Sermon for Sunday 18th January 2009

Sometimes even true love needs a helping hand.

Occasionally two people are so meant for each other, that the only people it’s not obvious to are the couple themselves. When this happens friends or family will maybe resort to helping true love along, or to put it another way, meddle in their business and conspire to get them together in a way that each of the couple will think that they found the other.

Who found who in our gospel reading?

In verse 43 John tells us that Jesus decided to go to Galilee and he found Philip. Then Philip immediately finds Nathanael and tells him “we have found him about whom Moses and also the prophets wrote”. In reality they are both right, God always finds us, but we also have to find God.

This reading is from the first chapter in John’s gospel and already, if we look a little earlier in the chapter, Andrew one of Jesus’ first two disciples had found his brother Simon Peter and told him that “we have found the Messiah”. So you see, in this chapter there’s a clear pattern developing. The early disciples finding Jesus (or Jesus finding them) and then finding someone else to bring to him.

It’s a pattern that we repeat in Churches up and down the country every week. People who come to faith by an Alpha, Emmaus or another group are encouraged to bring a friend and to tell colleagues. That’s great, it’s right that we should do that. We wouldn’t be a good friend if we kept it to ourselves. It’s like finding the best book or film and keeping it hidden away so no one else can enjoy it.

And it’s great to be invited to join something as well, to be bought into the inner circle, rather than remaining on the outskirts of a church or community.

However, if we take this gospel passage as just a good example of evangelizing we miss something very important. Philip found Nathanael for Jesus, but Jesus already knew Nathanael, he had seen him under the fig tree, Jews often sat under the fig tree to read scripture or hear the law, so even though Nathanael’s first words about Jesus weren’t exactly encouraging (“can anything good come out of Nazareth”) Jesus knew him. Nathanael’s reaction wasn’t surprising, at that time Jews were expecting the Messiah to return imminently, but a Messiah from Nazareth just wasn’t what he had expected. Nathanael was from Cana in Galilee, a neighboring town. Galileans were of mixed stock, they had been forcibly Judaisized about one hundred and fifty years earlier and they were looked down on by most Jews of pure decent, but it appeared that even fellow Galileans disliked those from Nazareth.

Philip would have known this, but he also knew that his friend should come and see: and he was obviously pretty certain that he would keep an open mind as he took him to Jesus.

He did and immediately he recognised Jesus as the Son of God, the King of Israel; and Jesus promises “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man”. This was a reference from scripture about Jacob and his dream, of the ladder reaching to heaven with the angels ascending and descending, only now Jesus was replacing the ladder with himself, he was the link between heaven and earth. The name Jacob means deceit and Jacob later became Israel, so when Jesus says of Nathanael He’s “a good Israelite in whom there is no deceit” he’s saying he sees the true person.

In our earlier reading from the book of Samuel it was Eli who recognised that the voice Samuel heard was from the Lord. Samuel mistakenly thought that it was Eli calling him, but he was open to try out what Eli had told him to say “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening”. Samuel didn’t expect the Lord to be calling him, as we have already been told that “in those days visions were not widespread”, so he naturally thought the call he heard had human origins. But Eli, who hadn’t exactly demonstrated good judgment when listening to God’s message about his own family, recognised the call to Samuel, that he hadn’t understood himself.

God has a calling for everyone, we may not all be called to be a prophet and lead, in the way that Samuel was, but we do have a calling. Sometimes though we can’t hear God’s message for ourselves, even Christians don’t make it easy for God to call them. Maybe, like Nathanael the message doesn’t come in the way we had expected it, or like Samuel we hear a call but can’t discern the identity of the caller. Or, we are just too busy doing what were doing to make time to listen. Then sometimes his message does come via another source, maybe something we feel drawn to, or someone else pointing us in a particular direction.

I know people who have heard God talking directly to them; however I have never experienced it in this way. God often has to move me with small nudges from other people. And, like Nathanael, when given these nudges, if it’s not what I expected my first reaction is also to Poo Poo the idea. The first time a minister at my Church suggested exploring Ordination to me, I thought she had taken leave of her senses, but I had felt a calling to do something and once the words were spoken, each time I put the idea out of my head as ridiculous it resurfaced

I am not suggesting that we should all do everything that other people tell us that we should. Indeed if we took on every job that comes along, we would leave ourselves too frazzled to hear any message, although, the people responsible for the tea and coffee rota would appreciate it. I am also not suggesting we are all called to the same things. You could have been blessed with a good voice and sing in the choir (not like me); or you may be called to pray for others. But like Nathanael we can be open to a call that comes in a way we aren’t expecting.

God knows us, he knows every hair on our head, he knows everything that we think and do. He loves us and wants us all to fulfill our calling; it’s in doing this we bring ourselves to God.

Finally, how can we help ourselves to hear God’s message? If you look closely at the two readings I mention, they give us a clue. Nathanael was under the fig tree, the place where they studied God’s word and law and Jacob named the place that he lay down “Bethel” meaning “God’s house” he built an alter there. Samuel was lying in the actual shrine, the inner place in the tabernacle where the “lamp of God” would burn all night.

All of them are entirely appropriate places to hear God and while I am not for a moment trying to limit God’s ability to communicate with us in any place at anytime, it is defiantly easier for us to hear God’s word when we put ourselves in a holy place where we can read scripture, worship and be still. It doesn’t have to be a church, but we should find a place where we are open to hear our message, in whatever form it comes.

AMEN

©Jackie Richardson 2009