15 January 2012

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Epiphany
Psalm 139 / John 1:43-51
15 January 2012


“What should I do with my life?”
It’s a question that comes to us, all of us, at many different times in our lives. Child, worker, new parent or grandparent, retired, elderly … “what should I do with my life?” is a universal question for us.
And the change of the calendar, the move into a new year, can accentuate that question.
Thankfully, as we move into this season of Epiphany, these weeks of God showing forth what God is all about in the life and ministry of his Son Jesus Christ … we have some texts, psalms and stories, which are all about shedding light … Epiphany light … onto that question.
Our Psalm for today begins in our questioning, wondering and wandering in life … with the answer that we are known by God.

Lord, you have searched me out; O Lord, you have known me.

Many of us might have that terribly Lutheran streak of being meek and quiet, content to sit in the back row, not wanting any attention called to ourselves … but even in that, deep down, it is good to be known. To be known by friends, companions, fellow travelers on the journey. For us, church, especially a smaller church, a cozier worship service, is just right because this is the Cheery time and place where “everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”
But this word in the Psalm is stronger … better … wiser than even that comforting word.

Lord, you have searched me out; O Lord, you have known me.

The words of the Psalmist bring a rush of Biblical images … God, searching for us in all the circumstances of life … the times when we feel so close to God, God’s words and God’s ways for us … and the times when God feels a million miles away. But there is the Lord, and here is the Lord, searching for us, the Light of his Word of love and care searching us out, like One in the darkness, searching with a torch or flashlight for that which is lost yet beloved to them … that is the image the Psalmist word-paints for us this morning.

O Lord, you have known me.

In these words, we also have a rush of images … “you have known me” here has the sense of action, begun once in the past, still in effect now. “Knowing” in the Old Testament sense of how a lover is to their beloved … that closeness, that proximity, physically, mentally, spiritually, that is also what the Psalmist is referring to here. A God who wishes and wills and works to be near his beloved, always, in all ways.
And as we move further into the Psalm, that language becomes more and more secure and sure, for us.

You trace my journeys and my resting places and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You encompass me, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

This is guiding and mentoring language … not controlling and manipulating, but a “hand on the shoulder” word … God, here, searching us out in the dark places of life … God, there, lending an ear, a Word, subtly, surely, guiding us, through the little “voice in our ear” we hear in many different places and times of life … in the quiet of worship … through the words of a hymn we sing together … in the presence of faith-friends offering us their care and support, encouragement and love. That mentoring hand of God, leading and guiding us through life.
This talk of guiding and mentoring also reminds us of a part of last week’s story about Jesus’ baptism … his rising up out of the water, and the Word from heaven descending up on him … You are my beloved.
In our baptism into the dying and rising of Jesus … our dying to sin and our rising to forgiveness and new life … in our baptism God calls us, too, by that name … beloved. We are God’s beloved … adopted, named, claimed in our baptism … formed and shaped through water and Word, worship and witness, the bread and wine of communion … through all these, we feel ourselves being guided and mentored, molded and created into the body of the beloved of God.
In our Gospel reading for today, we get an initial glimpse of what that “body of the beloved” looks like for Jesus and those he calls to follow him. In John’s gospel, the story moves rapidly from John the Baptist’s description of Jesus’ baptism to Jesus’ gathering a community of the beloved around him.
Jesus knows them.
Nathanael asked Jesus, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
Jesus’ seeing Nathanael “under the fig tree” may not sound like it’s that big of a deal, either to Jesus or to us. But elsewhere in the Bible spending time under the shade of a tree often means the one who is there is thinking … contemplating … perhaps feeling troubled, or alone, or just simply needing some time out, time away … to meditate, to find solace. So Nathanael’s cutting, perhaps even negative response to Philip’s invitation to “come and see” Jesus … can anything good come out of Nazareth?… Nathanael may not be aiming that word so much at Jesus, as he is being brutally honest about how he feels about his own life.
Jesus calls Nathanael “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” … he’s honest … about himself, life, the whole situation … while others are out working, fishing, mending the nets, Nathanael is under the fig tree, thinking, contemplating, perhaps asking that very question we ask ourselves, “what should I do with my life?”
And Jesus knows him. Jesus knows him and calls to him through Philip’s invitation, come and see. Nathanael gets up from under his fig tree and goes, and feels known through Jesus, known in Jesus, and becomes part of the beloved community.
We are part of that beloved community. As our Prayers of Intercession begin and remind us this morning, “As God’s beloved people made radiant by the light of Christ …” We are God’s beloved, made so through our baptism into Jesus, called by Jesus, gathered by Jesus, known intimately by Jesus, not for his manipulation, but for our transformation ... our transformation, through this worship, through water and Word, bread and wine, the comforting and welcoming presence of our brothers and sisters in Christ … and then, and then, as that beloved community, we are sent forth, as our prayers continue, to “pray for the church, the whole human family, and God’s good creation.”
That prayer can and does take many forms … certainly, asking God to watch over those who especially need our prayers … all those we regularly hear of and mention … the sick, the suffering, the poor and oppressed, the unemployed and underemployed, the discouraged and despondent.
But more … our prayer can and must take other forms … whatever actions we can work on our part, where the gifts God has given to us to share meet the world’s great need … we, beloved by God, beloved of God, are called to go and share this Word about Jesus, into the world … so that others, through us, will “come and see” Jesus.
“What should I do with my life?”
It all starts with our being God’s beloved.
You are known intimately by God. You are loved thoroughly by God.
We are washed and made right with God through our baptism into his Son Jesus Christ … fed and filled in this worship … and then … then, we are sent out, to answer that question, “What should I do with my life?” in as many different ways as there are “us” here … but all, so that others will “come and see” Jesus through us, his beloved ones. Amen.