2 EPIPHANY, YEAR B

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

18 JANUARY 2009

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1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Cor. 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

“Lord, you have searched me out and have known me.” (Ps. 139)

The unique and wonderful thing about the psalms is that they let us in on people’s personal sharings with God.  And while we listen, we are overhearing people telling their own faith stories to God, revealing their own inner thoughts. Some of their innermost thoughts are not lovely, though. We spent part of our recent retreat at the monastery in Massachusetts discovering some of the psalms’ more unlovely outpourings. Some of our innermost thoughts are not lovely, either.  But, says today’s psalmist, God already knows what is in our hearts and minds anyway. “Lord, you have searched for me and have already known me…. you knit me together in my mother’s womb… you discern my thoughts from afar…you are acquainted with all my ways…....”  God has known us intimately from our earliest beginnings.

God knew the boy Samuel, too, the boy whose parents had given him up to the temple priest, Eli, to house and train and raise for service to God. God knew the boy, even in those dark days when the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread. God knew Samuel and called him, even when the faith of the old priest, Eli, had grown stale and the sacred ark of the covenant, tucked away in the temple, had lost its power. God knew Samuel before Samuel knew himself. And Samuel grew up in response, to become a prophet of the Lord.

God knows us, too, no doubt better than we know ourselves. (“…from whom no secrets are hid…”) God recognizes us and reveals us to ourselves. Does knowing that terrify you or comfort you?

God knows us. But do we recognize God? Do we recognize God-with-us?

Which brings us to the gospel of John. And the band of friends living those days in Galilee. In those days, when Jesus their neighbor was walking and living among them and one day John the Baptizer points to Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” And with a jolt, Andrew suddenly snaps to and calls his brother Simon. “Simon, we have found the Messiah.” And Philip hears and he goes off to Nathanael. “We have found him,” he says.

One by one, these friends find Jesus. But they don’t find him at the end of a search. They discover him quite by accident. Jesus has been in the neighborhood all along, chatting, working. It’s just that they have seen only one aspect of him so far.  Suddenly, quite by accident, at the invitation of a friend one day, they realize---Aha!—who Jesus really is. As we would say, they see the light and they get it.

Like Archimedes who was given the task of figuring out if a crown was mixed with silver or was it pure gold. And one day Archimedes is sitting in his bathtub having a soak, and he sees the water sloshing around as usual, but suddenly he sits very still and takes another look and while he looks, an insight crashes in on him and he sees the water in an entirely new way. “Eureka!” he shouts and he leaps out of the tub and runs naked down the street. “Eureka! I’ve found it!!”

“Huerisko/eureka. I’ve discovered it.” Because silver is less dense than gold and therefore displaces more water per ounce of weight than gold,  Archimedes  figured out the way to solving his crown puzzle. “The solution was there all along, so obvious, right before my very nose only I never saw it!!” Has this every happened to you? We might say “eureka,” but most of us I’d guess would say “duh!”

And so the friends see Jesus now, finally, as if for the first time, the one who has been living among them only they never saw him for who he really was.

I have a friend who was talking to me the other day and somehow we got onto the subject of a favorite little second or third hand shop of hers in Lewiston. “You never know what you’ll find there,” she said. “Like the blue glasses. I got some several years ago. I put them on and I wore them around for awhile. It was amazing! I saw things, but things didn’t seem the same any more. Some things didn’t really stand out and others had a lovely glow to them. Things I’d been seeing forever changed right in front of me. They seemed entirely brand new.” 

“Eureka,” I thought to myself.

“If I’m careful, may I borrow your blue glasses?”  

I took the blue glasses home and put them on. My friend was right. Things that had been ordinary seemed utterly new and different. I was seeing them in a brand new way. Things hidden came to life. My blueberry pattern on our kitchen table, the snow mounds in the field out back, Angus and Paco.  I was discovering new aspects to things that had been there all along.

There is an airplane pilot.  We know him now for his skill, his intelligence, his training, his bravery and above all his utter cool. “Brace for impact,” he told his passengers and crew. The world knows him now. But nobody ever dreamed what he would be called on to do last Thursday.  Even those with whom he had lived and worked for decades. His family. His parents. Even now they are seeing him in a brand-new light. Revealed, as if through blue glasses from a little shop in Lewiston.

Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael were seeing Jesus now as if through blue glasses. They discovered who he was in a brand new way. “We have found him!”

And from then on, the circle of discoverers expanded, as when a pebble is tossed into a pool. One by one by one the invitation went out, and it goes out still, “We have discovered him, the one who has been here all along. And you, too, can know him,” they said. “Here, try these blue glasses!” Not cajoling or wheedling or haranguing. As one wise theologian puts it, “Faith sickens and dies in an atmosphere where doubt is laughed at.” No, the disciples simply invited.

And other people did, too, down the ages, one by one by one. The disciples invited. So do we. That is our job. Passing it on. Even when the wonderful moment when we  discover the sacred, the aha moment, fades and we tuck the blue glasses away in their case, even then the memories remain and nothing is the same again.  Jesus abides—in the stories, in the witnesses, in the sacraments. Telling our stories and listening to the stories of others is our job. Paying attention is the job of our faith, inviting others to “come and see” and saying “yes” when invitations come our way as well.