Discipleship from Birmingham City Jail

A sermon on John 1:29-42, in conversation with Dr. MLK's Letter from Birmingham City Jail.

[an audio recording of this sermon is available here. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.]

I would be willing to bet that if asked to name the signature phrase of John’s gospel, at least 9 out of 10 seminary graduates would say “come and see.”

It is a phrase repeated a number of times, in different voices, throughout the narrative, but that’s not why biblical studies departments teach us about the importance of “come and see.” It’s not about having a frequency answer for Bible trivia.

This phrase matters because of what it actively invites.

It invites curiosity. It invites inquiry. Ultimately, it invites relationship.

When the answer to a question, particularly to a simple, factual question like “where are you staying?” is “come and see,” that answer shifts the dynamic.

Instead of being focused on gaining information, it becomes focused on building understanding, on drawing close enough to experience the answer, rather than just acquiring a fact.

And that shift is essential to understanding the call to discipleship, because from the very beginning the task of discipleship is a task of discernment.

Jesus doesn’t want sycophants who will blindly follow him just because John tells them he is God’s chosen one; he wants them to see for themselves.

Jesus wants genuine relationship with his disciples, not unexamined obedience.

They need to be ready to think, and ask questions, and figure stuff out.

They even need to make mistakes sometimes, and get called out for it, and try to do better next time.

They need to embrace the work of discernment, because he is, as John proclaims, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

Jesus is there to literally save the world, and that will look like: disrupting the status quo, and creating profound change and angering people in power, and ultimately getting killed for it.

Jesus needs followers who will come to understand that assignment, and that means people ready to learn, and change, and do hard things.

This is important for understanding John’s gospel AND it’s important for understanding the life of faith.

Because, far too often, powerful voices in the church, especially in times of crisis, have taught the opposite. They have taught that “good Christians” stay in line, and do what they are told, and live peaceably with others.

But that version of peace is really passivity. It is the opposite of asking questions and leaning into a transformative relationship. It is the opposite of discipleship.

And we need to recognize this contrast, because the Christian church in 2026 is being faced with a critical choice in how we will respond to the discipleship challenge of our time.

Thankfully the church has also always had prophetic voices that call us to come and see the realities in our world and the way that Jesus’s message speaks to them; voices that reject passivity and exhort discernment.

There are many such voices now, including some from within our denomination, who are speaking to the crises of this moment, but on this weekend when we remember his birthday, I am drawn to the testimony and discipleship of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and especially to his Letter from Birmingham City Jail[1] which helped to shape the prayer of confession that we prayed at the start of today’s worship.

Although King’s letter is not an intentional reflection on the calling of the disciples in John’s gospel, nor is it addressed to the particular authoritarian crisis we are facing, it is a call to “come and see” to its intended audience: the white moderates, especially those in the church, who criticized Dr. King’s way of responding to the violation of human right for people of color.

As such, his letter speaks to us, with the invitation to respond differently to the violation of human rights in our time.

It highlights the contrast between a come and see discipleship that calls followers of Jesus into the work of discernment, as compared to the orderly passivity of his critics.

If you have never read the whole letter I encourage you to do so – it is easy to find online and it’s worth the effort to work your way through his dense and provocative arguments.

But in conversation with today’s gospel story, I just want to pull out three elements of his challenge to the church that, I think, offer us actionable guidance about what it looks like to answer Jesus’ invitation to “come and see.”

The first lesson is to realize that the whole idea of “outsider agitators” is a tool of division that rejects the engaged and discerning work of discipleship.

When King was accused of not having a right to insert himself into the organizing in Birmingham, he responded that “injustice anywhere it a threat to justice everywhere,” explaining that,”We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”[2]

In essence, King’s detractors were criticizing him for joining someone else’s conflict.

But King rejects the idea of “someone else’s conflict,” because humanity is held in common, which means we cannot draw arbitrary lines that absolve us from involvement.

And that is precisely the action of “come and see.” You don’t “come” to see something that is already at your feet.

Coming, in the discipleship sense, involves leaving your comfort zone to see what Jesus is up to.

If we hear of something that pulls on the responsibilities of our faith (as injustice clearly does, if we listen to scripture), then we cannot decide from afar that it’s not our concern.

We need to come close. We need to see what is going on, and if we see the kind of sin that Jesus came to save us from, we need to join on the side working for justice.

The second lesson is the need to distinguish between “negative peace” and “positive peace.”

In one of the most poignant lines of the letter, King expresses his reluctant conclusion that the greatest threat to freedom is, “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”[3]

This distinction is the epitome of the task of discernment.

It pushes past easy categories that can cover over systemic sins and asks what “peace” boils down to.

The pacifying answer is the peace looks like calm.

The discerning answer is that peace is only real when it is paired with justice.

And King drills down on the need for discernment when he calls out his critics’ praise for the Birmingham police force’s protection of “order,” with a litany of illustrations[4] of just what they would see that same police for doing if they would actually come and see.

Discipleship that examines the evidence instead of accepting the propaganda requires the work of discernment; and that requires the willingness to come and see.

The third lesson is actually a heart-wrenching question.

Near the end of his letter, King asks, “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?”

It’s King’s candid admission of doubt, based on what he has seen.

Because he has seen the twisting of Christ’s call to discipleship into justification and protection of an institution of power that instead demands obedience.

But he has also seen what he calls the true ecclesia,[5] the believers who have walked away from conformity and safety in order to join the work of justice. He says of them, “Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times.”[6]

In his willingness to ask that question, and in his vulnerable response, I see Dr. King modelling for us the discipleship work of come and see.

In true discipleship there can be no avoidance of hard questions. And neither can there be retreat into cynicism.

True discipleship looks like recognizing the claim made about Jesus: that he is the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the world, with all the danger and disruption that entails.

And it looks like embracing the call to come and see whatever Jesus has to show us, even when that challenges our assumptions and pushes us out of our comfort zones and calls us to join in the work of justice.

None of the disciples who were called in today’s gospel story knew what was coming. They did not know how they would be challenged and changed.

But when they heard the invitation to come and see, they came, ready to see. Ready to discern. Ready to be part of Jesus’s world-saving work.

Jesus offers us the same invitation.

Thanks be to God.

[1] All quotations from the letter in this sermon are drawn from the publication included in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. James M. Washington. (San Franscisco: Harper Collins Pub. © 1986 Coretta Scott King.) pp. 289-302.

[2] p. 290.

[3] p. 295.

[4] p. 300.

[5] p. 300.

[6] Ibid.