Sunday 15th January 2006Epiphany 2

1 Samuel 3: 1-10, 19; Rev 5: 1-10; John 1:43-51

Philip saith unto him, ‘Come and see.’

+ In the name of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We’re back in green.  This liturgical time when we use green vestments is known as Ordinary Time.  After the great festivals of Christmas and Epiphany it is a relief to get back to the ordinary. The lights in Marylebone High St are now down.

The Truth is made known to us through attentive listening to ourselves, our own needs, our own feelings where God comes to meet us.  All time is epiphany.

Common Worship, probably going back to an older tradition when Christmas was kept until the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, 2nd Feb, and cribs and Christmas trees stayed up until then, instituted a season called Epiphany, with Sundays of Epiphany rather than after Epiphany.  

The human inclination, though, I think, is that there is a limit to naturally sustaining high festival, the festive season, the heights of celebration.  Our culture is obsessed with turning everything into a drama, a high point, a celebrity moment.  It demands considerable effort.  There is something to be said about the relief of not having to keep it going in high spirits. So back to the ordinary – green and here’s hoping the churchwardens will not report me for my ecclesiastical disobedience to Common Worship under the new Clergy Discipline Measure.

And yet the term Ordinary Time is also a misnomer.  If God is ever present among us in his Spirit, restoring, recreating, drawing us to the truth, can any time be ordinary?  And yet ‘ordinary’ is an important antidote to a consumerist tendency to immediacy, easy accessibility, resolution, wanting something extra-ordinary, super-natural, distraction from somewhere else to entertain or an escape to somewhere else from the mundane.  

The Truth is made known to us through attentive listening to ourselves, our own needs, our own feelings where God comes to meet us.  All time is epiphany.

So this liturgical rambling and mulling over …. for that is just what homilising means – tossing ideas and insights about; drawing us into a discussion so as to become real participants; initiated into the mysteries we can’t quite get.  Jesus on the road to Emmaus is homilising with the despondent disciples, listening to them intently, asking them questions, drawing them into a conversation, an open-ended discussion, the indeterminacy of the Mystery; drawing them slowly to the point of recognition, the point of revelation of who He is.

You and I are invited in this Year B of the three-year cycle of readings, to ‘Come and see’. Come and see for yourself.  Come and be engaged by the Person of Christ who speaks to us through scripture.  Come and see God in a new way, yourself in a new light, come and find what you are looking for.  Come and see the world from God’s point of view.  

The homily at mass is a spelling out of the landscape, the preacher’s vision which may or may not resonate with our own.   But we want more.  Liturgical prayer and corporate reading of scripture are not enough to satisfy.  We are all invited to contemplate the Truth for ourselves by engaging as we can with the Word of God in holy scripture.  

I need to move from being an observer, a speculator, connoisseur, mulling over ideas into the landscape  - that subjective place where God addresses me and I find some response.

Attentive reading and listening is a pre-requisite for seeing something anew, for allowing it to come home to you.  The readings are printed on the notice sheet so that we can read them through in advance, allow them to find a home in us, allow them to speak to us – even before coming to church, to begin to stir in us.  

In preparing a homily, I read the lessons through slowly, sometimes aloud so I can hear them too, before going to sleep – this allows them to sink in.  The subconscious works on them.  It is not a matter of analysing and trying to be a scholar.  That would leave one wondering whether one was right or wrong- and so self-defeatist. And I, for one, wouldn’t dare say anything again!

As you read through the passages unhurriedly, What strikes me?  What appeals or repels me?  Above all: what are you saying to me Lord?  What is it you are offering me? And: what is it I want?  What is happening to me at a feelings level. What is my gut response?

And this is altogether different from investigating the text – rather I am allowing the text to investigate me.

This way of approaching scripture reveals our initial reactions, the ways we think, and the way we feel – this is a personal starting point – self-awareness.  It is from there that we can be taken to a new place or insight, a new vision – an epiphany in the ordinariness of who I am, as I am and a response to it.

Nathanuel responds: “can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” he asks sceptically.  .  He is being himself and perhaps what he really means is the opposite: is there any good in me that you can find that could attract you?  

Authentic, honest, not getting anything right, he is sincere.  The meaning of sincerity is ‘without wax’ – without the mask of wax which actors would wear – without guile.  Jesus knows here is someone with whom he can engage fruitfully.  And so Nathanuel is drawn into a conversation with the Lord, able to talk and express his feelings, drawn into recognition of Jesus: from ‘Whence knowest thou me?”…. to ….”Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the king of Israel.”  He discovers who Jesus is for him.

You know that old saying: “how can I know what I think unless you let me speak.”  We find out what we think as we talk.   Talking things through with another person is a way of finding out – becoming more aware how God is moving within one.  And many seek spiritual directors so as to do just this.

Here lies the stuff of being called by Jesus, as it came to Samuel in the OT lesson.  The word of God is addressed to the church, but it is also addressed to me personally.

Jesus promises more: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending.

In the vision of St John, the Lion of Judah – the Messiah, comes to losen the seals and open the book; what is revealed is the Mystery of himself as a ‘Lamb standing as one slain’: the dead and risen Lord, the One who lives as if death were not.

Revelation is apocalypse, the tearing open of the veil of heaven to reveal all inside.  The one who does this is Christ our Lord, always calling us, always calling us to fresh insights – epiphanies – revealing to us more and more as we open ourselves to him.

And this is all predicated on his knowing of us.  Those moving words of Jesus: ‘when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee”.  Before you knew me, I have known you and I have called you to some greater truth, some deeper mystery.

We prayed in the collect that God would ‘transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of his grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known his heavenly glory’.  So in this year of the Lord’s favour, as we listen to a round of preachers, let us open ourselves to be transformed by the riches God makes known to us.

“Come and See”.  Amen