Epiphanies: Samuel, Philip, Nathanael and Martin by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Epiphany 2 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend
January 18, 2015
1 Samuel 3: 1-20; John 1:43-51
I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation shall reach to the end of the earth. Isaiah 40:6b (Opening Sentence for Morning Prayer in Epiphany).
Epiphanies. That’s what this season is about. Bringing light where there was darkness. Bringing clarity where there was confusion. In our Christian tradition, epiphanies are events that in one way or another make known to those witnessing them that God has entered into their space, that God is present and active in the world. More broadly, the word “epiphany” has come to mean any event or circumstance that draws us to understand something or someone in a new way.
Our passages from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament this morning each contain stories of epiphanies. In the first story, we find the young man, Samuel, a servant in the temple at Shiloh. Samuel was the son of Elkanah and Hannah, who, being childless, had prayed to the Lord that if she was ever to be blessed with a son she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service. When she bore a son – this was her own epiphany -- she named him Samuel, meaning name of God or God has heard. As soon as he was weaned, she brought him to the Temple, as promised, to be raised by Eli, the high priest. We find Eli, who by this time was quite old, in his room, while the boy Samuel is sleeping actually in the Temple, near the Ark of the Covenant. Suddenly Samuel hears a voice: Samuel! Samuel! Thinking it is his beloved teacher, he responds, Here I am, and runs to see what Eli wants. But Eli hasn’t called him, and he sends Samuel back into the Temple. Two more times this happens, and on the third time, Eli – who in his own way has forgotten how to hear the Lord -- realizes that it must be the Lord calling Samuel. So he instructs the young Samuel on what to say if it happens again. Sure enough, the Lord calls a fourth time: Samuel! Samuel! This time Samuel responds as Eli has instructed him, Speak, for your servant is listening. And what he hears, as the passage puts it, will make both ears of those who hear it tingle: That his beloved teacher, Eli, along with his two disreputable sons, will soon be dead – the two sons for their treachery, and Eli for failing to do anything about it. And yet, the importance of the announcement is not so much one of judgment as to send the message to Samuel that he will be the one charged with being the Lord’s agent in doing a new thing with God’s chosen people; and this will be a good thing because it will result in nothing less than the renewal of his nation. This is the first of many times that The Lord will speak directly to Samuel, and from this time on Samuel will understand himself and God’s purpose for that life in a totally new way.
Then we turn to our Gospel and the epiphanies of Philip and Nathanael. Jesus, for no apparent reason, has decided to go to Galilee on his way back from his baptism in the River Jordan. On his way he sees Philip, about whom we don’t a lot except that he was probably a disciple of John the Baptist. Jesus asks him to follow him – and lo and behold, he does. Then Philip goes and finds his friend, Nathanael who, being from Cana, wonders if anything good can ever come out of Nazareth. As it turns out, Nathanael had been sitting under a fig tree that very day, reading about the patriarch Jacob and his dream of the ladder going between heaven and earth and angels ascending and descending up and down the ladder. He had begun to wonder if this new teacher from Nazareth really could be the long-expected Messiah for whom he and Philip had been waiting. So when Philip says to him, Come and see, he goes along. And Jesus, reading Nathanael’s thoughts, speaks to him and reveals what Nathanael was thinking. Nathanael is so astonished that he blurts out, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. As author Joan Camay writes, it’s as though Jesus said to him, You are not believing in me because I saw you under the fig tree. You are believing because you have been wrestling with your doubts – you are a true son of Jacob. Jacob saw a ladder between earth and heaven and angels going up and down it. You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Now you are looking at him of whom that ladder is just a picture. You are seeing Him who is the link between heaven and earth. The lives of Philip and Nathanael were forever changed, and they certainly did not get any easier. They found what they were seeking – the Messiah -- but that discovery would lead them to a very different destination than they had imagined.
