Josephine Robertson
Epiphany 2B –
January 15 2012
1
Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51
Preached at St
George's, Austin TX
Revelation
rarely comes from expected or welcome directions. Too often we miss
the chance for new life, for revelation because we only hear what we
expect to hear; or rather, we don’t hear what we don’t expect.
“The
word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not
widespread.”
Sound
familiar? When the canon of scripture was closed many people believed
God was done talking to us. Revelation was complete, God had had the
last word. And what a relief. No more troublesome messages out of the
blue, no more surprises, all neatly recorded on paper where we can
study and discern at our leisure.
Of
course in the last 1500 years God has made it pretty clear that far
from being done with revelation, God’s just getting started. And
yet the human truth remains the same. We can be incredibly deaf and
blind. We can fail to see the evidence of God in the world around us,
we can fail to hear the voices that speak God’s message to the
world.
Fads
tend to flare across the internet like lightening, one that flared up
recently is called “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls.” If you
have’t happened across it, it’s a blog where black women (many of
them young) document the often ludicrous things white women say to
them on a regular basis. And reading them, you have to wonder just
what
these women were thinking. Like a young white journalist, who after a
day of making friend’s with a black colleague at a conference
confided that a year before she’d been sure the few black
journalists she know had tails.
The comments tend to go downhill from there.
But
what is interesting is the furor this blog has ignited. The furious
comments from white women insisting the things they said couldn’t
possibly be offensive, or that they
would never say such an unenlightened thing. While it might be hard
to talk about the great macro issues of racism today, talking about
the everyday personal acts of misunderstanding and ignorance (what
author Tami Harris calls “microaggressions”) is far more
difficult and can still ignite the sort of ire and denial that Martin
Luther King faced in the 1960s.
We
can be incredibly deaf when the message is not something we want to
hear. When it makes us uncomfortable, touches a sore spot, reveals
something we dislike in ourselves, or points out uncomfortable
truths.
Jesus
today is beginning to gather his followers. He is calling out to the
people around him, and those who hear, like Philip, follow him. I
doubt Philip just up and followed Jesus out of the blue. Perhaps he
had been part of the crowds being baptized by John, perhaps he knew
Peter and Andrew and they had shared their wonderings about this
anointed one, this teacher.
And
Jesus has seen something in Philip. He has seen a seed planted in
fertile ground. So he singles Philip out when he discerns it is time
to move on. The seed of understanding that has been growing in Philip
is enough now for him to do something a little risky. It is enough
for him to venture to reach out to a friend, to say “I think I’ve
found something amazing. I think I’ve found the messiah, come and
see.”
Poor
Samuel might have continued to run back and forth to Eli, he might
have never received his commission from God, had Eli not been wise
enough to help him discern God’s voice. We can be deaf to God,
especially when God’s call threatens to turn our lives about, when
that call leads to change and upheaval, or for Nathanael, when the
call comes from an unexpected place.
Nazareth
wasn’t exactly a hub of intellectualism. It was a backwater peasant
town, a community of laborers for the larger towns and villages
nearby. It was poor, dirty, backward. It has been compared to the
hills of Arkansas and the Appalachians. Full of hard working people
to be sure, but uneducated, and certainly not likely to become the
next President of the United States. Can any good come out of Possum
Trot? Can any good come out of Nazareth? “Come and see” Philip
says. People from Nazareth were used to being not
seen. Like many in our society today they were used to being
invisible, they were used to being passed by as if the other person
had become suddenly blind.
Whether
it be a person with different colored skin, a strange accent, a
person who is homeless, poor, uneducated, mentally ill or
handicapped, or simply of different behavior, culture, dress or
belief how unconsciously do we become deaf and blind. How
uncomfortable difference can make us. Tomorrow the United States will
celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, the church will celebrate
him on the date of his Martyrdom April 4th.
What was it that Dr. King did that so upset the powers that be of his
day? What was it that incited so much hatred that he was eventually
martyred? I think it was his inability to allow deafness to remain
untreated. It was his insistence on offering the healing power of God
to all people, release to the captive souls of his black brothers and
sisters; and healing of deafness and blindness to his white brothers
and sisters.
When
God calls, the world changes. And that change can be painful.
Generations of African America, hispanic, LGBT, women, and
differently abled know how hard that change can be to bring about.
Those who cry out for the poor and the oppressed, know.
A
fellow preacher shared a story with me that I would like to share
with you. She tells the story of a homeless man who spent his days
watching business people come and go from a shiny office tower
downtown. Every day he watched them march by on the street, intent on
their business. Every day he watched them leave again at the end of
the day on their phones, planning dinner with their wives and
husbands and friends.
He
had watched them so long he felt like he knew them, though they had
never noticed or seen him. And finally one day he got bold, because
he had a burning question he just had to ask. And so as a man who
always dressed in the most expensive suits, with polished shoes and
perfectly cut hair strode toward the door our friend John leapt up
and stepped in front of him. The executive stumbled to a stop,
shocked. John blurted out: “Um, I’ve been wondering, I have to
know. Can you see us? From your office way up there? Can you see us
down here?”
Philip
said to Nathanael “come and see.” Open your eyes to something
new. Open your eyes to a different world. We can be incredibly deaf
and blind. Yet our God never is. Despite the images we so often have
of God seated on a distant throne, gazing down at the world, Jesus’
interaction with Nathanael shows us that while our eyes may be
closed, and our ears plugged God sees and hears clearly. God
sees even Nathanael, under that fig tree. God hears, the moment
Samuel opens his mouth. God has been waiting for a word.
Indeed,
God is shockingly close to us. Closer than our own skin, closer their
our closest friends and family. God rests in our hearts seeing us,
and hearing us as even we cannot. Jesus, from poor disparaged
Nazareth sees to the heart of Nathanael, he reveals in one sentence
something about this young Israelite, something so personal Nathanael
demands to know how Jesus could know him. We could write this off as
a flash magic trick. Yet Nathanael knows, if Jesus has seen him under
that fig tree, so too must he have heard him. Nathanael has been seen
and heard. He has been searched out. And in revealing Nathanael to
himself, Jesus reveals God to Nathanael. The God who dwells closer to
us than our own skin.
The
God who speaks through unexpected mouths, who rattles our
expectations. The God who refuses to conform to our standards, who
dances around our rules. The God who dares to walk out of a backwater
town, with rough carpenters hands, and demand we take him seriously.
The God who still speaks through the voices of those like Martin
Luther King Jr, like the black women who reveal our society’s
blindness, like the homeless man who suddenly stands in our way and
demands “can you see me?”
“The
word of the Lord was rare in those days.” Perhaps, or perhaps as
humans are wont to do, we had simply become deaf and blind to the
ways God was speaking. Perhaps, like Samuel we could not hear that
God was calling us. May we, today, be listening for God. May we be
Eli to one another. May we be Philip, running to call his friend to
open his eyes to the promise of God among us. May we be Nathanael,
whose eyes were opened by the nearness.
May
we see the invisible, may we hear the silenced. May we see our own
hearts, as truly as God sees them, and as God has not abandoned us,
may we not turn away from what is revealed. May the stops we have put
in our own ears be removed, that we might hear God’s word from
surprising lips. That God’s call to us may ring through loud and
clear where we least expected, or wanted it. May we truly see God in
one another. And when we speak, and may God’s words be on our lips.
