“Come and See” - January 15, 2017

John 1:29-42

            At the end of the luncheon following Dorothy Hopp’s funeral, somebody came over and told me that her father had built the altar.  That, in and of itself, was interesting but she went on to mention that he worked with Wharton Esherick and had executed his designs to build a lot of the furniture and some of the actual fabric of the Wharton Esherick House.

            “The Who House?  What are you talking about?”

            Wharton Esherick was a sort of combination wood sculptor and architect who lived and worked in Paoli around the middle of the twentieth century.  (He died in 1970.)  He made furniture that is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  His masterpiece, though, was his house and studio, exactly 4.3 miles from here, just up the hill a little bit from the octagonal schoolhouse. 

Let me tell you.  It’s one of the oddest places.  The front is like a short tower or the bottom of a silo, covered with stucco.  When the stucco was first put on, though, they mixed pigments into it so that there are big splotches of color, almost like a tie-dyed house.  The rooms are laid out so that there are no right angles or square corners, which meant building furniture to suit the place, and the woodwork that called for is incredible.

            Telling you is good, but it might be better if I show you some of it.  Here are a few pictures.

            Pretty nifty, huh?  There’s a lot more, though, that I cannot convey this way. Three dimensions are better than two, and when you get a chance you might want to visit.  (You have to make reservations and the place is closed in January and February, though.)  When you are actually there, you can see details that don’t fit into a picture and get a feel for the way the building sits on the hill and where the sunlight comes into the windows. 

            The same dynamic is true of Jesus.

            It was one thing for John the Baptist’s followers to hear him tell about his own experience.

“‘This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”’” [John 1:30-33]

It was a good thing for John to tell about that, and for them to hear it, but it was better when he was able one day to point them to Jesus and say,

“‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’” [John 1:36]

Best of all, however, was when they went directly to Jesus and even before they caught up with him, found him asking what they were looking for and then inviting them to come along with him.  Before the day was over, they were going and getting their friends and saying what Jesus had said to them,

“Come and see.”  [John 1:39]

            That’s how it goes to this day.  I can repeat the stories of Jesus, and you can read them for yourself in the gospels.  That’s good. 

“I love to tell the story of unseen things above:

Of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love.”

It’s even better when you begin asking yourself, “What are these stories about?  What’s all this Lamb of God business?  If sin is real and serious, how could it ever be forgiven or overlooked?”  At that point, anyone who has been there can and should show you what the love of God in Jesus can really do to renew a human being and remake a person from the inside out. 

            The time comes, however, when there’s an opportunity to see for yourself, To have a serious talk with Jesus and hear him speak directly to your heart with that kind of welcome, that “Come and see” that is still part of his message for the world, for each and every one of us, and then the invitation that goes with it: “Follow me!”