SERMON, JANUARY 18, 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139; John 1:43-51

I wonder if you know any skeptics. My world seems to be full of them—especially I know a lot of people who are skeptical about Christianity and organized religion. They have their doubts about the claims that Christians make for Jesus; or maybe they aren’t sure there is a God at all. Actually when it comes to the institution of the church they don’t have doubts—they flat out reject it.

And God knows if you are a thinking person you have to have your own set of doubts—your own skepticism about the church as institution. It isn’t hard to come up with a litany of reasons to stay away from it. Just consider the history. Just consider our current state of disagreements and disaffections. We live in a time when the underside of institutions—churchly and otherwise—has been exposed—and the unquestioned loyalties of the 1950s are long gone. We live in an age of institutional skepticism.

Just this week I got a long email from a young man I haven’t seen in years. He is my godson, now in his in early forties. He has just returned to church after many years of absence. He told me that the hardest part of worship is saying the creed. He just doesn’t believe it all. He has his doubts about it. Maybe he even knows some of the not too pretty history of political machinations that lie behind its adoption. Maybe. In any case he can’t get his brain around it all—he doesn’t really give what I would call intellectual assent to all the affirmations of the creed.

He isn’t the only one. Our churches are filled with people who find the creed to be a strange, foreign document. They aren’t sure they believe every line of it—or think that whatever it meant originally is not how they personally would interpret the words. They have their doubts. Some are skeptical. I would say that this is the case in most congregations—at least it has been so in those I’ve served.

Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister and wonderful writer once said this about doubt: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (1)

Samuel and Nathanael have their doubts in our stories this morning. Samuel, the boy given to the priest Eli by his mother, and dedicated to serve in the temple, hears the voice of God calling him by name. But even though he is where he is (the temple) and even though he’s been serving God day and night, he doesn’t recognize the voice he hears. He is caught off-guard by the voice of God in the place where we might expect that voice. The God he has been serving he just doesn’t know. His wonderings send him to Eli to see if he is the one calling. After all that makes the most sense, doesn’t it? Finally, Eli, blind as he is, realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to listen.

Nathanael’s doubts spring from his assumptions. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks. He’s made his judgments about that little nothing place and its people. He judges Jesus, without knowing him. He judges him on the basis of his judgments about where he comes from. This kind of thinking is rampant in our own day—we know about this, don’t we. Judging folks on the basis of where they come from—on their origins. The whole gospel of John really is an inquiry into this very question. People who reject Jesus are those who judge him on his appearances, on what they know of his origins. They reject him because he has no stature in the religious world—he’s a nobody from no where acting like he’s a somebody from somewhere. The truth is that the folks doing the judging don’t know half the story. Jesus’ origins are not what they think, and they’ve forgotten that God is one known for picking the surprising, no-account person for God’s work.

The thing about Nathanael’s skepticism is that it moves him to investigate—to inquire. The invitation from Philip is simple and direct: ”Come and see.” And rather than draw back, go the other way, Nathanael decides to go and see for himself. This is where Fred Buechner’s words about doubt hit home: the ants in the pants that keep you awake and moving. I know some skeptics who ignore that discomfort—who think by drawing back—by simple rejection they are honoring their skepticism. They get stuck. It’s easy to do.

I’ve done it myself. Made judgments about people based on their look, their origins, their language—whatever. Then I draw back and my skepticism, my judgments remain in place. Unexamined really. I’m stuck. It’s the daring to draw near that can open me to new life. It’s the acceptance of the invitation, ”Come and see,” that can lead to new insight. I think of many years ago when for the first time I entered a prison to visit a man there—a man I didn’t know. His mother had invited me to go and see him. My judgments and fears filled me almost to my eyeballs. But by the time I’d finished my visit, I knew that I shared a lot in common with the man I’d visited. Oh, we had our differences, but we had much in common. I’d found some much needed humility, as well as new life and relationship where I’d expected none. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You’d be surprised.

Our passages this morning have much to tell us about God and God’s call: in both stories there are doubts, wonderings, skepticism; in both someone else helps the person understand who is calling—someone else invites the person to “come and see” to “come and listen.” You and I live in a time when just about everybody has a cell phone or a blue tooth in their ear. I get calls from robots who speak my name. We’re overwhelmed by calls—how to distinguish among the voices? How to keep from getting immune to all? It certainly helps to be in community—to ask our spiritual friends and elders for their input—to worship together, sing and pray together, attune our ears, open our hearts to God and God’s ways. All of these help.

But the most important part of the story of Nathanael is that Jesus calls him in his skepticism, in his judgment, and invites him into relationship. We tend to think that Nathanael became a follower of Jesus because of what he saw in Jesus. And this may be so. But we can also attend to what Jesus saw in Nathanael. How Jesus first saw Nathanael. First saw and first loved him—doubts and all.

Psalm 139 sings of how God has known us since before we were made, knit us together in our mother’s womb, it says. This isn’t about predestination. This is a song of love responding to the deepest truth of all that we are known and loved by God first. Our response of love is just that: a response. Nathanael saw Jesus as the Son of God because Jesus had seen Nathanael and loved him first. This is what we most deeply desire and long for—to be fully known and loved. It is also perhaps the scariest of our desires. We so often draw back in fear that being fully known we will NOT be loved. But that is NOT how divine love works.

The Creed, the hymns, the prayer, the words of our communion service are all kind of fumbling efforts on our part to express that incredible love that God has for us. None of those words do it justice. None of our words can capture this mystery. The Gospel of John is filled with these words about Jesus: son of God, Lamb of God, King of Israel—on and on they spill out. These may be words that make our brains spin, words we cannot give our intellectual assent to. Words we doubt, we wonder about.

But faith really is not just about intellectual assent—its about who we give our hearts to. With whom will we throw in our lot? With whom do we want to relate? Being in the company of? Travel with? Nathanael lets his doubt lead him to come and see. He thinks he’s seen the fullness of who Jesus is in Jesus’ knowing him from an impossible distance. Jesus tells him he ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This love will transfigure both of them. And us, as well. _______________ (1) Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper & Row, 1973.