In today’s readings we have
two stories about people who took a bit of getting through to, who were blind
or deaf to something which later seemed obvious to them. Nathanael can’t
believe that Jesus might be the Messiah; Samuel takes all night to realise that
God is speaking to him and the old priest Eli has been deaf to the voice of God
for many years. I expect we can all sympathise with them. I’m sure we’ve all been
confronted with a truth about someone or something which, looking back, we feel
we should have known all along. Worse still, perhaps we realise that we did
know it, but couldn’t acknowledge it.
Why didn’t the banking
community see the credit crunch coming? Why didn’t we spot the warning signs of
a relationship that was getting into difficulties? Why didn’t we take notice of
the niggling symptoms that later turned out to be a serious illness?
Why did it take us so long to
realise that we were called to a particular career or ministry?
It is all clear to us now,
but what was it that clouded our vision and stopped our ears before?
In Nathanael’s case it seems
to be prejudice which gets in the way of him seeing the truth about Jesus. A
Messiah from Nazareth! You’ve got to be joking” he says to his friends. We’re
not sure why Nazareth seemed so dodgy, but presumably people at the time would
have understood. It might have been because the northern territory of Galilee
was more mixed ethnically and religiously than the southern lands around Jerusalem.
It was also where the majority of the occupying Roman soldiers were stationed,
forcing the people into greater collaboration with them. Or perhaps Nazareth
just had a bad reputation – a backwater, hicksville place people wanted to
avoid. Whatever it was though, Nathanael seems convinced that Nazarenes are not
Messiah material, and he can’t get past that.
It was only when he meets Jesus
that he realises his mistake. This man knows him, somehow, even better than
Nathanael knows himself, because he sees Nathanael’s potential as a disciple,
something which was way off Nathanael’s radar.
The story of Eli and Samuel
is a more complex tale, and a sadder one. Eli was the old priest at the shrine
of Shiloh where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. He had two adult sons who
should have followed him as priests in this important position. But they have
gone off the rails and are abusing their positions and stealing the offerings.
Eli knows this at some level, but he’s never quite found the courage or energy
to confront them. In the end, of course, they are responsible for themselves, but
at least Eli could have tried to influence them, and it seems he hasn’t.
The message God gives to
Samuel is grim – it is the end of the road for Eli’s household. His sons will
eventually be killed in battle, and Eli himself will die of sorrow. No wonder
Samuel seems reluctant to pass this message on. But Eli finds the courage at
least and at last, to urge Samuel to tell the truth, no matter what it is, and
by doing that he teaches Samuel a vital lesson which he will need to draw on
often in the future – that the truth, however painful, can’t be avoided
forever. Samuel goes on to be one of Israel’s most important prophets,
instrumental in the lives of King Saul and King David . He is often called by
God to challenge them – and those who challenge kings need all the courage they
can muster. I like to hope that Eli took some comfort in seeing that, for all
his failures, he has been able to play some little part in God’s work.
And that is what it is about
– God’s work. Because it is most often where the pain is and where the mess is
that God is. We see this in Jesus, born in a dung-strewn stable, growing up in that
dodgy town of Nazareth, dying on a cross, alone and reviled, looking to all the
world as if he had failed. Who would have thought that God could be in these
squalid places, in these squalid things? Not the Magi who headed first for
Herod’s palace. Not Nathanael with his blinkered views. Not the horrified
disciples who ran away from the crucifixion. But that is where God was, at work
in the world through Christ. And that is where he still is. In the places, the
people, the situations we would rather not see at all – the things within
ourselves we’d rather bury or ignore. It is there that God waits patiently with
his healing and his love because it’s there that we need him most. Turn away
from that place and we turn away from God too.
I wonder what would happen
tonight if, in the silence, we were to say, as Samuel does, “Speak, Lord, for
your servant is listening?” I don’t know, and that’s why it frightens me, as
perhaps it does you, but if we are serious in our search for God’s presence in
our lives and in our world then the place where we least want to be has to be
the place for us to start.
Amen
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