This is the season of Epiphany, in the calendar of
the church. It’s part of the greater Christmas season, which goes on until
Candlemas on Feb 2, so if you’ve still got your decorations up you shouldn’t
feel in any hurry to pack them away! Epiphany means “shining forth,” or
“revelation” . It starts with the story of the Magi, for whom a shining star in
the heavens leads them to the revelation of a child born to be king, but this
season then continues with all sorts of other stories in which people have a
revelation, seeing Christ, themselves, the world around them in a new light.
Their epiphanies are the moments when the lightbulb goes on in their heads, the
penny drops.
In today’s readings we have two stories about
people who took a bit of getting through to, who just couldn’t seem to hear or
see things 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.
This pandemic has been one wake up call after
another, a time which seems to have caught many people napping again and again
and again, failing to take seriously enough the warning signs and the risks,
despite the fact that emergency planners have been warning of the danger of
pandemics for decades. Why didn’t we want to heed the possibility that
something like this might happen?
This reluctance to see and hear what is right in
front of us isn’t limited to pandemics, of course. We will all have experienced
it in other ways too. 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?
On a more positive note, many people take years and
years to realise that they are being called to a particular career, vocation or
ministry.
In hindsight it was obvious, but what was it that
clouded our vision and stopped our ears beforehand?
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 if today 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 we are avoiding is probably the very best place to start.
Amen
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