A Lectionary Reflection for the people of Thankful Memorial Episcopal Church for worship from home, January 17, 2021, Year B, 2 Epiphany

1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sometimes I think that the real reason I’m a priest is because I was always a little jealous of my sister.  My older sister and I are separated in age by a mere 22 months and (since I skipped kindergarten) I was only one grade behind her in school.  In all the schools we ever attended, most of my teachers had my sister in their classes just the year before.  So throughout my childhood, the grown-ups in my world knew me first as “Zeyna’s little sister.”

The one place that wasn’t true?  St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church.  The folks of the parish I was baptized into never referred to me as “Zeyna’s little sister” – at least not in my hearing.  I was always given my own name and identity by those adults who fostered my growth and shared their faith with me.  And so, unsurprisingly, I engaged in the life of that parish more and more as I got older.  I’m sure that that early experience of being known for who I was by the folks who claimed to reveal God’s love to me most clearly was formative and contributed, to some extent at least, to my eventual sense of an ordained vocation.

The boy Samuel was dedicated by his mother from his conception to service in the Lord’s temple, but I can’t imagine that he had any particular sense of his relationship with that Lord.  Until one night when, suddenly, he did.  In an age when “the word of the Lord was rare… [and] visions were not widespread,” Samuel is so surprised to hear God’s voice calling out to him that he doesn’t even know it for what it is. 

In John’s Gospel, Nathanael, too, is surprised by God.  Nathanael is sitting under a fig tree when his friend Philip comes to him with the news that he has met the Messiah.  Nathanael is skeptical that “anything good [can] come out of Nazareth.”  But Jesus breaks through that skepticism by telling Nathanael the truth about himself: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

In a pre-baptismal lesson, the 4^th century Church father, St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote about the reasons why his catechumens may have first started engaging in the life of the Church.  Perhaps a man came in order to please a woman in his life.  Or a woman came to please a man… “Or a friend [may come to please] a friend. I take whatever is on the hook,” St. Cyril wrote.  “I pull you in, you who came with an evil intention but will be saved by your hope of the good. Doubtless you did not know, did you, where you were going, and did not recognize the net in which you have been caught? You have been caught in the church’s net! Jesus has you on his hook, not to cause your death but to give you life after putting you to death. . . Begin today to live!”[i]

It doesn’t matter where you were or what you were doing when you were found by God, St. Cyril says.  God will use any excuse to catch your heart and entwine you into intimate relationship.  Samuel was just doing what his mother told him to.  Nathanael was enjoying a fig in the shade.  But there is enough openness in both of them, just enough curiosity for them to respond when God finds them where they are and calls them into their vocation and discipleship. 

“Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up,” says Psalm 139.  In verses that we don’t read this Sunday, the psalmist continues, “Where can I go then from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.”

What the psalmist names, what Samuel and Nathanael both discover, is God’s relentless pursuit of us, God’s beloved children, so that we might be “caught” in Jesus’ net (as St. Cyril put it) and caught up in the abundant life we have in Christ.  God pursues us through our skepticism or naivete, through our doubt or despair, searching us and seeking us out, finding us when we didn’t even know we were lost. 

In these dark days, when almost every moment seems to be one of crisis or fear, when the forces of hate and discord threaten to overtake us, what a comfort it is to know that God’s pursuit of us is relentless, that we will be found, that as dark as it may sometimes seem, Christ will yet enlighten us.

And, even as we rest in that comfort, we are simultaneously called into the challenge of being God’s beloved. 

When Samuel finally understands that it is the Lord who calls his name, and listens, the message he receives is a shocking one.  God says that Samuel’s mentor, the priest Eli, is about to be stripped of his power and brought low for his and his family’s sins against God.  This is not a happy first-prophecy for Samuel to share with Eli.  But it is nonetheless the truth. 

And Nathanael, once he is found and identified by Jesus as one “in whom there is no deceit” responds, fittingly, by proclaiming the truth, too: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!  You are the King of Israel!”  And then following that king all the way to the cross.

You see, the consequence of being found by God, of experiencing epiphany, is a vocation of truth-telling, of sharing the knowledge with which we have been enlightened, of proclaiming the Word of God to others, of shedding abroad that same light to the world. 

And that’s not always easy.  In fact, it rarely is.  Especially in this day and age when the truth seems somehow to have become a matter of opinion, standing firm in the real and ultimate truth we have in Christ Jesus can feel lonely, isolating, difficult, perhaps even downright radical.  And this is the truth we have in Christ: that each one of us is God’s beloved child, “marvelously made,” that to denigrate, destroy or deny the dignity of ourselves or another is to desecrate “a temple of the Holy Spirit,” that we have been created by and called into the divine work of love.  And sticking to this truth, holding fast to this Way of Christ can be tricky.  It can put us in uncomfortable positions – as it did Samuel – and focus our attention on profound mysteries – as Nathanael discovered.  Indeed, standing firm in Christ’s truth may often lead us straight to the cross – and to the resurrection beyond. 

So here we are: Closing in on marking one year of the pandemic.  Witnessing one remarkable and critical and tragic moment of history in our country after another.  And all the while carrying on with the daily duties and responsibilities of our individual lives.  And right there, in the midst of it all, God finds us, catches us up and calls us onward in faith to “shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped and obeyed to the ends of the earth.”  Amen. 

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