Come and see!

This week our campus ministry participated in the classic first week of the semester event, Club Carnival, which is when every single club at the University of Mary Washington signs up, is assigned a booth, and sets up their tri-fold poster board and their pamphlets and their QR codes and their giveaways, they put out a sign-up sheet, and we all table together and say Please join our club!!!!!!!

Club Carnival can be kinda awkward because it's a game of first impressions. It's gotten easier over the years though as we've gotten more pictures on our poster board and built up our stock of brochures and stickers and settled into a sense of who we are. But it used to be really, really tough: right after covid, in the midst of a big transition time, and with just a couple students and not a very solid program calendar, people would come up to us and say: "well what are y'all about?" "what do you believe" "what kinda stuff do you do?" and we would have to say, "uhhh, well what are you looking for?" or "hahaha, uhh we don't know! we're gonna figure it out though, I hope, come and see."

This gospel passage this morning feels very club carnival to me, I don't imagine Jesus had a tri-fold poster board or glossy pamphlets or a calendar of upcoming events to share, but he did have a bit of a reputation that preceded him, and like college ministry tabling, this story is essentially telling of the first encounters between Jesus and The People, and it starts with this pair of questions. Jesus asking "What are you looking for?" and them replying, essentially "well what have you got to show us?". The whole exchange is very coy, mostly along the lines of "well we've heard John the Baptist say quite a lot about you" and they imply that they're looking for the teacher, the messiah, and he kindaaa doesn't really tell him what he has to teach, only "come and see." We don't feel clear really what Jesus has to offer yet, or what these people are looking for, just that they are looking for something.

But in the midst of a world that is as broken and confusing as it has ever been, I imagine we might recognize this feeling shared by the disciples. I think: whom among us isn't looking for something, though we might not even quite know what it is. Or I think maybe: whom among us isn't looking around for a teacher or a leader or an adult or a messiah to give us some clarity-- about what the heck is going on in the world; about what's going to happen, about what we should do, about if and how everything is going to turn out okay, about the nature of evil and how we resist it. I'm looking for somebody who can help me feel righted in a world that can feel so wrong. I'm looking for somebody who can offer moral clarity in a time of moral murk. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to be those voices, those leaders, but so many of whom seem to have a lot to gain-- power or profit-- at being the loudest voices, and it so often seems at odds with moral clarity.

But my hunch would be, that if you are here at church, you have already found some sense in church of rightness in the world, some sense of how to act in a world full of bad actors, some sense of belonging in a lonely world, an ounce of meaning in a nihilistic world! You might feel like you are still in the "well what are you looking for; I don't KNOW!" phase of things but you also have found something, or at the very least you knew where to look.

So imagine you were set up at a Club Carnival and somebody were to approach you and say, um, "what's going on over there at Trinity Church?" I wonder what you would say. I feel like there is this uhh, sorta temptation still to let the answer just be come and see or follow me, but we forget maybe that "come and see" was the first thing Jesus says in this Gospel, and over the next twenty chapters of this Gospel, Jesus explains who he is, what he believes, what he's there for, and what he's asking of us. "Come and see" was to people who had very little context for him, who has heard about him, but who were maybe still sussing out what it meant that this was or might be The Messiah, they didn't know how the story would play out or what would happen to him, they didn't know about the kind of church that would be birthed from his life and ministry. We have a lottt more context than Peter, Paul, John for what we're doing here. We can talk about his resurrection, his parables, the vision he had for the world and how it matched so much of what was raised in the Old Testament, about the work the church has done and is doing, what it feels like to be here, and what circumstances meant that you sought this place out and found your place within it.

I say all this not to say that "come and see" is an insufficient answer. It is sooo, so, so important to bring people here, because there are things about this place that are impossible to explain. And, we live in a time where it can feel a little bit like a invitation to church is spinning the big Wheel of Fortune wheel, if somebody says "come to church with me" you reallyyy do not know what you're gonna get and it can run the gamut from like, fancy vestments and stained glass and a high altar to like a drum set and a t shirt cannon and every possible kind of sermon or homily, the good the bad and the ugly. "Come and see" can be a scary invitation if it is the beginning and the end of the invitation.

And in the midst of all of this, there are people without a church, who are looking for a church, who need one badly, and who are afraid of the invitation to church for fear-- sometimes legitimate-- of what they might find when they show up. There are people who need faith, who need a community of friendship and mutual care, a place to help them navigate tragedies or people to share their joy with, and if that's what you've found in your faith or in your church, it needs to be told.

It took... years... to figure out who we are over at The House, to hammer out our particular sense of mission and vision, to figure out what programs work for us, and what kind of fellowship and events feel like us, and after starting with one student and a kind of empty house, a couple years later, we have like 30 students and 20 more who've signed up who haven't quite landed yet, so many they don't really fit in our living room which is a funny problem to have: and here is what they've learned to say about our ministry.

Some say that they were absolutely adamant that they were done with church and not going to join a campus ministry, and then they found The House and somehow, church felt doable again.

Others say that the prevailing message of the church of their childhoods was that there was something deeply and fundamentally wrong with them, and that this was the first ministry that they felt like had something else to say, or that didn't shame them for having questions.

Many of our students say that they friendships they've made at The House kept them afloat during college and that the safety that they have created for one another is something that they have not experienced in a church ever before.

I might add that for me, a little church ministry whose primary modes of being involve art, creativity, laughter, and questions, make it a fun place to be for me, and for them too I think.

So if any of that interests or appeals to you, Come and See! Hah!

And in the meantime, I wonder what your answer would be for this church, for Trinity? What does this place mean do you? What does this faith mean to you? Amen.

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Bonus: