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| An example of what evangelism is NOT. |
Come and See!
August 25-26, 2012
Text is below--audio can be found at this link.
I’m a big, big Nebraska Cornhuskers football fan. Ever since moving to Nebraska when I was in 4th grade, I’ve followed the Huskers, cheered the victories and grumbled at the losses. I love to talk about the team, I love to go to the games when I can—in fact, I’ll often lose my voice by game’s end from cheering so loud.
January 1, 1995 was a big day for me as a Husker fan. The
Huskers were in the Orange Bowl, playing Miami after a perfect season. Win this
game and they were national champions. Anticipation was high, especially since
the Huskers had made it to the same point the previous season, only to have
their title hopes dashed as a last-second field goal attempt sailed wide.
At the end of the third quarter, Miami led, 17-9, and things
didn’t look all that good for Nebraska. But then, plays began to open up for
the offense. With about 7 ½ minutes left in the game, Cory Schlesinger scored
on a run up the middle, and the two point conversion afterwards tied up the
game. Miami wasn’t able to do anything with their next possession, and when the
Huskers got the ball back, they drove down the field, running it right at the
tired Miami defense. With a little over 2 ½ minutes left in the game, this
happened:
With the play that my wife and I still refer to as the
“Schlesinger Roll,” Nebraska took the lead for the first time in the game, and
ended up winning. Here’s Kent Pavelka’s call of the final seconds:
That wasn’t just fake emotion he was mustering up. As the
game ended, celebrations erupted across the state. Over 10,000 people
spontaneously gathered at the intersection of 72nd and Dodge in
Omaha, and thousands more converged on 13th and O here in Lincoln.
Complete strangers gave each other hugs and high fives. I was at my parents’
house in Bellevue, and we ran outside, cheering with the other neighbors.
When we see or experience joy, when we hear or experience
good news, we want to share it with others. When something affects us so
profoundly, we want to tell others, we want to invite others into our joy, so
that they too may become a part of it. It might be something as relatively
small as a football game. It might be something like a birth announcement or an
engagement, or a new job, or a promotion. Birthdays, anniversaries, all of our
life’s mile markers are things that we seek out others with whom we can
celebrate. It comes naturally to us.
Why then, is talking about our faith often not the same?
Today is the last topic in our summer series on Faith
Questions You Were Afraid to Ask But Your Kids Weren’t, and the question we’re “tackling”
(to continue the football metaphor) is the question of evangelism. What exactly
does evangelism mean? Why is it so difficult for many of us?
For too many Christians as well as for many outside the
Christian faith, the word “evangelism” has become a dirty word. It brings for
many people negative connotations, people knocking on doors or carrying signs
or trying to argue someone into the faith or beating their neighbor over the
head with a Bible until it finally sinks in. But the word “evangelism” isn’t
any of that at all. It comes from a Greek word which means, “one who is the
bringer of good news.” In fact, the root is the same as where we get the word
“angel.” Our church thinks so highly of the word that we have incorporated it
into the name of our wider church body—we are part of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America. Evangelism ought to be part of our spiritual DNA—so why, so
often, is it missing?
You, my friends, are evangelists! You are the bringers of
good news! That doesn’t mean being pushy, it doesn’t mean arguing or violence
or much of what the world tends to associate with evangelism. It’s about
experiencing joy, about experiencing transformation, about experiencing God’s
amazing love and grace and forgiveness, it’s about being a part of God’s
promise that God is making all things new, and simply wanting to share that.
Wanting to not keep this incredible gift to yourself. Wanting to experience
this in a community, and wanting others to be able to share in the freedom
through the cross that you yourself know. It’s about extending the same simple
invitation that Philip extended to Nathaniel: “come and see.”
“Come and see.” The day before the events in our reading,
two disciples of John the Baptist had been so captivated by Jesus’ encounter
with them when he had come to John that they had followed him. One of those
disciples was named Andrew, and he had gone and found his brother Simon.
Apparently, word must have spread through their hometown of Bethsaida, because
in our reading today another resident of that town, Philip, has his own
encounter with Jesus. And what is Philip’s reaction? He runs and finds his
friend Nathanael, telling him excitedly, “We’ve found the one! The one that
Moses and the prophets wrote about! It’s Jesus, from Nazareth!”
