Mutual Epiphany:The Call of Christ

2 Epiphany B  January 14,2018
1 Samuel 3:1-10  Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 6:11b-20  John 1:43-51

Lectionary Link

We are in the season of the Epiphany, the season of the manifestation of Christ to this world.  One of the themes of the season of the Epiphany is what I would call the Counter-Epiphany or the Reverse-Epiphany.

Now what would I mean by that?  I mean that the Reverse Epiphany is the manifestation of men and women to Christ.  People are made known to God in Christ.

Christ is made known to us; we are made known to Christ.  And this is the event of human friendship with God.  This event is marked and celebrated by what we call the Call of Christ.

When Jesus met Nathaniel, Jesus said to him, "Behold an Israelite in whom there is not deceit or guile."  He said, "Rabbi how did you know me?"  Jesus said, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you."  Jesus was saying, "Nathaniel, I was checking you out even when you did not know it.  I saw your body language.  I knew I wanted to call you."  Jesus had an Epiphany of Nathaniel before Nathaniel had his Epiphany of Jesus.

And isn't that how love and friendship and calling occur.  It is a mutual Epiphany.

Einstein once said the main question of the universe: Is it a friendly place?  The main Christian question is:  Is God personally friendly to me?  Does God love me?  Am I known by God?  Has God had an epiphany of me and let me know about it?

You and I remain unknown to most of the population of the entire earth, even if we get 15 or more minutes of fame.  We remain unknown to most of the world.

We depend upon a core number of people in our lives to have an epiphany about who we are and if we can enter the regard of enough people it is significant for establishing our sense of worth and esteem.  But sometimes having the mere regard of significant people is not enough.  There remains a nagging sense of wanting another kind of recognition, something which cannot be given by mere family or peer relationship.

St. Augustine was quite a lover; he was a scholar, a rhetorician and he had plenty of regard by people in his life.  But he later wrote: The human heart is restless until it finds its rest in God.

How did Augustine come to find his rest in God?  His mother, Monica prayed endlessly that the playboy scholar would find his rest in God.  And God answered her prayers and Augustine came to find his rest in God and he received a call from God to devote the rest of his life as a scholar bishop and he became one of the amazing theological architects of the Christian Church.

How might we understand the dynamic of this mutual epiphany between Christ and a person known as the call of God in Christ?

I believe that creation is like the Trojan Horse of the Divine.  How so?  God hides something of the image of the divine in each person.  And this image of the divine within is like a powerful homing device that is always seeking out its likeness and owner.  And this homing device like God's preset GPS is sending out continuous instruction about finding our way home to God.  In our sin and ignorance we misread what this homing signal of the power force of inward desire.  We let the desire linger and focus too long on things that are not divine and we let idolatry slow us down and send us on long detours of addiction and distractive behaviors.  When our GPS is too far out of whack, we need to have  milestone people in our environment onto whom we can project our desire to get it back on track to the divine.  Jesus Christ arises in human history to be the One onto whom we can project so that our desire can be reorganized and become the energy to propel us in the right direction.

Since all of us have the divine homing device within us, we can all be a part of God's mission to call and reconcile all people to the reality of their true being.  Before Jesus called Nathaniel, Philip was the set-up man for Jesus.  "Hey, Nate, I found this great teacher Jesus who has knocked my socks off.   I have to tell you about him.  Okay...where's this Jesus from?  He from Nazareth.  Nazareth?  You're kidding me."   That's like asking a Giants' fan to find something good about the Dodgers.  Sometimes our regional bias and other prejudices will not let us regard the truth of our own being because we want to control how we get the message.  Philip the evangelist was at his wits end so he said: "At least come and see.  Meet him."

Today, we are called to be like the evangelist Philip.  We need to be willing to pray for future members of St. John's.  We know that there are many habits and biases which would keep people away from our parish.  We need to have the boldness to invite and say, Come and see.  Come and see if you can find your calling to Christ in our midst.

Let us make this new year a year of mutual Epiphany.  Believing that God in Christ knows us and loves and helps us activate that homing device within us to lead us back to God, but also calls us to be those who invite others to be with us as we are finding our way back to God and finding a way to let the image of God in our lives be seen as the most important thing about us.  Amen.