Don’t you want to know what happened between four o’clock that day and the next morning? In this mystery, an entire evening and night are unaccounted for. We know many details about the first couple of days. Here’s what we know. On the first day, before we pick up the story in today’s Gospel, some priests and Levites from Jerusalem ask John the Baptist who he is. Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet?
We know that John clearly denies that he’s the Christ. He’s merely the one crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord. He’s not the Messiah. He’s not even worthy to untie the thong of his sandal. We know John was baptizing with water only, not with water and the Spirit.
We also know that on the second day, John sees Jesus and announces that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John says he didn’t really know Jesus but that he performed baptisms in order to reveal Jesus to Israel. It’s implied that Jesus was baptized by John, and John bears witness that Jesus is the Son of God, the one on whom the Spirit descended.
We know that on day three, John is standing with two of his disciples and once again identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God as he walks by. Something about this proclamation intrigues the disciples so much that they follow Jesus immediately. We know that as they follow Jesus, he turns to them and asks them what they seek. They ask him where he’s staying. Jesus invites them to come and see, and they go to the place where he’s staying. They stay. It was about four o’clock, the tenth hour. We also know that Andrew was one of the two disciples and that he brought his brother Simon to Jesus, who named him Peter.
That’s what we know in this story. After the disciples go to stay with Jesus, the next thing we hear is that, on the following day, Jesus decides to go to Galilee.
There’s a lot we do know in this story, but there’s something important that we don't know. I’m dying to know what happened in those lost hours after the disciples went to stay with Jesus but before they went to Galilee. Why is it that St. John the Evangelist gives us so many details but says absolutely nothing about what happened in that house?
It’s a frustrating omission because the movement in the story has been from the fringes of relationship with Jesus to an intimate sharing of time and space with him. We start in an outer circle, where John claims he didn’t really know Jesus, although he was the one preparing the way for him. We then move from John talking about Jesus to literally pointing to him as he walks by, proclaiming his identity. And then we reach the center of these rings of concentric circles, where the two disciples follow Jesus, speak with him, and choose to see where he is staying. It’s the tenth hour, about four o’clock. And suddenly, as John tells the story, it’s the next day. An entire evening and night have disappeared into thin air.
Could it be, though, that St. John the Evangelist omitted these details not because they are unimportant but precisely because they are so important, too important, perhaps, to express in words? Could that time in the house with Jesus have been so sacred, so precious that St. John was reticent to render them into fallible language? Were those moments in the place where Jesus was staying so personal that to confine them to human language would have been a kind of blasphemy?
The more I spend time with Scripture, the more I appreciate that every move, every choice of word and, yes, even every omission, is meant to tell us something. I suspect that what John has chosen not to relate is, in fact, the heart of this story. And what we don’t know is too fragile to be encoded in words. It’s also what was inspiring enough to create a long chain reaction of disciples calling others to follow Christ.
Imagine, if you can for a moment, what happened in that place where Jesus was staying. We are only meant to imagine it, after all. We’ll never know, and we’re not supposed to know. All we know is the effect that experience with Jesus had on future generations of disciples, and especially on us.
I imagine that Jesus reclined at table with his friends over a meal. It’s odd to think about this beautiful time together when Jesus and those first disciples hardly knew one another. Can you imagine staying for so many hours with an utter stranger? Can you imagine being so transformed by the encounter that you decided to change the rest of your life’s course as a result? Something happened in those moments. Were tears shed? Was sin confessed? Were great periods of silence held? Was there laughing? More crying? My own heart yearns to know what happened in that house. But we’ll never know. We’re not meant to know.
Whatever St. John himself knew about those moments, he could not write them down. To do so would have been to betray confidence. To do so would have been to distort a wondrous mystery that could never be articulated in words.
It’s like trying to describe the mystery of our presence at this Mass and at every Mass. How can we sum up the ways in which we are transformed at this feast? Every encounter with the living God in this place is different, precious, and sacred, and every encounter would only be made smaller if rendered in human language.
Our movement into worship is rather like the movement in today’s Gospel story. We journey from the fringes of relationship with Jesus into deep communion with him in Word and Sacrament. We move from mere chatter about Jesus and from our lives, work, and play into this sacred space. Every time we come here, we heed a call to come and see. We keep coming back because we have seen, and we have believed. When we have come to see, we have been changed forever, in a way that we can’t put into words.
At the Communion rail, so much inner transformation and miraculous healing has taken place, that we could never share its profundity. Sworn enemies have been reconciled. The hungry are fed lavishly by God. The lonely pariah finds a moment of pure welcome, if for a fleeting moment, in an otherwise grim week.
But those on the outside looking in are like us when we hear today’s Gospel story. In that story, we see the movement from the fringes to the center, from talk about Jesus to an abiding relationship with him. Those who aren’t here with us on Sundays and who never darken the doors of the church see us leave our homes and disappear for a few hours each Sunday. Those few hours are, in some sense, unexplained. They remain unaccounted for.
Do others wonder what we do when we come here? Do they wonder why we keep coming back? Have your friends ever tried to ask you to explain it? Have you ever tried to explain it? And maybe this is why we can be such reticent evangelists. Maybe it’s not so much a fear of sharing Jesus with others as it is an inability to articulate just why, week after week, we heed Jesus’s invitation to come and see.
There’s one final thing that today’s Gospel has to teach us. It teaches us that if the Church is to grow, she will grow from the inside out, not from the outside in. It’s on the inside, at the core, at the center of the rings of concentric circles, that we find an abiding relationship with Christ. That’s our destination when we accept Jesus’s call to come and follow him. And we stay a while with him, even as he abides with us eternally.
Our experience in this inner circle is the one that drives us back out into the world to invite others in, a constant going and coming. We cannot explain it. Our transformation here is one that touches each of us deeply, in ways that must remain a mystery and which we can never put into words. Our response to that mysterious encounter is to run back out into the world, not to explain it, but to issue an invitation.
Come and see. Come and see the One who will give you true life. Come and see the One who will offer you food that does not perish. Come and see the One who forgives our sins, heals our brokenness, and puts us back together again. Come and see the One who leads us into all truth. Come and see the One who must be experienced and who will change your life. Come and abide for a time with him who abides with us forever. Come and see, and you will never be the same again.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 15, 2023