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| Hatlem Meer |
1/11
Our Bible Study group tonight is looking at the Gospel text for next Sunday, January 17, the second Sunday in Epiphany. John 1: 41-53 is John’s telling of the calling of Jesus’ first disciples. It immediately follows Jesus’ baptism story, though this telling does not specifically have John baptize Jesus. Only in this telling are these first called disciples of John. (Russ of course is sure Jesus was a disciple of John.) Jesus has travelled from Bethany outside Jerusalem to Bethsaida on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. The main character here is Nathanael, who only appears in John. And note that Jesus is identified as “son of Joseph,” suggesting that there was a belief that Joseph was Jesus’ father. Nathanael jokes”what good can come out of Nazareth?” As it was a small, secluded, backwater kind of town. Jesus responds calling Nathanael an “Israelite without deceit”…which Marsha sees as a reference to Nathanel being guileless.
Jesus is also setting up a kind of pun. As the first to be named Israel was Jacob, the classic deceitful trickster. Jesus moves form there to an image of himself as Jacob’s ladder (51) with angels going back and forth to heaven. As Stephen Mitchell saw Jacob himself as the ladder, Jesus there becomes the ladder connecting heaven and earth, and thus the son of man, the human one. (The Jacob’s ladder story, Genesis 28:12, was my text when I peached the sermon for Congregational Sim Shalom at Thanksgiving shabbat. (http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2020/11/living-in-coronavirusworld-217.html )
A phrase that appears several times in this passage is “come and see.” Jesus invitation is if you want to know what he is about, you have to come and see, and then it will be clear. Show, not tell as they say.
We note that:
*John points out Jesus to his disciples as the “lamb of God” or Passover lamb, not clear whether Jesus was ready for that or not.
* John says that he did not know Jesus before but when he saw the dove, he knew. While some of us see this as though this story did not have the two as cousins, as in Mathew, Amber Lee points out that this could simply be a new insight into Jesus reality, as in, he didn’t know that. As Epiphany is about revelation or getting it, this is a perfect Epiphany story because it reveals Jesus. He accepts Nathanel’s skepticism and responds, in essence, you ain’t seen nothin yet.
That seeing is very important to Marsha. She points out that Nathanael follows because Jesus seems him. Maybe because he’s the kind of guy no one sees. We wonder about how many of those who stormed the capitol did so because they do not feel seen. In my work with homeless people, it’s clear that the worst part of being homeless is that you become invisible, no longer seen. And as their invisibility continues, their connection to reality slips further and further away. My friend Marc Greenberg of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing always said that more important than giving money is seeing people, affirming their humanity.
This passage comes up on the weekend before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday. It’s a story of calling. Fredrick Buechner suggest we should sing “Adeste Fidelis” again this weekend, “O Come All Ye Faithful…”
As I ponder the events of last week, I think of Gandolf’s words to Frodo in Lord of the Rings…”We cannot choose the time we live in. We can only choose what we do with the time we are given.”
Cone and see. Come and see,
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| the last Santa... |
On a tech trip to Chelsea I see one last Santa Claus…has he been stranded? Stayed too long at a Russian Christmas celebration?…at a Mexican food truck….
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| the trees come down.. |
The Christmas display across from Morningside Park is coming down…
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“Drinking Religiously” out of 4 Saints Brewery in Asheboro, North Carolina begins with our convener sharing the logo of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign, and asks what it brings to mind. Sadly, it immediately conjures up images of the siege of the Capitol last week. We reflect on the meaning of poor. We recognize that all of us in the conversation, compared to people the world around, are privileged. Even as I contemplate the thin line between making it and not and how vulnerable, I, most of us are. How do we identify? How do we understand abundance?
How do the people who invaded the Capitol understand themselves? I am aware and puzzled by the fact that friends of mine from the Occupy movement have been involved. They see the response to Covid as tyranny, staking away freedom. They have. Somehow fallen sway to Qanon fantasies. And see this invasion as somehow a continuation of Occupy Wall Street. I struggle with this. I guess once you mistrust authority, it can just keep going.Once you believe on conspiracies, it’s open game. And in this motley crew are people who legitimately been left behind and been manipulated like street gangs of late Weimar Germany. I am still not sure where we go with all this…
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