“I see you.” This meme from the movie Avatar did the rounds for a few months. It seemed to be nourishment for a collective hunger in a world which had descended into anonymity and a penchant for the kind of efficiency that codes citizens by number rather than name.
It was a kind of epiphany – an understanding of something deeply significant in order to be fully human.
The Gospel passage by the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday (John 1:43-51) has two key “I see you” moments.
Philip is first “seen” by Jesus as he begins to gather his close disciples. Philip knows he is “seen” as he immediately goes with Jesus and soon after recruits Nathanael, who is apparently reluctant to acknowledge that “anything good can come out of Nazareth.” Jesus acknowledges and praises his scepticism and “sees” his potential.
Nathanael typifies our natural human response. We fear gullibility within ourselves and develop a protective mask that is only removed when trust is established. The mutual “I see you” epiphany that then takes place between Nathanael and Jesus reveals a trust for which the world starves.
Some call it the silly season. Its those first few weeks of a southern hemisphere January. The office is quiet. I’m at work making use of the downtime from the regular weekly program to engage in some tidying up and planning for what must take place in my final six months here – and beyond. There is a kind of relaxed urgency about all this.
Here is the call of great things to come – both for those we must leave behind and for us as we move into uncharted territory. And the season of Epiphany has burst upon us. Between now and mid-February we are reflecting and responding to the explosion of understanding that the self-revealing of God through the Christ thrusts upon us.
Yet it is an understanding that opens up just how much more territory there is to explore!
Psalm 63:1-8 catches the sense of an awakened thirst seeking satisfaction. These January days are pregnant with expectancy seeking fulfilment because of what is known and what is understood.
Magi by Brian Whelan, This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Tradition usually has the visit of the magi with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh on the final day of Christmas, heralding the season of Epiphany, the celebration of a manifestation, that in Jesus, all that needs to be known about God is revealed. The gifts of these 12 days comprise this epiphany. The challenge now is for someone to set them to the metre and music of the familiar “Partridge in a Pear Tree” carol which has its own debated symbolism.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, God gave humanity:
12 Epiphany
11 Auld Lang Syne – connection
10 Word dwells among us
9 Deep wisdom
8 Fresh start
7 Visionary hope
6 Cosmic outlook
5 Unconstrained love
4 Thankful hearts
3 Wedding clothes
2 Completion
1….and peace on earth to all.
When my friend and colleague Denis returned from interviewing survivors of the Christchurch earthquake one year on, he noted that a common question was “Where is God in all this?” Denis reflected that perhaps the more pertinent question is “Where am I in all this?”
It neatly swings us to a fresh line of questing, particularly in this season of Epiphany that, according to Christian tradition, almost blinds us to the glory of the revealed presence of God. Such presence draws the magi to Bethlehem, the crowds to the Jordan, and Andrew,Peter, Philip,and Nathanael to the side of Jesus.
Such a question hits us when we are confronted with some transcendent moment of awareness, an instant of the numinous, where the universe seems to call our name towards something bigger and greater than our being. For a while, our routine distractions fade into the background as we ponder the ramifications of this wider awareness. Such moments alter career paths, uproot places of living and set new pathways in life.
They manifest differently according to the layers of life we have experienced. Someone neatly divided the average human course into three stages – roughly exploration and discovery (0-30 years), development and consolidation (30-60 years), and reflection and entropy/ascendancy (60+ years)
It occurred to me that such arbitrary categorisation (if such a thing helps) is illustrated by the various ways that the four disciples in today’s text in John 1 respond to their “call”.
Andrew and Simon (Peter) have been with John the Baptist – they witness Jesus’ baptism and John’s feting of him. Their quest is to find out as much as they can and they go after him. He asks them what they are looking for and they wonder obliquiely where he is staying. He invites them to come and see. Seems a bit like the exploration and discovery stage.
Philip is simply called. “Follow me,” Jesus says. And Philip’s mode of following is to catch on quickly to what it’s all about and set out to expand the territory of Jesus’ influence. Philip is the Great Introducer – just about every time we encounter him from this point he is introducing potential disciples. This is a work of development and consolidation.
I imagine Nathanael in a hammock under the fig tree – it is perhaps a metaphor of contemplation. He’s seen a lot of life – been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Philip invites him to meet someone worth talking to. Nathaniel’s response sounds curmudgeonly, skeptical and world weary, but neverthless he goes. He discovers that he is known and the moment of mutual recognition is enought to move him from entropy to ascendancy.
Reflecting on Nathanael, and the possibility that he is responding to this “call” in the latter stages of life, reminded me of this TED talk by Jane Fonda.
So, “Where am I in all this?” may well be the best question of the year.
I remember visiting this site some years ago, but what I recall is the question that I am most often challenged to answer than the details of the geography or “sense of place.”
The question arises again this Sunday as the season of Epiphany leads us to ponder the events surrounding Jesus’ baptism. Why did Jesus compel John to baptise him? Was it even necessary? John baptised people for the “remission of sin” – a kick in the pants that turned them towards embracing the reign of God. Jesus was the epitome of those who were oriented this way – so no wonder John balked at his request, wishing to submit to being baptised by Jesus instead.
So why?
Jesus’ enigmatic answer is that his baptism was necessary “to fulfill all righteousness.” And indeed it was sealed by divine signs of approval in the dove and the Voice. Read the whole account here. But what does “to fulfill all righteousness” mean? If we can find a satisfying answer to this, we have answered the opening question.
I won’t go into it here but I think the answer is more widely focused than what Christology (theology of the person of Jesus) – as important as it is – can answer. Somehow it catches up John, the popular movement that surrounded him, the story of Israel, the role Jesus is now beginning to play and an invitation that bridges cultures and millenia. Hopefully I’ll work it out by Sunday!
Some call it the silly season. Its those first few weeks of a southern hemisphere January. The office is quiet. I’m at work making use of the downtime from the regular weekly program to engage in some tidying up and planning for what must take place in my final six months here – and beyond. There is a kind of relaxed urgency about all this.
