When I heard this Gospel, I laughed to myself because that last detail struck me as so random. "It was about four o'clock in the afternoon." So what? But then I wondered, was this a brilliant (albeit common) literary device, employed to draw the hearer into the action of the story? Or is it one of those fragments of authentic oral history, passed down from one of those two disciples who followed Jesus, passed down from disciple to disciple until it found itself embedded in the written Gospel's text, like a flake of gold nestled in the alluvial sand of a river?

"One of the two who...followed him was Andrew." Andrew would be my bet for the disciple who would have told in later years, again and again, how "it was about four o'clock in the afternoon" when he first encountered the Lamb of God and followed him. After all, we can hear the excitement in his voice when he runs to his brother Peter and says "We have found the Messiah!"

I can imagine Andrew asking the little community he had gathered around him in Scythia years after the resurrection, "Did I ever tell you the first time I saw Jesus?" Rolling their eyes, the assembly would respond like a family who's heard it a million times, "It was about four o'clock in the afternoon." And Andrew would smile. Andrew was, after all, not one to hold back his exuberance--in bringing his brother Peter along, he could be called the first Christian missionary. He was also the one who brought the boy with the loaves and fishes to Jesus at the feeding of the five thousand. Perhaps he said to that boy "Come on, let's take that lunch to Jesus--he'll know what to do. You know, it was about this time of day that I first met Jesus. In fact, it was about four o'clock in the afternoon..."

I bet we can all think back and come up with moments when our lives changed, sometimes for the worst, sometimes for the better. I have often heard people ask each other, "Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon? When Nixon resigned? When the Challenger space shuttle exploded? When the World Trade Center was attacked?" These events somehow changed the way we saw ourselves and each other, our place in society or even in the universe itself. But there's another type of story, Andrew's kind of story, the type that begins something like "It was about four o'clock in the afternoon." This past week, I asked several people what their stories might be, and I was given permission to use a couple of these stories as examples of the different ways God calls us to "Come and see." These are true stories.

Listen to what one woman says: "It was about 3:15 in the afternoon...We'd just heard a talk about reconciliation and had the chance to write a confession on [a slip of] paper. I'd poured my heart out about...a relationship that was not healthy and should not have lasted as long as I let it. We folded the papers and put them into a bowl where they were ignited. Being flash paper, they were instantly gone and left no ashes. In that moment, I fully felt God's forgiveness and knew that no matter what had happened, the relationship and the guy in it didn't have any power over me unless I let them. God was in control of my life, and I didn't need to give that power to anyone else. At that moment, I finally knew that I'd come through the whole thing a little scarred and gun-shy, but a better, stronger person."

Here's a bit of spiritual autobiography from another young woman:
It was about three o'clock in the afternoon on Earth Day 1990 when I told my friends I was leaving to meet my mom to go to church. Someone turned to me and said, "WHY do you go to church? To make your mum happy?" Racking my brain briefly for something that would sound cool, I instead simply stated that I go to church because I want to go to church. With that simple declaration, I was opened to an entirely new relationship with God. It was my first "public" proclamation as a young adult of my desire and intent to commune with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I went to church, don't really remember the details of the service, but I do remember being full of emotions and sensations I could not and cannot name. I cried some. I was joyful. I was more fearful. I was open. Despite being a lifelong Christian and Episcopalian, it was a beginning for me...

And here's a final story that is particularly appropriate to tell today. It was about six o'clock in the evening, December 1st, 1955. A forty-two year old seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama sitting in the second row of the "colored" section of a public bus was told by the driver to give up her seat to a white man who had boarded after the "whites only" section at the front of the bus had been filled. When she refused, the driver called the police and Rosa Parks was taken to jail. The next evening, at about six o'clock, a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence by urging nonviolent resistance through a boycott of the bus system. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Asked by a reporter forty-five years later why she was the one who had to take action, Rosa Parks replied "I don't know, but I have always let the Lord use me in whatever way he sees fit."

We never know when the Lord will have need of us. We never know what time the Lamb of God will pass by, beckoning us to "come and see." But we can become more aware that the time is nigh, and indeed, happens to us time and again. You already know your own stories. You will doubtless have your own stories to tell. Perhaps right now, or during coffee hour, or later on today you'll even remember a story of your life you had forgotten, and suddenly, you will see God in it, and you will think "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" And then maybe you'll turn to whomever you're with, or perhaps even write down in your journal that night, and begin your story with something like "It was about four o'clock in the afternoon." Amen.