On this weekend when we commemorate the work of the 20th century prophet Martin Luther King, Jr., we would do well to recall what Dr. King would later describe as his own epiphany. Well before the March on Washington or his “I have a Dream” speech, there was a defining moment for him that came past midnight, in a kitchen, at 309 South Jackson Street, in Montgomery, Alabama, which served as home to the King family from 1954 to 1960. The year was 1956, and King was 27 years old, two years into his service as pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Over the past month, King had been a leader in the Montgomery bus boycott, a decision that set off a series of death threats delivered via mail and phone to his residence — as many as 30 to 40 calls daily, often at night. Normally, King could put the phone down and go back to sleep. But one call, on the night of January 27, 1956, stood out. As King’s wife, Coretta, and 10-week-old daughter, Yolanda, slept in the bedroom nearby, the voice on the other end of the line said: “N, we’re tired of your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow up your house and blow your brains out.” Shaken, King went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. But soon he buried his face in his hands and began to pray aloud: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right … But … I must confess … I’m losing my courage.” King later explained what happened next: “I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.’” And with that, his fears ceased. But the threats did not. Several days later, around 9 p.m., a bomb exploded on the front steps of his house. No one inside was hurt, but the marks of the shrapnel can still be seen on the side of the house.
That moment of decision for Dr. King — of whether to continue with the Montgomery bus boycott that had just gotten underway — can tell us a lot about the nature of epiphanies. Today, Shirley Cherry keeps the story of Dr. King’s epiphany alive as tour manager of what has now become Dexter Parsonage Museum. “People need to keep in mind, Martin Luther King didn’t ride buses,” Cherry says. “He never had to ride buses; he didn’t come from that kind of background. But he cared about people who did … What happened that night, in the kitchen, was a lesson for all of us. It’s a lesson in commitment and obedience.”
Real epiphanies are not always clear; they often require discernment. Real epiphanies are also frequently not easy; even when they are “good news” they may complicate or add a burden to our lives instead of making them easier. Sometimes, they hand us the moral duty to take up someone else’s burden in order that God’s purposes may be achieved. What can we learn from the stories of Samuel, Philip, Nathanael and Martin Luther King, Jr? I think there at least three important lessons we can draw:
- An epiphany first of all involves expecting that God does indeed speak to us and then listening for God’s voice or looking for God at work. If we’re not paying attention, then we’re not going to be aware of god’s presence or what God is saying. And once aware, we need to actively discern what God is saying or doing. If we are not listening – to God, to ourselves, and to each other – we have little chance of picking up on that new thing that God is trying to do.
- An epiphany almost always involves taking that information and then coming to a new understanding of ourselves, who we are in relation to other people and the world around us, and who we are in relation to our God.
- An epiphany demands a response to the call. In Samuel’s case, he went from being the child servant of Eli to being a prophet for the people of Israel, who would usher in a new leadership for Israel. For Philip and Nathanael, they went from being faithful Jews waiting for the Messiah to being at the forefront of a movement that would see a radical re-interpretation of their Jewish belief system. For Dr. King, it meant taking the step from being a leader of a local protest to being the face of a national movement that would mark the beginning – and only a beginning – of moving the people of the United States toward a more complete understanding of the term “equality.”
What we learn from today’s lessons is what Shirley Cherry called a lesson in commitment and obedience. It is not enough to hear God’s call and believe. The God who engaged the world in the person of Jesus Christ summons each of us – as God did with Samuel, Philip, Nathanael and Martin – to believe in that call, to believe that it is authentic, and to act upon it in a way that makes a difference in God’s kingdom.
Each of us received our call at our baptism, which was, for most of us, before we could discern the sound of God’s voice. Any of us made a mature affirmation of that faith in confirmation. This morning’s lessons challenge us to look in the mirror and examine our lives: Do we really believe that God is still speaking and acting? Are we listening for God? Where in our lives have we discerned God’s voice? What has God been saying to us? What have we done with that call? Have we been a game changer for God? Or have we turned and walked the other way when we had a chance to make a difference?
My prayer for each of us, for us as the gathered community of God, and for us as citizens of this nation, is that we expect God to speak to us; that we be attentive to God’s voice, that we approach without fear that new thing towards which God is nudging us; and that we follow with courage where God leads.
And may all of God’s people say: AMEN!