Epiphany 2B, January 17, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

O vision fair of glory, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Last week I began my words to you with “what a week.” So how do I start this sermon? The British satire television program comes to mind from the early 1960’s, “That was the week that was,”. I can’t say that I “remember” the show, but I clearly remember that when I was growing up my parents practically wore out their vinyl record album of Tom Lehrer songs, “That Was the Year that Was”. If you’re too young to know these songs, your homework is to find them on YouTube! Those songs are still pertinent: the pollution of the environment, the threat of nuclear war, racial strife, religious conflict.
Lehrer liked to say, “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet!” And yet, listening to his satirical prophetic wisdom helped so many people clarify their purpose and organize themselves and others to join in working for a better future. Lehrer’s work was a call for a better future.

The progress toward a better future, however, is not linear, nor is the work completable in anyone’s lifetime. Remember the famous teaching of Rabbi Tarfon from the Mishnah, the first major work of Rabbinic literature: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.” [1] It is our turn to do the work because we are alive in this age. We must always rededicate ourselves to work for peace with justice, of mercy and compassion, of right-relationship and truth. It’s worth noting, though, that at the moment, we are a people whose nerves are completely jangled – our individual nerves and the nerves of our communities and our Church, of and our country and our world. So we should proceed with some caution.

In our first reading from the first Book of Samuel, we read that in the olden days, the word of the Lord was rare, and the ability to see clearly was not widespread. Back in the year 1100 BCE, Israel was going through a time of immense societal change. Biblical scholar Bruce Birch calls it “a time of spiritual desolation, religious corruption, political danger, and social upheaval.”[2] Sounds familiar! Eli the priest and his sons were responsible for guarding the Ark of the Covenant and its holy oracle. Eli’s eyes were failing — he could barely see. Eli’s sons had committed sacrilege, and he had not rebuked them. This is a story of the transfer of authority from Eli to Samuel, which highlights Eli’s wisdom and integrity and Samuel’s responsiveness and bravery in truth-telling. The word of God, here, is like a light that is both harsh and bright – exposing what was shameful and shining like a beacon to show the way. God was about to act in a way “that would make both ears of anyone who hears about it tingle.” That word for tingle has to do with quivering with shame or fear. The call that Samuel heard was to prophetic work of declaring both judgment and hope, both repentance and return to the way of obedience to Love (which is another word for God). It was a call for a better future.

From Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we heard an exhortation to remember that we are to treat our bodies –collectively as if we are precious to God, because we are. The language and the metaphors can trip us up, though. Paul’s talking about real and metaphorical immorality that has to do with using our bodies – our persons as well as our communities – as anything other than worthy of respect, dignity, and honor, with kindness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness, truthful speech, and self-control. Sexual immorality is a form of idolatry, and Paul implores his beloved siblings in Christ, to flee from sexual immorality, and to flee from worship of idols. Regrettably, our NRSV translates the word [3] for flee as “shun” when it’s about sexual immorality and as “flee” later when it’s about worshiping idols – but it’s the same word for escaping the same problem or temptation or snare.

Paul asserts that Jesus followers are to ensure that our bodies –collectively – are treated as if we are temples for the Holy Spirit within us – because the spirit of holiness is within us, whether we acknowledge her presence or not. We are to treat bodies – individually and collectively — with the utmost dignity and respect. Everybody, according to Paul. Every body because in Christ, there is no discernable difference between people when it comes to being beloved by God. In God we belong to one another and we must treat one another well. It’s a call for a better future.

And from the Gospel of John, we hear this fascinating little story, interrupting our lectionary’s otherwise sequential reading from the Gospel of Mark. It’s a fast-paced and cryptic account of the two disciples called immediately after Andrew and Simon Peter, namely, Philip and Nathanael. This is a call story that is different from (and incompatible with) the story of the call of the disciples in the other Gospels. Nathanael is not named anywhere else in the whole New Testament. His name means gift of God, or given from God. Nathanael asks the wonderful rhetorical question, “Can there be anything good out of Nazareth?” (that insignificant, obscure, tiny village of cave dwellings, home to bandits and other troublemakers, population less than 500?) Of course the whole Gospel screams: “YES! That is exactly where our messiah is from.”

In the banter reported here, Jesus calls Nathanael an Israelite in whom there is no guile, in contrast to Jacob – also known as Israel – who deceived his brother and his father to get his birthright and blessing. I’m not sure what Jesus means when he says that he saw Nathanael under the fig tree before Philip called him, but maybe this. In this passage from the Gospel of John, full of allusions to the First Testament, John’s audience probably knew the biblical prophecies of Zechariah and Jeremiah of a future time when a person will call their neighbor under a vine and fig tree…mark[ing] the beginning of a messianic rule of right-relationship under a David-like monarch. [4] Also, the tree of the knowledge in Genesis is traditionally considered to have been a fig tree and it’s associated with abundance [5] and well-being.

This passage is all about seeing. This is in the same Gospel where Jesus says in response to Thomas, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Two things strike me about the Nathanael and Thomas stories are that Jesus discloses the most about himself to the ones who express skepticism and doubt in this Gospel. And, that no matter how we’re used to hearing about these lessons, I think they teach us that seeing is not about believing. Rather, seeing is about beloving. It’s always possible to choose to love. For Nathanael and the others, following Jesus was choosing to see Love and be seen by Love. They were responding to a call for a better future.

Although Nathanael names Jesus as the Son of God (which is what Caesar claimed for himself) and King of Israel (which is what Herod claimed for himself), Jesus responded by referring to himself as Son of Man – literally a mortal or a mensch, a title that by the first century of the Common Era, had become a distinctive prophetic title. [6] Jesus’ promise or prediction about seeing heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man is another reference to Jacob (aka Israel’s) story. You might remember that was Jacob’s dream – of angels ascending and descending on a ladder in what he’d mistakenly thought was a Godforsaken place. I hear Jesus saying that any mortal, any mensch can have that prophetic title and do that prophetic work. Anyone can serve as a ladder on which messengers and messages of love are carried.

This past week, like so many weeks of the past year in our national discourse, we’ve swung between soaring, inspiring calls for hope and justice and plummeting rhetoric of ignorance and hatred when it comes to talking about people who are marginalized and mistreated by white supremacy and by patriarchal power. We’ve heard and read words of courage and integrity – full of grace; and words of the toxic, devastating menace of racism (on which our country was built), utterly lacking in grace. It can feel like being on a sickening carnival ride. Rather than saying, “This is not who we are,” which rings so hollow. Let’s say “I’m not taking this with me into the future.” The difference is that former is denial, while the latter is a vision of choosing what will shape us and amending our lives accordingly. [7] It’s a call for a better future.

I believe that this is how God works – through the voices of our teachers, in our waking and our sleeping, in our wildest dreams, in respecting the dignity of our individual and collective bodies. This is how Love works – in how we choose to look and see, in how we allow ourselves to be deeply seen, in how we decide what to take with us into the future. This is how the heavens open up and angels of God ascend and descend upon us, the Body of Christ when we are willing to answer again the call for a better future, with the Love of God urging us onward.

← Back to sermons page