January 18, 2015
(1 Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51)
Epiphany 2, Year B
Some people might get burning bushes and parting seas and dreams of angel-laden ladders reaching to the sky. Some people might be hit as if by lightening with remarkable and astounding happenings that are clear signs from God. Epiphanies that are obvious and indisputable.
But I think most of us probably have fig trees. Or voices that sound a whole lot like those of our friends and mentors. Most of us are more likely to experience subtle epiphanies that might only make sense to us. Even those are enough, but they are awfully easy to miss. For most of us, it’s hard to catch our attention.
Like Samuel. Samuel was in a pre-sleep haze when a voice called his name. Three times, Samuel assumed the voice was that of the only person he knew to be nearby, his mentor Eli. He didn’t yet know the Lord, we are told, and it didn’t occur to him that God might be trying to get his attention.
And like Nathanael. Nathanael was living his normal life and along came Philip raving about Jesus. But Nathanael was skeptical. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It didn’t occur to him that Jesus might be inviting him into relationship.
And like me. Most of the time, I’m living my life without noticing. Moving on to the next thing on my to-do list. Seeing my day-to-day tasks as something to get through. Too wrapped up to focus on the world around me or to listen for the hearts of the people nearby.
Luckily for Samuel, God didn’t stop calling. And when Eli recommended that Samuel respond to God that he was listening, Samuel gave it a try. Jesus called and called until Samuel began to learn how to listen.
Luckily for Nathanael, Philip kept inviting him. And despite his skepticism, Nathanael walked along with Philip to see Jesus for himself. Jesus found ways to invite until Nathanael began walking toward him.
Luckily for me, friends and family and colleagues and reading material and this Church community keep reminding and challenging me (some in more explicitly religious ways than others) to try to listen, to try to see.
For me right now this takes the form of the group meeting here on Thursday mornings to talk about a book called The Artist’s Rule. I love art, but I wouldn’t call myself an artist. And I’m not really a big fan of rules. But this group called to me because it offered an experience of intentional spirituality in community, a chance to try out new ways of looking for God. For 12 weeks— a season — about a dozen of us will be trying to create a pattern in our lives of showing up, hoping to make room for God through practices like journaling, praying with scripture, drawing, and walking. Trying to find the sacred spaces within us and all around us. Trying to see, trying to listen.
For Nathanael and Samuel showing up was a new beginning. When Samuel put his heart into the listening, he discovered that the voice that had previously been just a voice was actually God’s voice speaking to him. When Philip responded to the invitation to follow and learned that Jesus knew about the fig tree, he recognized that the man who had previously been just a man was something so much more.
This fig tree bit intrigues me, and all kinds of commentators have gone to great lengths trying to concoct ideas of just what might have been going on under the fig tree that was so significant that it changed everything for Nathanael to have Jesus mention it. But I think the very absurdity of the fig tree is the glory of this story. We readers have no idea what the fig tree meant to Nathanael and neither did Philip or anyone else that might have been gathered around. To us it seems insignificant and silly. But Jesus knew. And in that knowing, Nathanael realized that Jesus had seen him in a new and real way, to the core of his being. He experienced Psalm 139: “Lord you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” It was a new beginning.
Showing up has been a new beginning for me this past week too. Although I’m finding it logistically difficult to make time and space for the new practices in The Artist’s Rule, and as always I am easily distractible, I have been surprisingly energized by my new early morning pattern. I’m finding, like Nathanael and Samuel before me, that once I show up, there is a chance I might actually listen. And if I listen, I might actually hear. Once I show up, there is a chance I might actually look. And if I look, I might actually see. Once I show up, there is a chance I might be open to the subtle presence of God in my midst.
A few days into this new practice, I came down in the dark and looked out the window. The sun was just beginning to peek out and the horizon slowly turned tangerine. As my eyes adjusted I started to see the black of the branches and trees in front of me, swaddled in the backlight. I noticed a single leaf still hanging onto one of the skinnier branches. I sat there for what felt like a long time watching that one leaf barely moving in the breeze. I no longer noticed the car lights going by in the distance or even the window I was looking past. I wondered how that one leaf had managed to hold on so long after all the others had fallen. Was it hanging on past it’s time, refusing to move on to it’s natural future? Or reveling in the moment above the ground, enjoying every wisp of breeze? The light continued to grow and a few minutes later I realized that this wasn’t a leaf from this tree at all. It had fallen from above or blown from another tree and landed here.
Now, I realize that objectively that doesn’t sound like much. But for me, it was a message about the importance of showing up, trying to see and listen in the moment, being open to new discovery. If my morning had gone like it so often did, I would have been reading my email, making coffee, working on the details of the day, getting aggravated about some small thing throwing me off track. Instead, I got a fig tree. Even if it wouldn’t make sense to another living soul, I know that God was reaching out to me with that tiny brown leaf, inviting me to a new way of looking and listening. Inviting me to a new beginning.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her poem Aurora Leigh wrote:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
I think Philip’s invitation isn’t just for Nathanael, but for all of us: Come and see. Amen.
Mindfulness, I'd say.
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