The last couple of weeks may have seemed bleak and more than a little violent. We may feel like the word of the Lord is rare in these days, and visions are not widespread. The Hebrew in the Samuel passage today is a lot more evocative than our English translation. The first clause is actually a little closer to, “The word of the Lord was ‘dear’.” That word like in English carries a meaning of both ‘precious’ and ‘expensive’. The second clause of that sentence more literally reads: “And there was not open vision.” That word “open” is actually a less awkward way to translate broken through. Visions have not been able to break through – break through what? Cynicism? Apathy? A vast rage, perhaps, the kind that stokes the fires of violence? A needlessly hostile mockery which grows like a weed into a merciless silencing and repression?
Last week John told us the voice of God is always there, speaking throughout time and in all generations, choosing messengers not to our convenience or according to our narratives and principles, but choosing ones that will nudge us into growth and humility.
Not safe ones. Not great ones. Not regal ones.
Dangerous ones. Poor ones. Little ones.
Other ones.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only the one who sees, takes off their shoes.”
That is the truth – the Word, if you like – that God shouted into the abyss. The echo still rings out, rings out in the bursting open of seeds, the rich new growth encouraged by wildfire, the death of stars, the obsolescence and renewal of billions of cells in your own body. Because life and death are intertwined, because earth and heaven have married and become one flesh, because God has met us where we were in the everyday desperation of one tiny life, all things have been utterly transformed – every common bush, every ordinary blood cell, every daily bread, every inconsequential life, made new and carrying a spark – crammed with heaven, afire with God.
That is the truth.
Have you seen it?
I promise you have.
If you’re thinking, “No, I didn’t,” well – Samuel didn’t know who was calling him. Nathanael was skeptical of the source.
Both were called, and both answered.
You were called.
Did you know that?
Maybe, like Samuel, you were alone when you heard that call. Maybe you knew someone was calling you but you didn’t know who it was.
Maybe, like Nathanael, a friend brought you a message, and you couldn’t believe it.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you respond.
Your uniquely personal response is key – both Samuel and Nathanael show us that. However, it is not the way to respond. It is only one way.
Samuel needed the almost ritualistic words of invitation: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” and he got them from his mentor.
Nathanael needed Philip’s invitation: the beautiful and, to me, somewhat haunting, “Come and see.” The Gospel of John is replete with deceptively simple coded and loaded language. “Come and see” is a very special phrase – Jesus used it a few verses earlier to invite Simon and Andrew to stay with him. It pops up again at other moments in the Gospel as well. When you hear it, you should hear this echo or overtone hiding in it: “everlasting life.”
Samuel and Nathanael were called with the help of others, and both responded in their own way – personally, communally. It has to be both. Our Three-in-One God is too dynamic, too powerful, too expansively, foolishly loving to confine such a gift to one person, one conversation. Think of the amazing strength of this God who managed to share such a monumental gift with the whole world through one life. But that’s all the world has ever needed. One seed, one star, one human life donned like a robe only to be taken off and given to us.
Some gifts are so big that we can’t even see them.
So how do we share such a gift? Let’s look again at the invitation. What was the content of Samuel and Nathanael’s invitation? What about our invitation? What do we tell the ones who are being called and haven’t yet discerned?
Let’s look again.
Samuel hears: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.”
Nathanael hears: “You will see greater things than these – the heavens opening, and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
See, I am about to do something. You will see greater things than these.
So what have you seen?
Have you seen God do something great in the place where you live? It’s not always about tearing open the heavens, or parting the sea, or wrestling with angels. Sometimes it’s about the view of the mountains from your window, or the smell of cedar trees, or the birth of a child, or shared laughter with an old friend. Sometimes it’s even about the boring mindless work that we do every day, the work we do for the people we love, the work we do because someone has to, and that’s our ministry.
Have you seen greater things than that? Have you seen reconciliation where all seemed lost? Have you seen life emerging from what seemed like death? Have you seen the helpers? Mr. Rogers the children’s television personality said that when he saw bad things on the news, his mother always told him to “look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
If you have seen help freely offered to someone in need; if you have seen the solidarity that grows between two totally different people who become friends and advocates; if you have seen a life poured out in order that others may live; if you have seen children and elders standing together before the altar with their hands held out for bread and wine; if you have seen the sun rise after the longest, worst day of your life, you have seen angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. You have seen heaven married to earth. You have seen the Word made flesh.
I have seen him. I am seeing him. Here. Now. He is looking back at me.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only the one who sees, takes off their shoes.”
Come and see.