1 Samuel 3:1-10 Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 6:11b-20 John 1:43-51
The Gospel of John is full of metaphors for Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus? Son of God, Son of Man, Word, Word made flesh, The Way, the Truth, the Life, Light of the World, The Door/Gate, The Vine, The Good Shepherd, The Resurrection, and The Bread of Heaven. When the poetic Pauline declares Christ to be all and in all, this poetic exaggeration finds another Johannine expression in Christ being the eternal Word of God, from the beginning who gives being to everything.
There is another metaphor in John's Gospel which is often missed and not highlighted. The Gospel of John presents a dialogue between Jesus and the regionally biased Nathaniel who asked skeptically in hearing about the boyhood town of Jesus, "can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
Jesus impressed this skeptic with perhaps a phrase for which it is impossible for us to know its specific meaning. "I saw you Nathaniel when you were under the fig tree." It could be that Jesus was such an observer that he could perceive the character of a person from afar, perhaps even in the deliberateness of some very seemingly ordinary behavior.
The metaphor that I would like to highlight from the dialogue of Jesus with Nathaniel is this: Are you impressed Nathaniel because I said I saw you under the fig tree? You will see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
We need contexts to understand this seeming cryptic saying. This is a not so cryptic reference to the famous Jacob's ladder. Jacob had his famous dream in Beth-el in his dream about a ladder from heaven on which angels were ascending and descending.
Now if the oracle Christ of the Johannine community is indicating that Jesus as the Son of Man is the connecting ladder between the invisible and the visible sphere on which the messengers of God travelled, what would be the meaning of such an inference?
The meaning of Christ as ladder from heaven evokes images of what Christ as the eternal Word would mean? Word is the invisible ladder of connection between the interior invisible world and the external visible world. And upon this Word ladder which is the entire linguistically possible universe, specific messengers travel to make general words specific applied words in the external contexts of people's lives. The meaning of the word angel is messenger; particular words are messengers or context specific words to provide value, meaning, and guidance for people in their external worlds.
But aren't angels actual beings which can be seen? Indeed they are in that they are the holographic appearances of words or messages for people who also experience words through projected image modes. What we see from dreams, dream-states and visionary states is real, holographic and pictographically constituted, and it is related to what we actually see while being significantly different. Seeing is actually a language or text in "pictures or images." They are picto-syntax and picto-grammar in nature because language co-exists with seeing. Scientists can dream and believe that images in dreams are actual without them having external concrescence.
The angels have different message formats and the theme of this week and one of the themes of the Epiphany season is the call of God in Christ. How does specific vocation, insight, purpose, arise from the morass of the everlasting Word? By messages and by messengers? It is not enough to say that every human has language as God's communication within us; we need specific occasions of meaningful message within the circumstances and contexts of our lives. The specific messengers of communication must arise from the field of possible messages to become particular for you and me within the specific circumstances of our lives.
We understand the words of the Bible to be for us angels or messengers of God in textual form and these words about the call of God to the famous Samuel, the calling of Christ to Philip and Nathaniel are given to us, not to limit the words of God to words of the Bible, but to let us know that Word of God and calling are normative and available to each person, in all times and places. Now some specifics of word and calling may seem more pronounced, dramatic, seemingly life changing, because of the role that they play as seeming milestones in our life story. However, the word and call of God is equally important when we are like Nathaniel, "simply under the fig trees of our lives." Are we willing to process and receive the words, the messages of the inner divine significance in our lives within the very ordinary.
The Gospel for us today is that Christ as the eternal word of God is also the connecting ladder of the inner life and the outer life. And the messages and messengers travel on this ladder to articulate the specific values, meanings, callings, and purposes in our lives from the perspective of what love and justice means in practice.
Let us be open to angels or messengers or messages of the call of God in Christ to us today in both the ordinary events and the milestone events of our lives. Amen.
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