He is so excited, so filled with joy, that he can’t just
keep it to himself. He has to share that with someone, and so he shares it with
Nathanael, whose response is just like popping a balloon: “Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?”
Nazareth? That town? Really? Come on, Philip—you’ve come to
me all excited about this? Seriously?
Philip would have had every reason to get defensive, or to
argue with Nathanael, or to attack, or to claim that Nathanael was persecuting
him, or complain that he wasn’t being taken seriously. Indeed, those are some
of the reactions that Christians unfortunately often have to those who question
our proclamation of good news. But instead, Philip simply says, “Come and see.”
When you know you’ve got a good thing, when you are so certain
that the news you have REALLY IS good news, then this good news can speak for
itself on its own merits. It doesn’t require you to argue your way through it.
It doesn’t require you to try to trick someone into believing, or to scare them
into believing, or to strongarm them into believing. “Come and see.” If the
cross really is good news, if God’s promises of newness and freedom and justice
and mercy really are good news, if we really believe that God so loved the
world that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, if
we really take to heart that it is by grace that we have been saved through
faith, and this is not of our own doing, it is the gift of God, not by works,
so that no one may boast, if we really have taken to heart the things that
Jesus said and did, his life and ministry and death and resurrection, then
evangelism becomes the same simple invitation that Philip extended to Nathanael:
“come and see.”
We Lutherans should be on the evangelical front lines. We
understand this grace stuff. We get the cross. We are theologians of the
cross—Martin Luther said a theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is,
and so we are able to see things the way they really are. We can see sin and
call it sin. We can see pain and disease and suffering and we have no need to
whitewash it. We know we are broken people and we live in a broken world. We
know that there is nothing about the cross to suggest that a life spent
following in the way of Jesus means sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. But we
also hear God’s promises, and we see the empty tomb on Easter. We gather around
the communion table, where all are invited, all are welcome, all are told,
“come and see.” We cling to the promise that there is nothing in heaven or on
earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We see God’s
transformation even in the midst of the brokenness, we acknowledge that we are
saints at the very same time that we are sinners, we look to the cross as God’s
ultimate yes to humankind’s no.
That’s good news. And that’s something we just can’t keep to
ourselves. When we’ve experienced something so profound, so life changing, so
WORLD changing, the very way we are wired compels us to share it. That’s
evangelism. It’s simply the invitation to come and see.
So then, we need to ask: is this story that we’re inviting
people into a compelling one? Does it have meat? Does it match up with their
experience of life and humanity? Does it take seriously the big questions of
existence? But is it at the same time personal? That’s the beauty of Holy
Communion for me—on the one hand, it’s universal. It’s a picture of all of
humanity gathered around the great table in a giant celebration of life and
love and Jesus’ victory over the powers of sin and death. On the other hand, at
the very same time, it’s intensely personal. It is FOR YOU. Not just
anyone…you. Our faith stories are the same way. God is at work in the world—we
know that. God is about the business of making all things new. But God is also
at work in your life. God is at work in the lives of those you meet. How do we
tell that story? How do we invite others to “come and see?”
We can tell through our words. We can simply share our own
experiences. Not what we have done, but
what God has done…in us, and for us, and yes even sometimes through us. And we
can also tell through our actions. That’s how every act of kindness, every act
of mercy, every act of sharing, of breaking down the walls that divide us, of
bringing peace…that’s how these are all acts of evangelism. Because they don’t
just proclaim the good news, they embody the good news. They make the good news
of God in Christ incarnate, enfleshed.
This weekend, our congregation’s third graders will be given
Bibles by their parents. My son will be one of those kids receiving a Bible. In
doing so, the invitation continues to be extended to “come and see.” Also this
weekend, we’re privileged to be helping to host the Nebraska Synod field trip,
which is focusing on prison ministry. Come and see. Come and see what God is up
to. Come and see and hear and experience.
We’re just messengers. Inviters. Proclaimers. God’s the one
who does the work—we don’t convert. We don’t change others. We don’t transform
them. All we do is what we’re wired to do. We just share our joyful freedom. We
just invite. We live. We love. And we rejoice together.
Come and see.
Matt Schur
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
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