Epiphany 2 B

John 1: 43-51

January 13, 2008

I have found that one of the great gifts of working with young people is the amount of resistance I have often met.(And I am not saying this simply because of the acolyte training later today.). By and large,they know instantly whether you are telling them the truth, and they are quick to challenge any question about themselves-- 'You don't understand” is what I have often heard, before the conversation is over: maybe some of you have had the same experience. But behind that statement is a different one-- you don't know me, not as I need to be known, behind the friends I have or my taste in clothes. If we are lucky, those of us who work in the church, it can be the beginning point of a life-long conversation they will have about what faith is, why the church is here to help with our questions about ourselves and about this God who knows us more deeply than we know ourselves.

It is a need I believe we all feel, to be known as fully as we think we should be known, and it is why the conversation between Nathaniel and Jesus this morning is such an interesting one. Nathaniel is found by Philip, who has simply said “yes” to this stranger from Nazareth, one who is the fulfillment of all that the law dictates. But Nathaniel's faith is of a different kind; it isn't until he meets this stranger, who tells him he is an”Israelite in whom there is no deceit” , that he feels compelled to ask, “Where did you get to know me”? In a moment, he will make his confession about this God-in-the-flesh, who saw him before his talk with Philip, but his question is an insistent one, one that all seekers ask,, especially in moments of unsought grace, when something or someone has been brought into our lives at a time when we did not know we needed them, when we recognize that we are being sought as deeply as we are searching.

Most of us, I think, are quite guarded about who we are. In a time when even our identities can be stolen, the temptation is to hold on to the things we really believe define us, our careers, our social standing, all that by which we feel the world evaluates us. Then we are given a moment that dismantles this world we create for ourselves We are compelled to ask when God began to offer us this time and this place, this person, to realize, as the psalmist says , that we have been searched-out and known and our thoughts discerned from afar. Where did you get to know me?

I remember such a moment in my own life as a young person, maybe seven or eight. We were living in suburban Boston at the time; after I had come home from school, my mother told me something very special was going to happen when my father arrived that evening. From that moment on, everything seemed immense, from the suit coat my mother had bought that was two sizes too big (You'll grow into it, she said ), to the coat and mittens she put on me, to the January snow-storm my father and I drove through until we reached Symphony Hall in the middle of the city. I remember having few words for what happened the rest of that evening, that I was hearing a Beethoven piano concerto and a few other wonderful pieces, but I remember thinking that this was going to be part of my identity, that whatever else became of my life, music was going to be an integral part of who I was. It was years before I could recognize how providential that moment was, but as an adult I was able to talk to the pianist who played that night. What I could not tell him was the part he played in my discovery of how deeply God was searching me out, how the whole experience had prompted a lifetime of questions about where God had come to know me.

Embedded in the response of Jesus to Nathaniel's confession, 'You are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel”, is the realization that most of us are much better at seeing these moments in retrospect, to trace God's hand in our lives looking back at all our journeys and resting places. Like Nathaniel, who wonders if anything good can come out of Nazareth, it often seems that we are at the start of our faith lives. But in the Lord's response is a promise , that we will see greater things than these, that the vision of angels ascending and descending on the son of Man is an assurance offered to all of us, to those who seek a deeper knowledge of one who knows us all so deeply..

Garret Keizer, who is a writer from Vermont and also a lay vicar in his community of Island Pond, talks eloquently about the ways in which he was formed under the tutelage of a Father Castle, who taught him the deep connections between the preaching he fell into in the community he served as a schoolteacher and the care he eventually ended up providing for all the fiercely idiosyncratic members of the body he was called to serve. It is a humbling account for anyone whom God, in his wisdom and knowledge of us, has put in our lives:

[Father Castle] is always with me. I get gas on the way to Island Pond, the cashier says, “Have a nice day', and I recall him saying: “There are no good or bad days. They are all the Lord's days. This is the day that the Lord has made.” Don't worry, be happy, “ the car radio sings-- and Castle replies; “We are not here to be happy. We are here to grow.” But I am so tired tonight. I would just as soon turn around and go to bed. And Father Castle says, “It is when you're ready to say, ' I'm not going to do it, I've had it,' that the opportunity to do good is often most present. You have to die for people every day'”.

Learning to die for one another. What these experiences teach us is the importance of a God who loves us so deeply that he was willing to do just that, that a God who knows our needs before we ask, as the old collect says, is the same God who offers himself and places others in our lives just when we need them. Like Nathaniel, we may feel like beginners, but that is where God meets us, at the start of all our journeys. We will not understand, as my young friends tell me, but we will be known, no matter where our journeys take us..