Come & See

I was in my early ‘20s, newly single, unemployed, and on the verge of losing my apartment, when the Great Recession of 2008 hit. I had no idea what I was doing with my life, much less how I was going to afford my bills for the foreseeable future, when the most curious of emails landed in my inbox from a friend I hadn’t seen since we’d graduated high school together seven years prior.

My friend told me he’d landed in Liberia, a small nation on the west coast of Africa, which was just beginning to recover from a brutal, 14-year-long civil war. Infrastructure was destroyed, poverty was rampant, and the country was struggling to address its orphan crisis birthed by the war. He and his colleagues, who were in the beginning stages of registering a non-profit organization to help Liberian orphans, suggested that I, a teacher at the time, may want to come visit and volunteer for a couple of weeks.

There it was – an invitation, though to what, I wasn’t sure. To something unknown … to a new place … new people. Hadn’t I prayed for God to show me what was next? Could this really be the answer? My friend had said it was pretty bad there; what exactly made him think I’d want to visit, with an endorsement like that?

Yet still, I felt the pull.

“Come and see,” at its core, is an invitation. The phrase, uttered in John 1:43-51 by Phillip, is a response to Nathanael’s cynicism that nothing good could possibly come out of Nazareth. Phillip desires for his friend to experience the life-changing goodness that he has through his relationship with Jesus.

Strangely, my friend’s invitation to visit Liberia was born out of the same desire. There was something beautiful there – so many things, really, which you know of if you’ve already read Until the Bones Shine.
I had planned to go for two weeks … and stayed for five years. And I could have missed it all had I never been invited or, worse yet, if I’d been invited but decided not to go because of the images I’d conjured up in my head.

Proximity, you see, changes people. Sometimes we can’t see things … people … even God … clearly until we get real nice and close to them.

What’s interesting is that the phrase “come and see” is used another time in the first chapter of John, just a few verses before and, there, it is Jesus who speaks the words. Two inquisitive disciples are curious as to where Jesus is staying after hearing John call him the “Lamb of God.”

Jesus turns to him after they ask this question, and responds “Come and see.” Another invitation. And after spending the day with Jesus, one of these men, Andrew, was so moved by him that he sought out his brother Simon to introduce him to Jesus, the Messiah, as well.

Again, proximity changes us. Jesus knew this; it’s why he invited the two questioners to come spend the day with him. Being in the presence of God and being in relationship with God not only transforms us on an individual level, but it also inspires us to offer the same invitation to “come and see” to others, as Andrew did. God desires true relationship with us, and that we have relationship with one another, and one of the best ways to build a community is through word of mouth and personal experience.

We must be careful to remember that Jesus extended this invitation to the two men as a means to satisfy their curiosity; perhaps they simply really wanted to know what a guest room for the Lamb of God would look like! Phillip, on the other hand, offers the invitation as a direct reply to Nathanael’s prejudice. One can almost hear the disdain in Nathanael’s voice as he sneered with disgust, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” In other words, he’d heard about those people, the ones from Nazareth. They were beneath him, on a lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder than he. It is rhetoric we’ve heard time and time again from the mouth of our former president as he spoke, particularly, about people of color and immigrants. What’s more, this type of speech is used by millions of Americans who would agree with him. Can anything good come out of the projects? Out of Chicago? Out of Mexico or Colombia or Venezuela?

Come and see.

Come and see how immigrants actually boost the U.S. economy through starting businesses, drive up demand for local goods, and help develop new and cutting-edge technology.

Come and see how immigrants are less likely to commit crime and be imprisoned than U.S. born nationals.

Come and see how the rate of Black individuals with at least a college degree has risen at the same rate as the general population.

It’s easy to hold tight to our prejudices and biases when we’re not confronted with the up-and-close reality, easy to speak about immigrants and people of color when we’re not actually in relational community with them.

As is the case with the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Everyone has their “side” and who they think is right or wrong, but the truth is that we are only afforded the comfort of our own prejudices because we are observing the conflict from across an ocean. We don’t have proximity to it. Yet if we move closer – if we come and see, hearing from the Israeli and Palestinian population who are actually living through the horrors – our prejudices are confronted. All of a sudden, things aren’t as clear-cut as we once thought they were.

And maybe that’s actually the point. Phillip seemed to think so, at least.

It is astounding how much there is to say about three simple words: Come and see. This phrase is an invitation from God that, at times, is given to us through other people. It is a reminder that God is relational and desires communion with us in addition to us having it with others. There is a beautiful quote by author Ram Dass that says at the end of the day, “We are all just walking one another home.” The beautiful thing about this invitation is the people who extend it go on the journey with us. We are not told to “Go and see,” which implies that we are going it alone. Rather, there is community and relationship that is present throughout the journey.

As noted earlier, the invitation also provides us an opportunity to examine our own biases, particularly ones we hold against other people and even ones we have against God. It’s important to remember that Phillip’s invitation was for Nathanael to come and see Christ for himself, not simply rely on what Phillip told him about Jesus. When we tell others about God, we need to acknowledge that our own interpretations (which are often flawed and/or incomplete) of who God is color our speech. This is why we follow Phillip’s lead and extend the invitation for people to come and see for themselves.

And may we not forget to listen for the voice of Christ himself, who continually pursues us in love, wanting always to be in ever-closer communion with us. May we see the significance of coming to spend time with him, as the two men who visited where he’d been staying did, so that we, too, might be changed simply from being in God’s presence.