Year B
John 1:43-51
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Let us Rise to Follow the Call of God
In 2009, newspapers reported the murder of Sitara Achakzai, a well-known native of Afghanistan who fled to Germany in 1990 and returned in 2004 to fight for both women’s rights and the poor. She received many death threats from the Taliban but refused to leave. She also refused heavy security and for protection she simply wore a different colored burka each day. She was gunned down outside her home. In any year and place, countless people devote their lives to justice and care for others, giving without counting the cost. People like Sitara demonstrate the generous love and concern for others that we find in Jesus Christ.
We are not all called to the same task as Sitara, and we are not equipped with the same gifts, but we are all called to important tasks whether small or large. We have a God who calls. All the texts today deal with God’s call and have much to say to us about the Christian life, ministry and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The season of Epiphany is all about the manifestation or showing of God, especially in Christ, and in the texts for today, God is shown in and through the call to discipleship. The stories of the call of Samuel and of Nathanael speak to us of a personal God who knows us and calls us for important tasks. They remind us that “call” is a recurring theme throughout both the Old and New Testament.
The story of Israel begins with the call of Abraham in Genesis and continues with the call of God to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus. God speaks to the prophets and sends them to speak words of warning and hope. Jeremiah, like the psalmist today, believes that God knew him in his mother’s womb and appointed him a prophet to the nations. In the New Testament, God calls Philip and Nathaniel and the other disciples through Jesus. Jesus knows about Nathaniel’s willingness to be a disciple long before Nathaniel does who is mentioned only twice in the scriptures, and then, only in the Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke never talk about him but they do talk about Bartholomew in the same places where John talks about Nathaniel. According to John, Nathaniel was the fourth disciple. Jesus called Peter and Andrew first. Then he called Philip, and Philip went and brought Nathaniel to Jesus. His only other mention is with the disciples at one of the resurrection appearances. What we know about Nathaniel is that he was a person who was hoping and searching. We know this because of the fig tree. People at that time often lived in a one-room house and they would plant fig trees in the front of their homes as a place to sit outside in the shade to be with God.
A fig tree is about fifteen feet tall and its branches spread out about 25 feet in width like an umbrella, creating a space that is almost like a private room. If someone wanted to get away from whatever was going on in the house, he or she could sit under the fig tree to pray, to read scripture, to reflect and rest. Sitting under the fig tree was often a sign of seeking and praying for God’s presence. And even though the church doesn’t look anything like a fig tree, the church is here to be a place to know the touch of the living God. We come to church to “retreat” from the chaos of the world around us so we can read scripture, reflect, and pray much like Nathaniel must have been doing that day when Philip went to get him and take him to Jesus.
What we also know about Nathaniel from Jesus is that he was a man “in whom there was no deceit.” A person “in whom there is no deceit” is a person who is honest, and sincere. Nathaniel was a good person who tried to do what was right. God as we see honors the qualities of honesty, genuineness, integrity, and open-mindedness. Though Nathaniel at first believed that Jesus could not be the Messiah, he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he is honest enough to express amazement that God’s Messiah could come from an insignificant village.
What is significant about this story is that God can accomplish great things in unlikely places and God is perfectly capable of honoring ordinary people like Nathaniel and Philip and the rest of the disciples that Jesus calls. They become the very people whose lives helped build and pass on the faith and eventually the church. And as we look back on our lives, we often can see the same pattern of divine care and call. Possibly not in the same way that Samuel did. Samuel was just a young boy who did not yet know the Lord when he was called, and yet he came to be regarded along with Moses and Aaron as a great priest.
The invitation of this gospel is to trust these signs of divine care and call and celebrate that ultimately God is in control and making sure that the purposes of God are realized and being advanced through us, God’s people. As Christians we are called by our baptism to be disciples of Christ and to act in love. Such love allows others to hear God’s will for their lives and to be strengthened by God’s Spirit. Each day there are opportunities to serve and in so doing, to draw on God’s strength and resources.
We all know from our experience in the life of the church that there are very important ministries of teaching, healing, care giving, administration, and so on. We are all called “with a holy calling” and our text today from 1 Corinthians offers us a very high vision of the life of every Christian, since all of us are “joined to the Lord” and “one spirit with him.” Each of us, in our bodily life, is a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” – that is, a dwelling place of God, and so we are called to live with dignity, honesty, self-respect, and genuine mutual love, in our relationships with others. We strive each day to show this kind of love of self, God and neighbor. We fail at times, we are all a work in progress yet thankfully, God, continues to forgive us through Jesus and continues to call us, ordinary disciples to make a difference.
May we be ready, as the boy Samuel, to jump up ready to serve. May we be ready, as Philip to find others to bring to Christ. May we be ready as Nathaniel to proclaim “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” May we be ready as Paul to proclaim the holy place of God’s call, the whole community of faith and as the community of faith, may we rise to follow the Spirit of Christ. Together with Sitara and so many others let us go find God: together we shall tend the light of our baptism, hear the word of the Lord and honor the call of God to see greater things. Because, if we take the disciple Nathaniel, seriously-we will know that it is through us that God’s will is ultimately accomplished.