The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

St. Francis Church – January 15, 2012

Rev’d Dr. Lin Lilley

1 Samuel 3:1-20; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

 

Tomorrow some of you have the day off in remembrance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. I ask you not only to remember Dr. King, but also remember his wife, Coretta Scott King. Mrs. King always seemed to walk in the shadow of her famous husband, even though she was a power in her own right. She came to mind as I was putting together today’s sermon because she experienced a call that led her to meet and marry Dr. King.

 

As a child, Coretta Scott walked five miles day to attend a one-room school in a little Alabama town. She wasn’t allowed to ride the all-white school bus or attend the all-white school. But Coretta Scott was a gifted musician. She won a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio, and, after that, she had her choice of the five best music schools in the country to do a graduate degree. Finally her decision came down to Juilliard in New York City and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She chose the New England Conservatory and completed graduate work in voice and violin.

 

Years later, Mrs. King described her decision to go to the New England school: “I feel that I was sent to Boston, directed there, because it was in Boston that I met and married Martin Luther King. Neither Martin nor I ever believed in destiny in the sense of predestination that no one can ever change, but we believed that God guided our lives, so that one day we would meet, and so that we might be instruments of His holy will” [Harry Vanderpool, “History Would Be Different if No One Played Second Fiddle in the Band,” Where Do Old Sermons Go? (Albuquerque: Creative Designs, 1993), 89].

 

Today might be labeled “calling” Sunday. Our Old Testament Lectionary reading recounts how God called Samuel, at age 12, to be a prophet in the days when “[t]he word of the Lord was rare” and “visions were not widespread” [1 Samuel 3:1]. In the Gospel reading we learn about Jesus’ call of his disciples, as described in John’s Gospel. The theme of calling will continue next week when the Gospel reading focuses on Mark’s description of Jesus calling a band of disciples.

 

Imagine what it might have been like for Samuel to hear God’s call. I expect that his life had been a little scary before this, and now a call in the middle of the night! And the call wasn’t from his guardian Eli! Samuel was the firstborn child of Hannah, a woman who was barren until she went to the temple at Shiloh and prayed for a child. If only God would give her a child, she would give the child to God. God did, and Hannah did, and Samuel went to the temple as a small child to serve Eli, the priest of the temple. Who knows what Samuel’s daily tasks included? He was at Eli’s beck and call. Samuel might have kept the lamp of God filled with oil, and maybe he helped divide out the portion of the sacrifice that Eli, as the temple priest, was allowed to eat, or he might have even scrubbed the pots where this part of the sacrificial meat was boiled.

 

At night, Samuel slept in the temple, so he could run to respond to any request from Eli. He may have lain down somewhere near the altar where the animals were brought to be sacrificed. Even the smell of the incense couldn’t have masked the odor of accumulated blood. As if that weren’t scary enough, the ark of God – the very throne of Yahweh that Israel carried into battle at the front of its armies, with its contents of sacred relics like a container of manna and the tablets of the Ten Commandments – was behind the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. [I am indebted to Episcopal priest, and preacher extraordinaire, Barbara Brown Taylor for suggesting that the preacher paint a word picture of how scary Samuel may have found his surroundings in the temple. See “Voices in the Night,” in Mixed Blessings (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1998), 18-20.]

 

And then comes the voice in the night. Each time Samuel jumps up and says, “Here I am” as he runs to Eli. The third time this happened, Eli begins to think that maybe it is God calling. So Eli advises Samuel: “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’” [vv. 8-9].

 

Once Samuel was ready to listen, the Lord indeed spoke to him. Samuel was then left the terrible task of admitting to Eli what the Lord had spoken.

 

Now let’s turn to the call in the Gospel of John. In today’s reading Jesus is calling two of his disciples. Jesus “found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’” Philip was obviously ready to listen. There was no hesitation at all. Philip fell into disciple-mode right on the spot and immediately turned to his friend Nathaniel and proclaimed, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth” [vv. 43-45].

 

The skeptical Nathaniel retorted, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” [v.46] Philip responded, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him, Jesus said, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” You have to admit, Nathaniel seems to have said exactly what he was thinking about a messiah coming from a place like Nazareth.

 

Nathaniel was flabbergasted at Jesus’ knowledge of him and asked Jesus, “Where did you get to know me?” [vv.47-48] Jesus responded, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you” [v.48]. We’re never told what Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree. It was good shaded area, and maybe he was sitting there meditating or praying for the coming of the promised messiah. Maybe that’s why Nathaniel so readily went from skeptic to acknowledging the divinity of Jesus.

 

But the key point is this: Nathaniel, like young Samuel, listened and responded.

 

In John, Chapter 1, a few verses before the story of Nathaniel’s call, we learn about two other disciples who respond to Jesus. Unlike Philip and Nathaniel, whom Jesus takes the initiative to call out to, Andrew and the unnamed would-be disciple in verses 35-42 take the initiative themselves to follow Jesus. These two men are disciples of John the Baptist. They are standing with John when Jesus walks by. John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” [vv. 35-36], and the two men who had been with John immediately turn and scurry to catch up with Jesus. Jesus says to them, “What are you seeking?” The men call Jesus “rabbi” – which means teacher – and ask Jesus where he is staying. Jesus answers, “Come and you will see” [vv. 38-39]. Come and see. We’ve heard those words before! It’s at this point that Jesus offers a relationship with them, and they follow him and spend the day with him.

 

Bible commentator, Rodney Whitacre suggests that, in the Gospel of John, Jesus as rabbi is an important theme [John: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 70-71]. Whitacre reminds us that in Jesus’ time rabbis didn’t call disciples. Disciples, that is, students, just came and sort of attached themselves to the teacher [Whitacre, 72]. So, Andrew and the unnamed second disciple were, like Nathaniel, willing to come and see.

 

Now it’s our turn to come and see. God didn’t stop calling people in the age of Christ, and God certainly doesn’t call only a special group or type of people. Jesus’ disciples probably weren’t the best and the brightest. They weren’t wealthy, and they didn’t seem to have any significant social standing. They were common men. But they were willing to try something new – love.

 

Coretta Scott didn’t come from Boston. She grew up on a farm in rural Alabama, and yet she made a difference. She sang in the best concert halls in the country, at Freedom Concerts, telling the story of the Civil Rights movement and raising large sums of money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization her husband had founded.

 

Each of us is called to come and see, to begin a journey of faith with Jesus, to make a difference in others’ lives. Few of us are called to be ordained. The royal priesthood bestowed in baptism is all it takes to be a disciple.

 

Jean Vanier, a layperson in France who founded two communities with and for people with disabilities, shows us how much can be accomplished by a disciple without a theology degree. Vanier felt called to write a book of reflections on the Gospel of John and thus shares what he has “heard behind the words and the flow of the Gospel of John” [back cover]. Here’s some of what he has to say about discipleship and following Jesus [Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (NY: Paulist Press, 2004), 47]:

This gospel begins with two disciples following Jesus

and it ends with Jesus saying to Peter, “Follow me.”

[The disciples] are called to learn from him

to discover little by little who he is,

his vision of love,

and who they are.

They do not always know where he is leading them

but they trust him

and walk with him.

We, too, are called to follow Jesus

day by day,

not always knowing where he will lead us

but trusting in him, seeking to become like him.