Sermon preached at Evensong on the Third Sunday of Lent 2025

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step—so runs the Chinese proverb. The journey of faith too must begin somewhere, a first step to be taken. The proverb suggests that we don’t have to try to get wherever we are going in a single leap. Step by step is fine. Every journey begins with a very humble, not so spectacular, first move; a stepping-out in faith, which may be following little more than a hunch, taking a bit of a punt, with only the haziest of ideas where this might lead.

Of course, first steps can be moments of great excitement and celebration. The first steps of an infant, the first steps into married life, the first steps into a new career. There is anxiety too—the infant may topple, the couple will face any number of challenges (for better, for worse), and you never quite know what a group of new colleagues will be like—but generally the motivation to step-out overcomes any fear. We are creatures who like to progress; to move forward. We are restless. Feet are itchy, by nature.

The second lesson today, from the first chapter of John’s gospel is full of the excitement of stepping-out; stepping into something new. John the Baptist declares, for the second time, Behold the Lamb of God, and two of his disciples immediately set off to follow Jesus.

I feel a bit sorry for John the Baptist, being abandoned in favour of the hot new rabbi from Nazareth. But John knew what he was doing. His job was point people to the Messiah—to help them take the first step in that direction. He must increase and I must decrease—John would later reflect. It takes quite some generosity of spirit to ‘let people go’ in that way; to let those we have become fond of step away from us in their journey of faith or whatever; to accept that while we may have been important to them for a season, now they need to step into different relationships and places. It is hard not to feel rejected, left behind. It is just one of the many and great challenges faced by parents.

I wonder if John felt that twist of sadness as Andrew and the other disciple beetled off to be with Jesus; to spend the rest of the day in conversation that would be life-changing. Where are you staying Rabbi? Come and see.

That conversation left Andrew convinced that they had found the Messiah; so much so that he went to call his brother Simon Peter. John (the evangelist) doesn’t give us any details of what that ‘come and see’ conversation was about. It is intriguing to imagine exactly what made Andrew realise that this was the person he and his brother should follow, but we get a sense of the excitement, the promise, the glimpse of something glorious—something that just had to be shared—that made them take that first step of discipleship.

And it doesn’t stop there. The very next day Philip is summoned to follow, and we are given no back-story, other than that he was from the same city as Andrew and Simon Peter. Perhaps there had been a conversation the previous night—You’ll never guess who we met! You should meet him for yourself. I challenge you not to follow him!

I suspect we have all met charismatic individuals who you just want to be with; whose attention and conversation is completely entrancing. Such people can be rather dangerous and manipulative—you have to be sure they aren’t in it for themselves in some way. Jesus proves himself to us in his submission to suffering; to betrayal; to giving himself up for the sake of others, but I wonder how Andrew and Simon Peter and Philip could see that at this early stage? How did they know that this man wasn’t going to simply use them? Or did they just take a punt—naïve or courageous, or a bit of both?

I remember, as a student, taking my first steps in the faith, and finding a lot of the prevailing Christian evangelism incredibly controlling and manipulative. I’m grateful for those (my parents mostly), who gave me a good instinct for those with a strong agenda. I’m grateful too to the Christians I found, or who found me, who weren’t simply trying to make me like them—who made room for me, and all my mostly-heretical opinions and naïve questions; who modelled a trust that God, Christ, was in all this, and would be guiding me to himself; and who weren’t anxious to get me on the straight and narrow as quickly as possible. We need more of that in the Church, I think.

Back to Philip, whose first step, like Andrew, was to go and tell someone else; Nathanael (who will become known as St Bartholomew). This initiates the most wonderful, witty exchange. Philip tells Nathanael that Jesus of Nazareth is the one foretold by Moses and the prophets; the one all Israel has been waiting for. Nathanael, who was from Cana, a village not far from Nazareth (in which a certain wedding will take place in John’s next chapter), Nathanael muses whether anything good can come out of Nazareth.

The little Cotswold town of Dursley, where I was brought up, tended to look with similar disdain upon those from the neighbouring God-forsaken town of Wootton-under-Edge. Neighbourhood rivalry is timeless. In Venice it could be with the people just across the next bridge. Can anything good come from Cannaregio?

Philip, wonderfully, echoes Christ’s earlier invitation to Andrew and the other disciple: Come and see.

This, surely, is the core of Christian evangelism; an invitation to come and see. Not a process of emotional manipulation; not an insistence on a particular kind of experience; not a bullying manipulation into intellectual conformity, but a spacious and generous welcome into the space God has created for us in Christ—the space which is the Church; a community of those who have come to see, and keep coming back to see, because with Christ there is always more; more to discover, more steps to take.

Jesus sees Nathanael approaching, and, as if he has overheard the previous exchange, greets him with what we might imagine was a knowing smile. ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael has not disguised his rather arch disdain for anyone from Nazareth, and Jesus, with a similar degree of ‘arch’, calls him out on it. Nathanael, presumably a bit wrong-footed, as all of us have been when we have said something disparaging about someone who we didn’t realise was in earshot (gulp!), effectively says to Jesus ‘Sorry, have we met?’ I saw you; Jesus said.

Before we take our first step, we are seen; we are noticed. The writer of the 139th psalm is overwhelmed with the thought—you have searched me out and known me; you discern my thoughts from afar; before I was knit together in my mother’s womb you beheld me. This awakening to the idea of being seen, being noticed, awakened to the prevenient attention of God, is an extraordinary discovery in a culture that often pretend there is no God at all, and it prompts a step towards the one who sees us; who bids us ‘come and see.’

Nathanael is overwhelmed with the knowledge that he has been seen—‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel’. We might think this is the end of the journey—he has arrived; recognising Jesus for who he is. But Jesus hints at more to come—more to ‘come and see’. You will see greater things than this—he says—you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

This points back to Jacob’s vision, from our first reading this evening. Jacob, stepping rapidly and urgently away from the brother whom he has deceived and angered; sent away from his own people; Jacobs discovers, is awakened to the notion that God is in this unlikely, uncertain place. God sees him—God’s angels ascend and descend that ladder in order to take a good look at him on God’s behalf. Even for this man, Jacob, in whom there is much deceit, there is a ladder into heaven.

And, Nathanael now stands before the Son of Man; the ladder on whom he will see angels ascend and descend; by which Nathanael will be invited to climb into the life of heaven, the Kingdom of God.

We too stand before him this Lent; and may we, like Andrew and Simon Peter invite others too, to take the next step on the ladder, on the journey of faith; to come and see what the angels see.