TEXT: John 1:43-51
Risking a Recommendation
When I first moved to
And it was
good. My subsequent experience didn’t
always agree with yours, but mostly it did.
Has there been a day go by that I didn’t consult the Weather Beacon? And your recommendation counted for a
lot. Some places I would never have
stopped in had you not steered me in that direction. Some activities I never would have tried had
you not encouraged the endeavor. I might
have stumbled across some of them on my own, but because of your help, I could
reduce my stumbling. You enabled me to
walk right in.
I don’t know
why that seems harder with church. We
have little difficulty recommending an Italian Food Restaurant, but are loathe
to recommend a church – and more importantly, its faith. Is it because our stomachs are somehow less
sensitive than our souls? Whatever the
explanation, the reticence is there. I
have a friend who hasn’t lately been going to church. He has a history of church involvement, but
not in recent months. “I’m waiting to be
invited,” he told me the other day. “I
need to be invited.” So what is keeping
those who know him with affection from doing so?
Certainly one
dimension of that hesitation is our feeling that religion is “personal,”
sensitive, and to conversationally stray into that territory is tantamount to
relational trespassing. We can recommend
a restaurant or a movie we’ve enjoyed because, well, it really doesn’t
matter. But a person’s belief system –
his values or her moral practice – is a decidedly different arena. To talk of matters of the spirit – faith and
understanding and the soil out of which attitudes and actions grow – feels to
be both intrusive of another, and more revealing of ourselves than perhaps we
might wish to be. What, after all, do we believe,
and what difference is that belief making in the way we live our
lives? What is important to me,
and why,
and isn’t there some risk in recommending it?
Risk, and also work as I sift through my own moral, intellectual and
spiritual integrity. Who am I, after all,
to be recommending anything so significant?
Am I, myself, any recommendation?
It seems to me
that such “second-guessing,” though, is to suggest that we aren’t on a common
search. Such an apprehension is one of
the more toxic by-products of our post-modern, individualistic culture: the silly premise that we have nothing,
whatsoever, in common; that each of us lives in our own separate, sequestered
world, constructing our own unique universes that bear no resemblance to any
others. But have you ever met anybody
who was really that completely unique?
Snowflakes, we are told, are every
one utterly original in shape and design, and who am I to question it? I will point out, however, that behind every
one of those precious and singular configurations is … water. H20. And we are all, finally, people. Hurts and hopes; aches and aspirations; joys
and jealousies. Unique, so far as it
goes, but as theologian Sally McFague observes it, finding our diversity within
our larger and overarching unity.
Reading this
Bible story, it appears to me that Philip is reengaging with Nathanael a
conversation long since underway; about a hope and a search long since
shared. They had talked together about
the faith they shared and the consummation for which they waited. They knew, together, for what they were
watching. It would have been stinginess
for Philip not to have passed on word of his discovery. It would have been to hoard the treasure; to
eat his fill while leaving the hungry to starve.
And Philip
doesn’t lecture. He neither pushes nor
cajoles; neither pressures nor debates.
He simply points, invites, and steps aside for Nathanael to come to his
own conclusion. It is, perhaps, a little
thing – this pointing invitation – but not so small had Nathanael never found
the messiah on his own.
What kind of
conversations are we having with those for whom we care? What kind of lives are we sharing? It’s fine to rehash the plays of the game
from the night before, or to commiserate about the weather. It is natural to swap vacation plans or
lament our respective aches and pains, but if our sharing never reaches below
the surface to matters of meaning and purpose, dimension and direction; if we
never offer our hopes and dreams and values and insights to the grist of
everyday interaction, then we do our own blank or rough edges the disservice of
never knowing the luster such agitation could buff and polish out, and our
loved ones the poverty of never touching the depth and substance of who we,
respectively, are. We simply must have
the kind of conversations that matter – that finger around in the moist and
loamy soil of our souls; not with random passersby with whom we’ve developed no
connection, but with those stars in our particular sky who have come to dot our
darkness with sparkle and light, and for whom we do the same.
We have, as
you might well know, a library here in the church building. You may, at least, have guessed it even if
you didn’t know where to find it. The
library, itself, is in one certain spot – some might fairly suggest that it is
in an out-of-the-way spot. But the
problem created by the library’s fixed place in the building is bridged by the
dedicated workers who care for it. They
literally bring the library to us – on carts, laden with books, rolled to where
we are. The carts don’t hold the
entirety of the shelves. Hardly so. But they bring to us a taste – a
representative sample – from which we can draw and perhaps develop an appetite
for the fuller expression on the second floor.
Some have imagined and advocated moving the library to a more centralized,
convenient location, and I’ve got no real argument with that. But no matter where we locate it, it
will always be in one place, and we will sometimes be in
another. The carts, you see, will still
need their well-oiled wheels to bring the books to us.
Which is the
same that could be said about the church.
As any realtor will tell you, there is something to be said for
“location, location, location.” But
finally the building can only be in one place.
Good neighborhood or bad, trafficked corner or hidden road, any church
building can only have a single fixed address.
But the church, itself – like the library on second floor – has carts to
bring the contents of our discipleship to wherever people may be. Carts that carry a representative sample of
the whole, extending the reach of the shelves to wherever. And the carts of the church are us.
Philip, according to the story, found Nathanael and said to him, “We have
found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of
Joseph from
Who will come to read the faith
because, as a book cart of the church, you have done the same?