Sermons
January 11, 2026 (1st Sunday after Epiphany)
“Come and see.”
John 1:35-51
Quite by accident, Dr. Lily Penleric made an incredible discovery.
Having been turned down for tenure at the college where she was an associate professor of music, specializing in the folk ballads of the British Isles, Lily went to spend some time with her sister Elna, who was a teacher at a settlement school in the hills of Appalachia.
At this time, the early 20th century, it was thought that these beautiful old English songs—like “Barbara Allen,” “The Two Sisters,” “Lord Randal,”[1]—had died out, no longer being passed from one person to another “knee-to-knee” as they had been for generations. They had been gathered into one volume a bit less than half a century[2] before Lily visited her sister at the Clover Settlement, but most of academia was certain nobody was singing them anymore, apart from some formal performances by trained singers.
As the movie The Songcatcher opens, Dr. Lily Penleric has just finished singing “Barbara Allen” for a class, and tried to get the students to think beyond the idea that these songs are simply “quaint” relics of a bygone era—but the truth is that even she thinks they are.[3]
Until her first night at the Clover Settlement.
At the school lives a local girl named Deladis Slocum[4] whom the school took in because she has no family. After supper Elna asks Deladis to sing one of her “love songs” for Lily. And as she begins to sing, Lily recognizes that the song she is singing is “Barbara Allen.” She says she learned it, and lots of others, from her granny, who had learned them from her granny—and both of them had lived and died right there on that same mountain.
These songs, which all the academics thought only existed in books, were still being sung, still being passed down “knee-to-knee,” practically next door to schools where they were being taught as quaint relics of the past!
Now this is probably one of those things that only musciologists like the late Alan Lomax or Lily Penleric—who is based on a real person—and amateur folk singers like myself can get that excited about. But I promise I will show you how this relates to our text for today, which is the account of how some of the disciples came to be followers of Jesus.
We are more familiar, I think, with the other three Gospel writers tell the story. John’s Gospel is another animal entirely. In the Synoptic Gospels, the disciples are by the sea doing their jobs, and Jesus comes and calls them, and they drop what they’re doing and follow him, leaving their nets, their boats, and their tax booths.[5] John just has folks get introduced to Jesus in one way or another.
It starts with the Baptist—John the Baptist, who is in all the Gospels a herald, or a harbinger, or whatever you want to call him—the one who announces Jesus’ coming. John sees Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” He doesn’t seem to have been making a prepared speech, but just sees Jesus and tells whoever happens to be nearby that he is the Lamb of God. And some of his disciples, as soon as he says that, leave him and go after Jesus.
One of them, Andrew, goes and finds his brother Simon, telling him, “We have found the Messiah!” Come check this out! So it’s by word of mouth, hand to hand, that the news of Jesus gets out. It’s by word of mouth, hand to hand, one person to another, that the disciples begin to gather around Jesus.
Jesus finds Philip and gets him to follow him. Then Philip goes and finds his friend Nathanael. Philip tells Nathaniel, “We’ve found the one the prophets told us about!” He’s Jesus of Nazareth.
And Nathanael scoffs. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip just says, “Come and see.” Check it out for yourself.
Very few people in this first chapter of John become Jesus’ disciples because Jesus himself seeks them out and calls them. Philip is the one exception. The rest of them are introduced to Jesus by someone else: John the Baptist, first; then Andrew introduces Peter; then Philip invites Nathanael to “come and see.” Then, a couple chapters later—we’ll get this story in a few weeks—comes the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well,[6] who goes back and invites her entire town to “come and see…He can’t be the Messiah, can he?”
And this is why the story of Dr. Lily Penleric from The Songcatcher suggested itself to me.
The movie takes place at a time when things are beginning to change for the Appalachian mountain people, and not always for the better. They have a deep distrust of “outlanders,” people who don’t come from the mountains. They don’t see their isolation as a problem; while it might keep them in extreme poverty, it also keeps the influence of the outside world from taking hold. And Lily runs into this right away when she starts trying to collect the people’s songs.
