17th January 2021
1 Samuel 3.1-10; Revelation 5.1-10; John 1.43-51
+ May I speak in the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The extraordinary truth, the great manifestation of who God is, that our readings seem to lead us to today is that God knows us. The key might have been somewhat hidden to you in the words of the psalm we heard chanted as we came in: ‘O 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’. In the beautiful story of Samuel, it is not his mentor and guide, Eli, who calls him but the one whose true servant he is, the Lord, and he knows this little boy’s name, and all that awaits him. Our Gospel also gives of Jesus’ knowledge, Jesus whom we are learning to know as our God walking amongst us, having already seen, already known, the supposed stranger Nathanael Philip brings before him ‘I saw you…before Philip called you’.
Could this be a terrifying thought? God knows us. Total surveillance, and by the one whom our lives are in the hands of…
There is something awe-ful in it, something which inspires our reverence and widens our eyes. However I think even if we imagine Jesus knows the worst there is to know that should bring a sense of extraordinary relief. Because it tells us Jesus’ love, his estimation of our true value, takes into account every thing we might try to hide.
We are not loved despite our failings, but in and through our struggles and what God knows we must overcome in all our areas of weakness and falling short. But Christ tells Nathanael to be MORE amazed, that there is much more to come. He is not just a miracle-working prophet who performs this sleight of eye and knows things undisclosed. He is the discloser of much more than human secrets. He is the one in whom God’s purposes are revealed and made known. In our New Testament reading, from Revelation, see Jesus a vulnerable, sacrificial Lamb—but only this lamb can ‘open the scroll’ of God’s purposes, bringing into full sight and reality that is hidden and then revealed through Jesus’ mission on earth.
It is not just the veil between your consciousness and mine that Jesus has come to penetrate, as a mind-reader might, but the veil between heaven and earth that is going to be torn down the middle with the Crucifixion and Resurrection. When God penetrates even death that we might live truly and eternally in God. The image of the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, recalling Jacob’s ladder and its revelation to him of God’s presence and purposes on earth, is an image of heaven now in open communication and union with earth. And we live that reality in
the life of the Church. In the Word which is lit and moving with the life of the one who speaks it, in our prayers, enlivened and made real by the salvation opened before us, in the sacraments, true
flowing channels of his grace and life.
So this Second Sunday of Epiphany, may our own epiphany be this: God’s knowing of us, his word intimate and direct to each of us by name, his life extended not just generally but so, so intimately and lovingly to each of our heads and hearts, however unworthy we may feel, just as we reach each pair of our hands out for his body, or receive his blessing. You know I cannot speak the words of distribution to each of you, to make communion safe. But in my head I say and mean heartfully every time ‘The Body of Christ, given for _you_’ For you. Perhaps this is a Sunday to go away and read, prayerfully, that Psalm 139 again, and to take into lockdown with us that however closed our lives may feel to those around us, they are wide open to, delighted in, and adored by God. May we answer live in that light, answer his call, and say, with Samuel ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’.