Second Sunday of Epiphany John 1:43-end 1 Samuel 3:1-10Jacob had a dream. He’d run away from home, after his deceit in order to get the blessing for the first-born son from his father Isaac, and which his twin brother Esau resented to say the least… The dream was about a ladder that reached up to heaven, and angels descending and ascending upon it, with the Lord promising to be with Jacob and to bless him and eventually bring him back. It is interesting that Jesus uses similar words when he spots Nathanael – who had been found by Philip – under the fig tree and calls him to be his disciple. It’s as if Jesus is saying that they have qualities that are quite different from those Jacob had displayed in his deceiving his father (Jesus says about Nathanael: ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’); and that because of their openness to him, they will see him in the fullness of his role as mediator between heaven and earth. Even so, Jesus’ words may still come across as rather curious, so what else could he have meant by them?Perhaps the point about Jacob’s ladder is that it was in the place where God was with him, so that he marked the place and called it Bethel, ‘God’s House’. A long time afterwards, Jacob did indeed come back and later again, his descendants had established it, and Bethel became an important sanctuary and place of worship. It was the beginning of the tradition of Jacob’s ladder as a reference to worshiping God in his house, where he would be really present, with angels going up and down, connecting heaven and earth. A lot of John’s Gospel is about the Temple, about the living God, the Word become flesh and living among us. The thought of the Temple goes back to the tent and tabernacle of the story of the Exodus, when the people of Israel were delivered from slavery and led into the Promised Land. Jewish minds would make that connection immediately and Jesus’ words to Nathanael may have been no mystery to them at all. In the context of Jesus calling his disciples and seeing Nathanael already before Philip called him and told him about Jesus, we can see how Jesus is saying something like: ‘You aint seen nothing yet!’ ‘Just because I spotted you much earlier and knew about you already, doesn’t mean that you know everything about me!’ Jesus is not just the Messiah to be expected; he is much more than the people can even begin to imagine. In other words: from now on, the reality that you will see is that which Jacob’s ladder is pointing at: God himself will be revealed to you, in the connection between heaven and earth that Jesus is not only representing but that he simply is.In the story of 1 Samuel 3, when the boy Samuel is being called by God at night, Samuel comes to know the Lord by learning to recognise God’s revelations. He is to become a prophet and to play an important role in the story of God with his people. He too, when he was called that first time, had not ‘seen nothing yet’. But as God’s servant, he was to learn and to serve, according to God’s plan and purpose. For us, living in the 21st century AD, we might wonder how we could hear the voice of the Lord and see him among us. If we have lost sight of his presence or are doubting his care, maybe we can learn from Nathanael and Samuel and say: ‘You are the Son of God!’ and ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’ Amen.
Baptism of Christ Mark 1:4-11 Acts 19:1-7John the Baptizer, or more commonly known as John the Baptist, did not create a great stir in the realms of fashion: clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, he was most suitably dressed, probably, for baptising people in the river Jordan, where he performed his very specific ministry of being a herald to the Messiah, Jesus. He knew the nature of his task very well, and proclaimed it without reluctance: ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ He was not only accurate in his choice of words; he was also very timely, because Jesus appeared ‘in those days’, as it says in Mark’s Gospel, coming from Nazareth to be baptised by John. The renewal movement had already begun before him, and Jesus was baptised into it, ‘to fulfil all righteousness’, as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 3. Now the baptism of John was one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. To repent means to ‘turn around’, indicating a change of direction in people’s lives. That is what John was proclaiming and many came to him to be baptised, realising they needed it. This was not exactly why Jesus was baptised. His baptism, with the Holy Spirit, had a different reason and function. That is what John knew and saw and what is recorded in all four Gospels. For just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, the heavens opened and the Spirit, descending like a dove, rested on him. And a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’God’s voice is heard in the Bible in several instances, mostly at crucial moments, and this was also an important sign, for Jesus himself, but also for the people who witnessed the event. When the Spirit breaks through, Jesus is empowered as the anointed king and affirmed as the Son of God. And it was a crucial moment, because ‘immediately after, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan’. As it says, he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. No mean feat! Jesus’ time of trial and testing is not unusual for a prophet, such as happened to Elijah, for instance. But here it is clear that it is a battle with Satan that had already begun and now is becoming even more focussed. The journey that Jesus has begun is now fixed and his feet are moving ever closer in the direction of the cross. His baptism is not for him alone, but it has significance for the whole world. And there is more. In Acts 19, the Apostle Paul is passing through the interior regions and comes to Ephesus, where he finds some disciples. He notices a difference: these disciples were baptised into John’s baptism, with the baptism of repentance, but not with the Holy Spirit. When Paul explained that there was something missing for them, namely the connection with Jesus himself, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit came upon them. It was not as if their first baptism was wrong; it was just that the fullness of life that God has promised and made available through Jesus had not reached them yet. What Jesus has come to do for us in his ministry of reconciliation and redemption is to give us that full life with him, always, in the power of the Holy Spirit. So that we too may hear those words of God himself: ‘This is my child, beloved and cherished.’ May we all be reminded that we are now God’s children, through his Son, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Link to a resource about spiritual communion during the coronavirus crisis which may be helpful to people:
