Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 15, 2006
1 Samuel 3:1-10,  Psalm 63:1-8, 1 Corinthians 6:11b-20, John 1:43-51
Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth?
Deborah Hutchison, Lay Pastoral Associate
St. David's Episcopal Church, Bean Blossom, Indiana

    Assumptions and expectations.  The fibers with which we weave our understanding of reality.  It’s human nature, the way our minds function.  We learn from our experiences and use those learnings to create a kind of mental map to help us interpret and respond to whatever life throws our way.  This way of being has a certain practicality, but it also creates a buffer, one might even say a block, against the inbreaking of the Holy.  To feel safe, we embrace the predictable.  God is anything but.

In the wee hours of the night, the boy Samuel encounters God.  In broad daylight, the man Nathanael encounters God.  Neither Samuel nor Nathanael recognizes at first who it is they are encountering.  Their initial responses are determined by their mental maps, their assumptions, their expectations.
Samuel was given into the service of God by a grateful mother, in thanksgiving for the opening of her once-barren womb.  Since infancy, he has been fostered by Eli, priest in the temple of the Ark of the Covenant.  Eli has trained the boy in the duties attendant to caring for the ark, the container which held the original tablets on which God wrote the ten commandments.  The most sacred object in all Israel, the ark was believed to be the focal point for God’s presence.  

We are told of Eli’s failing eyesight. Most likely, Samuel has begun to serve the aging priest as his eyes. But, on the night of our story, it is Eli whose sees, an believes.

It is hardly surprising that, when a voice calling his name draws him out sleep, Samuel assumes it is Eli.  Who else would he expect to be summoning him in the wee hours?  We can imagine a sleepy Samuel arriving at the old man’s bedside dutifully offering a chamber pot, as he probably had on many a night.  We act, after all, according to our assumptions and expectations.

Three times Samuel goes to Eli.  Any storyteller worth her salt will tell you that significant events in stories come in “threes”.  There is something about that third time that removes the lens of  “business as usual” from our minds eye and opens us to the possibility of something new breaking in.  
In this case, even though these events are unfolding in the sanctuary where God is supposed to dwell, the unexpected thing, the something new, is the voice of God.  We are told at the very beginning of this story that “[t]he word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”  The people of Israel have lost touch with their God, due, in part, to the corruption of their priests.  Eli himself was guilty of having prospered from the offerings brought to the temple to honor God.

I have often wondered how it is that this failed priest is able to perceive that Samuel is hearing God’s call.  Why didn’t he just assume the boy was having a child’s dreams and tell him to go away and not disturb him again.  I realize I am reading between the lines here, but there is something about Eli’s patience with Samuel and the gentle way in which he speaks to the boy -- "I did not call, my son…” which communicate, without saying directly, a certain tenderness.

Eli is the only father Samuel has ever known.  Eli’s own sons, it is revealed elsewhere, have turned out rather badly.  Samuel, with his devotion to the priestly path, is more of a son to Eli than his own flesh and blood.

I think it is this heart connection which disposes Eli to look beyond his assumptions and realize that Samuel’s odd behavior might indicate a theophany, a manifestation of God.  The story tells us that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him”.  The boy is clueless.  He requires the guidance of someone who understands what is going on in order to made his first direct connection with the Holy.  
I think it is his heart connection with Samuel that enables Eli to reach beyond his ego, which might resent this child being on speaking terms with God when he himself is not. And, I think it is Samuel’s heart connection with Eli that causes him to trust his teacher’s perceptions, let go of his assumption that it is Eli he serves and obey the old priest’s instructions to wait, instead, on the Lord.  

Thus begins for Samuel a relationship with the Divine that will lead to his becoming Israel’s most celebrated priest, a powerful kingmaker whose anointing of David, Israel’s greatest king, will set in motion a whole cascade of events leading, through the strange and miraculous convolutions of salvation history, to the coming of Christ.  If Eli and Samuel had remained cocooned within their assumptions and expectations, none of that would have happened, at least not that way.

But it did happen.  And so we find ourselves observing, roughly a thousand years later, another encounter with the Divine, this time in the form of Jesus, son of the House of David.  Nathanael’s capacity to receive the news that the Messiah has been found is sorely compromised by the fact that the proposed savior hails from Nazareth.  Hence, he responds to his friend Phillip’s enthusiastic announcement, not with cries of joy, but with the skeptical question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”    

This reminds me of football broadcasts, where the announcers introduce the players by saying, “Joe Schmoe, out of Cal State.”  It’s such an odd usage… “out of”…like the player has been propelled from his college directly to the current field of play.  Why does it matter where he went to school, where he’s “out of”?  Isn’t it more important what he’s “in to”, who he is now?  How ready he is to play his best on this particular day?

At any rate, Nathanael’s question makes it clear that his perception of Jesus is being determined by certain assumptions and expectations.  What those expectations and assumptions are is not as clear to us as it probably was to the writer of John’s gospel.  

One theory is that there are no messianic prophesies in the Old Testament that mention  Nazareth.  That supposes that Nathanael knew of these prophesies. That’s a pretty good bet, since he seems to belong to a group of people who entertain a certain level of expectation about the Coming One.  Another theory suggests that, since Nazareth is so obscure -- it doesn’t appear in scripture at all, or in any histories of the area, r in any early rabbinical writings -- Nathanael would have thought it too much of a backwater to produce anyone as important as the long –awaited Anointed One of Israel.  
Another theory is that Nazareth may be suspect to Nathanael because it is in Galilee, a region whose inhabitants were regarded by strict Jews as ethnically mixed and religiously impure.  I liked that one until I found out that Nathanael is himself a Galilean.  He’s “out of” Cana, a town that was about nine miles north of Nazareth.   

Whatever his reasons, Nathanael is unable to catch Phillip’s enthusiasm simply by hearing about Jesus.  The difference between their experiences is clear.  Phillip has actually met Jesus, heard the Messiah speak those words of discipleship, “Follow me.”  Phillip has a living relationship with the Son of David, a heart connection.  

Without that connection and its power to break through the status quo, Nathanael is left with his assumptions and expectations.  And they tell him that Jesus can’t possibly be who Phillip says he is.  To his credit, he complies when Phillip urges him, “Come and see.”  I believe he does this more out of love for his friend than any real hope that this is truly the Messiah.  Heart connection at work, again.

Now, this is the gospel according to John, where “seeing” is code for being able to perceive spiritual truth.  For Phillip, seeing really is believing.  In his case, it was enough simply to see the Lord.  Nathanael, for his part, does “come and see”. But, for him, it takes something unexpected and inexplicable to break apart his armor of expectations and assumptions.  

First he is surprised, and so put off his guard, when Jesus knows who he is.  Then he is astounded, and broken open, by the little miracle of Jesus’ vision of him asleep beneath the fig tree.  With that, the way is opened for the heart connection that allows him to see with his inner eye that he is in the presence of the Holy. "Rabbi,” he cries, “you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Jesus’ response is interesting to me.  He neither agrees with nor refutes Nathanael’s conclusion.  Instead, he essentially says, “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, describing a ramped-up version of Jacob’s Ladder.  “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  

Jesus seems to be saying that his coming creates an opening between our everyday reality of assumptions and expectations and the realm of God, allowing freer congress with the Divine Presence represented by those ascending and descending angels.  Comforting words for those of us who live two millennia after the Son of Man walked this earth, yet still long to see and believe.

So, where are we?  We’ve observed that we are creatures of habit who manage the challenges of living by creating a kind of life-map out of assumptions and expectations.  We’ve agreed that this life-map can get in the way of a living relationship with God, the Unpredictable One.  We’ve considered the possibility that this status quo structure can be breached to let in the Holy.  We’ve observed that the catalyst for this breaking open is love, the connection of heart to heart.  

We’ve seen that love, that catalytic converter, can come in many forms.  The love of an elder for an adopted child.  The love of a child for a foster parent.  The love of friend for friend, and that rare and thrilling love that unites disciple with spiritual master.   Jesus’ image of himself as ladder between the worlds assures us that the disciple-master relationship is still available.  Eli and Samuel show us that an actual physical encounter with the Anointed One, like that experienced by Phillip and Nathanael but impossible for us, is not the only way to initiate a breaching of assumptions and expectations by the Holy.  Love for one another is enough.

I suspect this is part of why, later in John’s gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, at least three times if not more, “love one another”.  Practicing love keeps us open to being surprised by God, who has always been fond of showing up in unexpected forms at unexpected times in unexpected places.
In this Epiphany season, this time of Divine manifestation -- and in every season -- let us practice love.  Let us wear our assumptions and expectations lightly. It’s not a matter of what we come out of.  It’s a matter of what we allow in.  AMEN.