) Andrew and an unnamed disciple follow—literally follow, as in walk after—Jesus, who invites them to “Come and see” (1:39.) Upon seeing, Andrew runs to his brother Simon and proclaims, “We have found the Messiah” (1:45.) Peter, whose interest has been piqued by his brother, then goes to meet Jesus and receives a new name.
Then we come to today’s lesson, where we see a similar pattern. This time Jesus initiates by saying to Philip, “Follow me” (1:43.) Philip shares the Good News with Nathanael saying, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote”—in other words, the Messiah. When Nathanael balks, Philip offers the same invitation Jesus gave to Andrew and the unnamed disciple: “Come and see.” Finally, Jesus furthers this invitation into the future by giving Nathanael a vision of what “you will see.”
To put this retelling into a visual form, notice the patterns, parallels, and movements when we lay these verses out:
Look, here is the Lamb of God
Come and see
We have found the Messiah
Follow me
We have found [the Messiah]
Come and see
You will see
From John the Baptist’s initial invitation to “look,” multiple people are invited to look, see, proclaim, and invite. This pattern of Good News spreading—of gospelling—leads not only to naming the truth of Jesus’ messiahship, but leads to a revelation from Jesus of angels bridging the gap between heaven and earth (1:51). Look! You will see!
This is amazing to me! Just by stating the plain truth revealed to him, John the Baptist set in motion events that transcend not only his own lifetime but the physical realms of heaven and earth! Just as my running from the breakroom shouting “Yahoo!!!” from my pink-icing- covered lips and leaving a trail of cakey crumbs offers a foretaste of the free desserts left for all, John’s proclamation leads people, even skeptics like Nathanael, to the Messiah who gives life to all.
“Where did you get those cupcakes?” a co-worker might ask.
“Walmart,” I reply.
“Can anything good come from Walmart?”
Clearly, my co-worker has not tried one of the cupcakes. I don’t mean to diminish Jesus’ messianic salvation of the world to a mere big-box store cupcake, but the sugar fiend in me sees the parallels in the metaphor.
Turning back to the story in John, I find it fascinating that of the two disciples who respond to John the Baptist’s proclamation, only Andrew is named. Likewise, although Nathanael has a rather fleshed-out character in this gospel, in the Synoptics, Nathanael is never mentioned. While some scholars suggest that the Nathanael in John’s Gospel is the same as Bartholomew in the Synoptics, there is nothing in the text itself to suggest that. In my thinking, the anonymity of Nathanael and, even more so, the anonymity of the disciple who went with Andrew tells us something about the role of discipleship.
As a former actor, I, to quote Lady Gaga, “live for the applause, applause, applause.” The disciples, however, once they have brought others to Jesus, tend to fade away as Jesus becomes the focus. Sandra Schneiders notes in her commentary on John that “there are no ‘second generation disciples’ in John, because all are bound to Jesus by his own word.”[1] While one might read this to mean that those who brought others to Jesus no longer matter nor need accolades because Jesus’ love outshines them, I think there’s actually something bigger going on.
Perhaps more than any body of literature in the Bible, the Johannine corpus speaks to the notion of community. While we refer to the author of the Gospel as John, we also know that the Gospel comes from the witness of the entire community. Schneiders even argues in her book that the Beloved Disciple may not have a distinct identity because the reader should see herself in that role.[2] In other words, each of us is beloved of Jesus because Jesus knows us and we know him. The apostolic witness of those like the unnamed disciple and Nathanael, of whom we know very little, are not lost in the shadow of Jesus, but, rather, they are consumed in the light of Christ. Our very identity in Jesus changes our own identity as one of the bearer of the light of Christ. Simon is no longer Simon, but Peter. We are no longer our individual selves, but the beloved community of Christ.
Remembering the light of Christ which came into the world at Christmas and was revealed to the nations at Epiphany, I wonder how we will continue in the footsteps of the apostles.
Look!
Here is the Lamb of God!
Come and see!
We have found the Messiah!
Follow me!
We have found the Messiah!
Come and see!
You will see!
Charles Lane Cowen is a Candidate for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island and a senior M.Div. student at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Prior to going to seminary, Charles spent a decade as a professional actor, director, storyteller, and puppeteer. He has performed with the Texas and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals and was formerly Associate Director of the Marley Bridges Theatre Company in Newport, Rhode Island.
[1]Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, Revised Edition (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), 143.
[2]Ibid., 239.
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