So the other day, I was grumbling about life over our Friday breakfast at Tallman's with Brooks. Seems my iPhone had updated, and I was complaining about all the changes. Nothing behind the wall (as the kids say) had changed, but the way the iPhone screen looked sure had. Everything was cheerful ...too cheerful, if you ask me. All my apps were brighter; things seemed bubblier. It was if the phone was shouting, “Hello! So good to see you!” every time I opened it up. And I wasn't having it.
When we got in the car, I plugged it into my charger, which connects with my dashboard screen, and the phone had changed the way it interacted with my car. Even it was bright and new and bubbly. I let out a long, low growl, and Brooks just started cracking up. “I know, I know,” I eventually responded. “This is a first world problem.” “It's not even that,” he said. “It's a first world inconvenience.”
I have a lot of those. I recently had an Amazon order delayed a couple of days because of lake effect snow in Syracuse. I realized I was out of Tide Pods AFTER I had loaded the washer. My positive post on my battery had some corrosion that needed some baking soda. A piece fell off of a pottery thing I'm making at Becca's studio. Lots of things that serve to make life so, so miserable and almost not worth living, right?
And yet somehow, I manage to endure, persist, and move forward, bravely encountering each of these awful events with courage and fortitude. I should be given an award, a cash purse, a Nobel prize for simply and stoically navigating this world.
But sometimes I find myself having to take a step back and really look at reality. A reality of when first world Steve meets third world Jesus. The Jesus who lived in a dusty backwater, with villages occupied by agents of the central Roman government. Snatching people up, oppressing them, taxing them of what little they had to give to themselves and their friends. A Jesus who lived in a world of increasing disease and never-ending poverty. A Jesus living at the crossroads of great civilizations, Rome and Parthia, knowing that their tiny homeland was ground zero of any geopolitical conflict, and there was nothing they could do if a king or emperor wanted to enslave more people or gather up their gold or other precious minerals.
And it is in this backdrop that two of John the Baptist's disciples were standing with John and saw Jesus walking by. They stopped him long enough to ask him where he was staying. And he responds, “Come and see.” I've never really thought about it before, but their question is a little bit strange to our ears. “Where are you staying?” Not “Who are you really?” Not “Will you show us your power?” Not “Can we join you?” It's strange to our ears, but not to theirs. They aren't curious about his house, is it nice, how many guest rooms, is there a pool?
“Where are you staying?” means “Where can we come and learn from you?” And he invites them in. And I wonder what they saw in the place where Jesus was staying? Were people already beginning to glom on to who he was? Was where he was staying already overrun by scared, sick, worried people? Were they sharing what they had there, looking after each other's kids while they talked about their lives and looked out for soldiers over the horizon? Was he walking among them, already reminding them that to love God and love their neighbor was an idea so ancient that it was if it existed before time, that you were meant to love your neighbor even before you were in your mother's womb. That love was the binding force of the universe.
And I wonder if Jesus looked up from his work there and saw that those two disciples had actually followed and were standing there, agape at the need, at the eagerness of the people to accept this love and to feel just the tiniest bit of dignity in the home of this holy man? And I wonder if Jesus maybe ambled over to them, put his arms around them, and said, “This is harder than you think. But you will never feel more alive,” as he dragged them into the fold.
Y'all, first world problems are not third world problems, but that doesn't mean that third world problems won't be creeping into our lives, perhaps sooner rather than later. And when they do, we will be called on to live into our baptismal vows, follow Jesus, and come and see what is happening around us.
It's so easy to stay locked inside, doom scrolling on our bubbly iPhones and watching one-minute clips of disasters and horrors and man's inhumanity to man. With our power humming through our wires, and the crockpot smelling good, and the cat purring on our lap. But Jesus doesn't say, “Sit and watch.” He says “Come and see.” And when we do, we have a choice, we finally have a choice that for so many has always been a theoretical choice, because they have not been called on to finally make that choice. But Jesus is always asking us to make it. To come and see. And then, when we vow to follow, to Stay and Work. Loving God as our neighbor, respecting the dignity of every human being.
When we have this reading during Epiphany, I always take a moment at the end to glance back over my shoulder at John at the beginning. He's just lost two disciples! I like to see him smiling as they go. He's done what he can to prepare them for this very thing. And off they go. Out into the world to stand on their own, to stand for others, to stand for what is right. John is about to do that, too. He's about to lay down his life in the service of something bigger brought about by petty, selfish, power-hungry people sitting on and around gilded thrones. He will soon die, but not for nothing. He will have raised up people who leave the nest and follow the truth, follow the light, follow Jesus.
You know, lately in this world, there are so many leaders and influencers and folks so rich that they can't even remember what it means to go hungry for even a minute. What it means to be scared for even a night. What it means to stand up to those very same leaders and influencers and rich folks.
There are so many people in this world who have managed to inspire me to be nothing like them. But I know now who I want to be like. I know now who I've vowed to be like.
I know that I've been called to come and see. We all have. At our baptism we were called. Jesus calls even now, “Come and see.” Well, let's go see what it's all about.
Amen.