We are in the middle of Epiphany season, "Epiphany" being Biblish for revelation, most especially the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But the way the lectionary committee chooses the texts, this so-called season of revealing looks a lot more like a call to us-to discipleship.

Which is maybe the point. To many scholars, confession (or witness) is "the heart" of discipleship. Confession is telling what you've seen or experienced. So maybe discipleship is the point of revelation. Or at least its implication. That understanding seems to be the operating system for the gospel-writer John-that the experience of Jesus as the revelation of God has to be expanded in ever-widening circles. "Come and see" echoes in every call and every response to incredulity. John's following account of Jesus' ministry is what people see. Not everyone who goes can see, but that's getting ahead of our story. Today, we find that nothing can be proved, but it's not really "revelation" until it can be witnessed to.

Look at how Nathanael gets to Jesus. Jesus finds Philip and invites him to follow. The first thing this new follower of Jesus does is to go get his buddy Nathanael. Philip tells him he thinks Jesus is the answer to a whole lot of questions, but Nathanael is skeptical. Philip doesn't argue with his friend. He just says, "Come and see." A simple confession as to what he has seen and heard. And then an invitation to come see for himself. Just an invitation. No iron-clad proof, no brow-beating the skeptic, no coercion. Just, "Come and see." When Nathanael "sees" for himself, he takes Philip's confession much further. He blurts the theological and royal titles of the Messiah, the longed-for king of Israel. What he blurts is more true than he could have imagined.

Lest you get freaked out, thinking the pastor is about to make you uncomfortable, the invitation to "come and see" isn't just evangelism, nor is it necessarily knocking on doors. Although neither is a bad thing. What Philip does is evangelism, and how he carries it out is at the core of discipleship. But both his medium and his message are simply an "I" message. As in, "I experienced this." "I" messages are always valid, because they are your experience, and no one can dispute that.

But it's not just evangelism here, the invitation to "come and see" is also at the heart of our own discipleship. Which is why I think it's so appropriate to use these two stories today as we prepare to renew our baptismal vows together in worship, and as we adjourn to our annual congregational meeting. These are stories about call, about Jesus' invitation to us. His "Come and see" to us begins with our baptisms and continues as our journey to the revelation of God.

Baptism is deceptively simple. Everything of importance that we do as Christians is done in the context of our baptismal promises. When we publicly confirm our faith. When we eat together. When we join particular churches. When we nominate, elect, and ordain officers in the congregation. When we learn and work. When we make marriage vows. All of this is in the context of our baptismal promise to try to be like Jesus. When we, who are the Body of Christ in the here-and-now, when we try to be like Jesus, are epiphanies (revealings) of him who is himself the revelation of God.

We will be renewing our baptismal vows this morning during the sacramental time. If you have not yet been baptized, this morning's experience will not be the same thing as receiving your own baptism. If you choose to be baptized later in this church, you will be making those promises individually in front of this congregation. Today's experience might be a time for you to glimpse what we all have to acknowledge. That when we respond to Jesus' invitation to "come and see," we don't come on our own. When parents present their children for baptism, they make promises on the child's behalf, promising with God's help and this congregation's support, to raise the child in the faith. This is an acknowledgment of what even adults have to admit-we don't believe alone. We can't. We make our baptismal promises in the context of a faith community, and when the going gets tough, we help each other believe.

Scripture says there is one faith and one baptism. If you have already been baptized, you don't need to be re-baptized in order to join this church or in order to prove how much you love Jesus. But it is also true that there are different understandings of faith and belief at different points in our lives. We can all stand to reconfirm our baptismal promises at different stages in our lives-when we reach adolescence, when we leave home for the first time, when we marry and have children, when we decide we like being single, when the nest empties, when we find ourselves at midlife with a different view of the world than when we started, at the end of our lives as we anticipate the fulfillment of our baptismal vows to join the Church triumphant in our death.

We are renewing our baptismal vows together today because it's time. Because a lot has happened to us individually and together in the last year. We are preparing to celebrate the joys and challenges of last year's ministry together, preparing for a new year of ministry together. It has been a year of growing in our faith and understanding of God in our lives, in the here-and-now. Hopefully, our personal senses of call have been growing and developing. The congregation as a whole is honing its sense of call. We are renewing our baptismal vows together today, because it's time. Come and see.