Readings:
1 Samuel 3: 1-10; Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 6: 12-20; John 1: 43-51
We have a fairly disparate set of readings this morning – God calling a small boy named Samuel, Paul writing to the church at Corinth about our bodies, among other things, Jesus meeting Nathaniel – and telling him he’s a fair dinkum kind of bloke, and the Psalmist who is an open book to God – everything about the psalmist, even the innermost thoughts are known to God. The psalmist is “fearfully and wonderfully made” – as indeed are all of us. What could possibly link all of these together?
I think one way of thinking about the readings begins to emerge when we think about the season we are in now – the Season of Epiphany. It’s theme of light to the nations is picked up in one or two of the hymns this morning. However, the overarching theme is one of revelation – how God chooses to reveal himself to us. God comes to us – we don’t have to approach God through intermediaries as if God were some remote overlord. The message of Christmas is that God comes to us. There are many faces to God’s revelation, and our readings this morning describe some of them. God’s presence and activity stretches from the cosmic – incorporating the heavens, the wings of the morning, the farthest limits of the sea, the depths of the earth – to the intimate and personal – whispers in the night to a small boy. God’s revelation, God’s grace courses through all of them.
The call of Samuel is a wonderful story. Samuel, asleep, hears a voice calling him. He , of course, thinks it’s his guardian Eli. Samuel is living in the temple as his mother has early in his life dedicated him to the Lord. Samuel goes to Eli a couple of times and says “Here I am, you called me.” You can perhaps imagine Eli beginning to get a bit cranky. He’s old, lying down in his room – and this little boy keeps coming in saying “You called me.” You know how it is when you’re just at that point of dropping off to sleep – and there’s a noise, like the phone ringing. It seems to take you ages to get back to sleep again. Maybe it’s like this for Eli, but he has one thing Samuel doesn’t have yet – and that’s wisdom – the wisdom of years. He perceives that Samuel is being Called by God and he tells Samuel what to say if it happens again; “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” – and it’s the beginning of the story of Samuel’s life calling or vocation as a prophet. The call of Samuel reminds us that children as well as adults can be God’s messengers to the world. God is moving through boys and girls listening to a children’s sermon or playing with the toys at the back of the church Samuel is both an unlikely and likely candidate for divine inspiration. He is a child and hardly expected in the culture of the time to hear the voice of God, and yet he does. Yet, from the beginning of his life, he was a child of promise – his mother dedicated him to God and her fidelity to her promise may have opened unexpected pathways of divine presence in his life. Yesterday, I ran into someone at the shopping centre – she and her husband and children been to some of our family services. Were we still having them, she asked. I said we were. She hopes to get back to them and I hope she does. Not only for them and the forming of their spiritual life as a family – but for us, too. Because her children can be God’s messengers to us. God can be revealed to us in the lives of her children. Children are not the future of the church – or of society – they are its present. God can come to us in the lives of children if we take the time to listen. The call of Samuel reminds us that divine inspiration requires a community to be fully understood. It takes time for Samuel to discover that this nocturnal voice – a dream, a whisper, an inner inclination – comes from God. After all, God’s voice comes through the many voices of our lives. It takes a process of discernment to discover which of the voices in our lives is most authentic to our vocation as God’s loving and beloved children. Samuel seeks the guidance of Eli, who doesn’t turn him away. We too should be available as a faith community not only to children, but to each other to help discern the voice of God in our lives.
Secondly, God comes to us through bodies – human bodies. That again, after all, is the story of the Incarnation – God coming in human form. It’s perhaps easy to get bogged down on some of the details of the reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul is writing here out of his own background as well – as a Pharisee for whom the Law – the Torah – was all important and he wants to tell the people of the Church at Corinth what is right and what is wrong – and there was at the time in Corinth a practice of temple prostitution which he of course condemns. But there is another aspect at a deeper level and the passage is really about the affirmation and care of our bodies. There is no mind-body dualism here; that is the body (or flesh) is bad and the spirit is good. When Paul speaks of the body as the temple of God, he is clear that the body is connected with the spirit – each shapes the other. The spirit is embodied and the body is inspired. Our bodies are temples or shrines if you like to God’s wisdom and grace. They are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made and deserve both affirmation and care. Glorifying God in your bodies implies that we are to treat our bodies as expressions of divinity – this then has implications for how we regard our own bodies and applies to our diet, lifestyle, sexuality – anything to do with our bodies.
It also applies to our care for the bodies of others. God can be revealed in human form, yet bodies are so often ruthlessly exploited – child abuse, pornography are only two examples We are called as church to honour all bodies. This involves feeding hungry bodies, restoring broken bodies, healing sick bodies, and affirming all bodies as beloved by God. There are no perfect bodies, despite what culture and the advertising industry may think we should aspire to. Rather, the church is called to be counter-cultural: to promote wellness, but also to see God’s wonder in every body. We are all awesomely made. We need to see and bring forth beauty where others see ugliness. In my first parish, I took home communion regularly to a young man who had Huntingdon’s chorea. It’s an awful thing. His body was misshapen and difficult to look at. Sometimes I would steel myself at the front door – yet I often came away somehow changed – in some way I’d been touched by God’s embodied in what many would see as ugliness.
The gospel story presents Jesus’ call to Philip and Nathaniel. While there are not many details, the point of the story I think is that God calls people in everyday life. We’re simply told that Jesus finds Phillip – we’re not told why, or exactly where, except that it’s somewhere in Galilee. Phillip tells Nathaniel “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote..” but really, Jesus has found Phillip. Phillip’s experience of God coming to him, being revealed to him inspires him to invite Nathaniel. There is no compulsion here, just invitation. “Come and see.” And in a discussion full of Jewish symbolism, Nathaniel realizes that God, in Christ has come to him too. As he responds, the heavens open up, new horizons emerge and his life is transformed. We have here a model for our own discipleship – to be invitational, not to compel. We invite people to come and see, and lives can be transformed.
One of the hymns begins “The voice of God goes out to all the world”. (TIS 282) The voice goes everywhere – and that voice and the one behind it is revealed in many ways – the glory of creation, the whisper in the night, a small child, human bodies, in the course of our everyday life when, like Phillip or Nathaniel we’re simply minding our own business – except we haven’t slipped under God’s radar. By all means we should be discerning and ask questions of ourselves and others when we think we’ve had a God experience But in the questioning, in the discerning, if we are inspired by a sense of holiness, we will discover God’s voice amid all the other voices, and God’s pathways amid the all the other pathways of our lives.