The Shepherd’s Voice

Bobby was excited about learning the 23rd Psalm, but he just couldn’t remember it. After much practice he still had a major problem with it.

On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Bobby was very nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, “The Lord is my shepherd and that’s all I need to know!”

Sometimes messages in scripture are just that simple. Take our Gospel lesson today. First, Jesus’ message to Philip – he simply said, “Follow Me.”

It’s pretty hard for anyone reading this scripture to misunderstand what follow me means. In Greek the word is ἀκολουθέω (akoloutheō) means come after me or accompany me, or go along with me. There is not much room for misunderstanding. I like that. I like it when we hear unambiguous, straight forward input from God our creator.

But perhaps you’ve already started to say to yourself, well wait a minute, follow me could mean look to you for guidance, or I’ll follow your modeling as a way to live, but it’s vague. If you’re doing that you’ve already watered down the message that Jesus had for Philip. Jesus words to Philip, were come along with me, accompany me, come be by my side. Simple.

This was not a term that meant believe everything I say. It did not mean worship me. It did not mean be my disciple, it just meant follow me. We see in later sections of scripture where Jesus is more specific about being my disciple, but here the text is clear, uncluttered with nuisance, simple, Philip was to follow Jesus.

I like to keep our invitation to someone outside of our church simple.

My dad was a simple man. He never went to high school, only graduating from eighth grade, but he was an avid reader. I never thought of him as uneducated. He was a good farmer, successful, paid for things upfront. He was pretty strict, after all he had 8 kids to raise and discipline so his words were usually simple, but he was a very loving man.

My dad was pretty involved in our local small rural church, but he was never outspoken about evangelism or outreach. He supported missionaries behind the scenes. Truthfully I didn’t know much about his faith until later in life. One thing I heard and observed about him was he wasn’t afraid to share ideas or thoughts with complete strangers. He could be in a line at the DMV and if it was 10 deep he would have talked to and shared his faith with people on both sides of him in that line by the time he got to the front of it. His words were simple, but authentic.

After Philip agreed to follow Jesus he too began to share with others around him. Philip was from Bethsaida, a fishing village where Andrew and Peter also lived.

Philip reminds me a little of someone who has been away at Bible camp, comes home and wants to tell his friends, his family what happened to him while he was away. Philip says here that he meet the one whom Moses and the prophets wrote about, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.

Nathanael’s response was pretty simple as well. It reminds me of what some of my friends would tell me as I told them about my own Bible camp experience. Just recently I wrote to an old friend from my rural days, in fact my home church in Minnesota. I told him about just graduating from seminary and I thought he’d say the normal congratulatory thing, but he said, what took you so long to graduate?

People often respond differently than we expect them to respond. Here Nathanael says “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” This may have been the normal response for that time and that place because Nazareth was a small town. It was known to sympathize with anti-Roman elements is society. There were zealots there. A term we might be more familiar with today is insurrectionist or insurgent. Nazareth was known to coddle social bandits, people who were NOT going along with the flow. So perhaps the very natural response to Philip would have been can anything good come out of Nazareth.

I love Philip’s retort or response, “Come and See.” Just like follow me, it was simple. It should be our response when we talk about our faith, our church, or our community of believers. Come and see what God is doing here. Of course you have to believe that God is at work here. You have to believe that God is at work all around us and you have to think what God is doing in you own life has meaning, has substance.

So the natural next question for me is, well what is God doing in your life right now? Do you see God at work? Do you talk to God daily in order to stay connected to the possibility of seeing God at work? If not, why not?

I talk to many people who aren’t connected with God. They don’t believe in the God of possibilities. What did we just hear from the angel Gabriel? He was telling a young teenager who had just gotten pregnant and was not a happy camper. She was afraid, but Gabriel said it will be ok because nothing is impossible with God. You must believe that…..

I know a pastor friend who tells a story about a time he served in a church in Seattle. It wasn’t a mega church, but people would come and it was a lively place where the love of Christ was evident. One lady who had a young son heard about the church and decided to start going so her son would have an opportunity to learn about Christ. Her husband wasn’t a believer so he rarely if ever attended.

As her son was getting older & it was time for him to start confirmation the pastor wanted to come out and talk to both the husband and wife about the responsibility associated with confirmation. The pastor made an appointment to come out to the house.

When he arrived the wife wasn’t quite ready so the husband answered the door. The pastor sat down with the husband and they exchanged small talk until the pastor started to inquire why the husband didn’t attend church.

Well, I’m not the churchy kind of person, there are so many hypocrites there, I’m not very comfortable at church. The pastor didn’t press him, he simple told him to come and see. They had there discussion about confirmation and the pastor left. He didn’t think too much about the conversation.

After the talk the husband started to come to church once in a while. He started to see how the wife and son were engaged in the church and he started to occasionally volunteer for some basic things like work days and helping with youth events. Gradually the husband got more and more involved.

Well the pastor moved on after a few years, and about 20 years later he gets a call one day from this woman who told him he should come back for the churches anniversary celebration that they were going to have at this earlier parish. He said, ok I will.

When he came for the visit he saw the wife and her son seated in one of the pews near the front. They were very engaged during the service and the pastor noticed, but her husband was missing. The pastor thought a lot of different things, but he decided later to inquire about her husband.

The wife said, yes Bill, her husband, was no longer with them, he passed away about a year ago. Bill had started to come more regularly, he got more involved, he started to observe how people treated one another, how love was openly shared. Eventually he was even the church council president. Bill had told his wife before his death that the pastor’s simple invitation to come and see is what prompted him to start attending church, it changed his whole life. Our God can change your whole life if you allow that seed of faith to take root and grow.

One thing I discovered in later years about my dad is that after he stopped farming he used to sell seed corn to local farmers. He got lots of awards for being a good salesman, top this, top that, but what I didn’t find out until he was near his death was that he really was an evangelist masquerading as seed corn salesman. He would tell me stories about talking to this farmer or that one or how he would pray with them sometimes as he shared his faith with them.

You don’t need to be a Billy Graham, or a great public speaker, or even a pastor, you just need to be a person with a simple message – come and see. As heirs of the kingdom we have something special to share with others; we need to sow the seeds of the kingdom.

We can talk about advertising, about programs, about budgets, about great choral music, but churches grow when one person tells another person to come and see.

God has given us a gift of grace, a gift that is often hard to understand, and sometimes hard to accept, but it’s real. We are all sinners and yet God sent Jesus into this world on our behalf. Paul told the Romans that even while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. If you can’t get excited about that you must be in a pretty dark cave, a remote place, unfortunately, some of us are. The funny thing is that doesn’t stop God from calling each of us by name.

Jesus came into this world and said “Follow me.” Philip got excited about it and told Nathanael to come and see. Some two billion people later have accepted that simple message. Preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words – St Francis of Assisi would say. I hope you can see God at work in your life, in your church, and as a result will tell a friend this coming week to come and see. – Amen.