We often make much of first words.
The first words of a story.
The first words of a relationship, of a friendship, of a romance.
Inaugural speeches.
First words should be chosen carefully if we don’t want to lose attention, lose the connection, lose the relationship.
Such as the first words of a sermon. Do I still have your attention? Oops.
The first words your child speaks.
Then there is the first time God speaks to you.
The first words that Jesus speaks in John’s Gospel he speaks to two people who are stalking him out of curiosity, fascination and I think desperation.
One of them is Andrew, soon to be an Apostle.
Andrew and the other unnamed person are spying Jesus out. Jesus is being tailed.
Rather than try to evade or ignore his stalkers, Jesus turns and speaks his first words, “What are you looking for?”
What are you looking for?
There is double meaning here, double entendre.
Andrew and the other answer, “Rabbi, where are you staying.”
And Jesus response is an invitation, “Come and see.”
And they remained with him that day.
What are you looking for? Come and see.
They were looking for the reason, the purpose of life, the word that makes sense of things.
We live our days trying to move stuff around and then we die.
Is that it?
Is there more? Please let there be more.
Is there a reason, a purpose, a word that makes sense of going through all the pain and grief and fear and boredom of this life?
Andrew and the other caught a glimpse of that word that made sense of things, that brought order to the disorder and confusion of things and they stalked him, they tailed him and they were asked the question, “What are you looking for?” And then they are invited over, “Come and see”.
They aren’t given an answer, they are only given the person of Jesus and the invitation to come and see. And that is the Gospel, the Good News according to John. Jesus is that essential thing that is missing in life and we are invited to come and see and to be born again, to really find out what it is to be alive this time around.
The Christian vocation, our calling, is to know Jesus deeply in all things, and that is where we find out who we are and what we are to do.
And the essential piece of that calling to know Jesus is to share in that invitation that Jesus is and that Jesus makes for all to come and see.
That means to know Jesus fully we have to make and be that Gospel invitation to others, the E-Word, “evangelism.”
Otherwise we are living contrary to God’s nature, and we will not know Jesus fully or know what John’s Gospel calls the fullness and abundance of life.
It works like this.
Jesus is the living invitation of God, Jesus is the Hospitality of God reaching out to the world to be seen and known and heard, God’s fullness revealed, God’s witnessing of God’s self.
Part of sharing in the Gospel life is being and giving that invitation and hospitality as well.
Does our living and our speaking and our thinking say “Come and see”, to others?
There is no single way to do this, no gimmick or trick, when we know Jesus in all things then it happens naturally, but that is not the same thing as being easy.
Knowing Jesus in all things. There is the challenge.
We are Like Andrew and the other, stalking Jesus, hoping and looking for that elusive fullness and abundance of life. And we won’t find it until we make that invitation and take on the ways of God’s radical hospitality.
The first thing Andrew did after staying with Jesus that day was to invite his brother Simon, whom Jesus then named Cephas, Peter. Andrew had become part of God’s hospitality. To be blessed by God is to then bless others.
Calling and Evangelism can’t be separated, they are the same thing. They are all about the hospitality of God, the invitation that is the person of Jesus infecting the world.
What are you looking for?
Come and see.