Second Sunday of Epiphany John 1:43-end 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Jacob 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.