SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

Saturday, January 13, 2024 (5pm)

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

I Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20) 

Psalm 135:1-5; 12-17 

John 1:43-51

 

This season after the Epiphany focuses our attention on the manifestations of God’s light in the world, culminating in the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Light Incarnate. And today’s readings emphasize that these epiphanies often take the form of God’s call  addressed to specific individuals.

 

We may notice some striking parallels between the stories of the calling of the boy Samuel in the Old Testament, and the calling of Nathanael in the Gospel. For one thing, both recipients initially misunderstand what they’re hearing.

 

When Samuel is lying down to sleep in the Temple, the voice of the Lord calls to him, “Samuel, Samuel.” He initially thinks it’s the priest Eli, to whom he goes and says, “Here I am, for you called me.” But Eli answers, “No, I didn’t; go back to bed.” After three times, Eli realizes what’s happening, and instructs Samuel, “If he calls you again, just answer this: ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

In a parallel way, at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, Philip finds Nathanael and tells him, “We have found him about whom Moses and the prophets wrote—Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” But neither understanding nor believing what Philip is telling him, Nathanael responds dismissively: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip wisely doesn’t try to argue the point but instead simply issues the invitation, “Come and see”—much as Eli had simply instructed Samuel to listen to what the Lord had to say.

 

So, just as Eli helped prepare Samuel to meet the Lord, so Philip helps prepare Nathanael to meet the Lord. And in both cases the encounter is life‑changing. Samuel enters upon his vocation as a prophet; Nathanael enters upon his vocation as a disciple. Some Church traditions identify Nathanael as St. Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Apostles. And all because Nathanael was willing to take up the invitation to “Come and see,” just as Samuel was willing to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” 

 

Taken together, these readings invite us to adopt a posture of openness and receptivity to whatever God wants to say to us now. Sometimes we need the assistance of a trusted advisor, guide, or mentor—as Eli was for Samuel, as Philip was for Nathanael. But most of all, we need to take the time to slow down, put aside our preoccupations and worries, and then say and mean the words, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

 

This posture is more important than ever amidst the current political divisions in our nation. Confronted with people saying outrageous things, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the emotions of the moment in ways that can be harmful to our souls’ health, never mind the feelings and sensibilities of those around us. I’m not suggesting for one moment that we should overlook or condone public wrongdoing. But when I find myself getting upset or worked up about something I’ve seen on television or read online, I’ve found it helpful—at least when I have the presence of mind to remember to do this—to sit back, take a deep breath, and say to Jesus, “Lord, please help me to see all this from your point of view. Please help me understand what your love requires of me in this moment.” 

 

Then, having prayed such a prayer, take the time to be quiet and listen to whatever he might say in response. In this way, we gradually learn to respond in a Christian way to what’s going on around us, rather than getting swept along in the prevailing ideological currents of either the Right or the Left.

 

In 1939, the spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill told the story of a pastor in the Confessing Church in Germany facing arrest, trial, and imprisonment for his outspoken resistance to Hitler and the Nazi regime. (I don’t know for sure, but I believe she was referring to Martin Niemoller, who’d served as a U-Boat captain in the First World War.) In any case, this pastor remarked: “While on the ocean’s surface it’s stormy and dangerous, still, three fathoms down it’s quite calm.” He was of course using this submarine metaphor to describe that place of inner stillness and silence where he encountered God and God’s peace—not as a form of spiritual escapism, but precisely to be able to resurface with renewed strength and conviction to continue the struggle.

 

If we take the time to practice this type of inner listening in moments of outward stress and crisis, then, who knows, we may find ourselves called to some new form of creative discipleship as agents of God’s love, reconciliation, and healing in a divided and suffering world. We may not know in advance what form that call will take, but the good news is that God knows!

 

Nathanael discovered on approaching Jesus that Jesus already knew him. “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” “Where did you come to know me?” “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Whatever this mysterious exchange actually means—and generations of biblical scholars have spilled gallons of ink trying to figure it out—Nathanael realizes that Jesus knows him as only God can. And so, finally brought to the moment of surrender, he confesses, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel!”

 

A basic tenet of Christian teaching is that God is closer to us than we are even to ourselves, so he knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. As the Psalm that we’ve prayed together puts it: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting places, and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether.” I can’t help but imagine these verses running through Nathanael’s head when Jesus says to him, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

 

Secure, then, in the assurance that God already knows us, with all our strengths, weaknesses, achievements, failures, opportunities, and challenges before we ever try to know him—and that he’s already called us, long before it even even occurs to us to call out to him—we gain the courage to say, with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” And then we stand ready, by God’s grace and strength, to do whatever he may ask of us next.