After Deladis, at the school, sings all the songs she knows, she tells Lily about another woman, midwife and herbalist Viney Butler, who knows even more songs. So Lily sets out with her phonograph machine to record Viney Butler. But after hauling that huge machine and all the other equipment[7] to the back o’beyond where Viney lives, Lily is disappointed when the woman claims not to know any songs. She barely even wants to speak to her, turns her back on her at one point.
Lily has no idea what is going on, but shortly thereafter another woman arrives, coming both to see Lily and to get some herbs from Viney, and she tells Viney she should sing for Lily. She says, “Viney, I think she’s a very nice person.”
And that’s what it takes—the recommendation of another mountain woman. After she sings all the songs she knows, Viney tells Lily about another woman who knows some songs,[8] and sends along her own introduction.
Lily Penleric, the outlander songcatcher, doesn’t get any songs from anyone without another mountain person introducing them, or at least passing along their approval. Without someone vouching for her, Lily had no luck getting the mountain people to sing for her. When someone was willing to make the introduction, things were different.
In our Gospel reading today, people come to be disciples of Jesus because others make the introduction. They say, “I think he’s a very nice person”—well, actually, they say quite a bit more than that: “We have found the Messiah!”[9] “Come and see the Messiah, the one the prophets told us about!”[10] “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?”[11]
But the point is that Andrew might never have become a disciple of Jesus without having been introduced by John the Baptist. Without Andrew’s introduction, Simon Peter might never have become a follower of Jesus. Without Philip’s introduction, Nathanael might never have become a disciple.
People tend to become Christians, folks who study that sort of thing have discovered, not because they have dramatic conversions, like Paul had on the Damascus Road.[12] Some do, but not many.
They don’t tend to become part of churches because they see an ad in the paper about a church event, and decide to go check it out. Some do, but not many.
No, most people who aren’t Christians and then become Christians do so because someone invited them—someone introduced them to Jesus Christ in one way or another.
One of the commentators on this passage actually makes the case that the story of the new disciples in our text is not finished until they tell others about him and get them to come and see and become disciples. I wonder if it could be the same for us.
Could it be that we’re not completed as disciples of Christ—our conversion isn’t finished—until we have introduced someone else to him? Could it be that the last step in becoming disciples ourselves is to tell someone else about Jesus, about what difference following him has made in our lives, and invite them to “come and see” for themselves.
Most of us here can remember who invited us to “come and see” Jesus. For some of us that person was a friend, or maybe a brother or sister. For others there has been a whole set of folks: parents, Sunday school teachers, pastors, youth leaders. But most of us are disciples of Jesus Christ because someone introduced us to him, invited us into his presence.
Now here’s the question: Can you think of anyone who would say you are the one who introduced them to Jesus?
If not, then there just might be someone you need to talk to this week.
[1] …in which a woman murders her lover by feeding him fried eels, which were evidently poisonous.
[2] Francis James Child’s collection was published in the 1880s, but he didn’t record songs from singers; instead, he gathered them from other written sources.
[3] Even in this age of professionally recorded music, these songs have not died out, courtesy of people like Simon & Garfunkel (“Scarborough Fair” is, like “Barbara Allen,” one of the “Child” ballads collected in the 18th and 19th centuries, but even then considered to be old), Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, and the late Pete Seeger and his relatives, Mike and Peggy Seeger and Peggy’s husband Ewan MacColl.
[4] This was Emmy Rossum’s first big-screen role, when she was 13 years old.
[5] Matthew 4:18-22; 9:9; Mark 1:16-20; 2:14; Luke 5:1-11, 27-28.
[6] John 4:1-42
[7] In this digital age I don’t think we can imagine how difficult a task that was. I can put recording equipment better than what Lily Penleric, John Lomax, or Cecil Sharp had in my pocket.
[8] This woman is played by the folk singer Iris DeMent, and at her home we are introduced to the villain of the story, coal company representative Earl Giddens, played by David Patrick Kelley, who is also a folk singer in his own right.
[9] John 1:41
[10] John 1:45
[11] John 4:29
[12] Acts 9:1-9