Lord, you are revealed as the Christ, our Saviour – come to us now and help us to see you as you really are, God of God, and Light of Light. Amen.
It’s about 1000 years before Christ and things have become a bit slip-shod at the Temple of Shiloh.
The story of Samuel from the OT today is a dramatic one. As you’ll know I’m sure – he is the miracle child born to his mother Hannah and father Elkanah. Hannah, unable to have children, visits the Temple at Shiloh, and prays so fervently and passionately for the gift of a child that the old priest there, Eli, thinks she is drunk. Eli adds insult to her injury and does her a grave injustice.
Later, when she becomes pregnant, in her joy at her prayers being answered, Hannah sings a song of exaltation – a song of shame turned to delight, of her heart ache becoming joy – of the lowly and despised being raised up by God – Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ most likely was inspired from her knowledge of Hannah’s much earlier song.
And Hannah’s generous response to this gift of God – her heart’s desire – is to promise to give the child back to God, to become a servant in the Temple, to the very same priest Eli, who had so maligned her.
In a similar way to Mary later – Hannah recognises that this child is of God and is destined for great work for God’s people.
While still a little boy, Samuel goes to live at the Temple and every year Hannah lovingly makes him a new robe – each one of course larger than the last – and she takes it to him on the one time in the year she is able to see her precious child, who, is now, as we heard at the beginning of the reading, ‘ministering in the Temple to the Lord, under Eli’s direction and teaching.
Eli is of the priestly tribe of Aaron and has been in charge of the Temple at Shiloh with his sons expected to carry on this sacred priesthood. However, the sons of Eli are a disgrace and Eli cannot seem to keep them in order.
In many ways all this is a bit like a soap opera, or a sitcom…but perhaps more of a black comedy. In today’s reading we hear how Eli the old priest is almost blind, and the lamp of the temple is growing dim…
It’s a metaphor for a people who are losing sight of God and are deaf and blind to his presence. With supreme understated irony the writer states that the Word of the Lord was rare in those days – visions were not widespread.
It sounds as if there was a lack of these things coming from God – but the reality is, it is Eli and his sons who are not listening or open to the Holy Spirit anymore. The house of Eli is about to fall and the Temple at Shiloh – one of the early centres of worship for the Israelites, long before the Temple in Jerusalem is built – is shaken to it’s foundations.
But someone is listening and attentive.
While Eli slumbers it is Samuel who hears the Lord calling him. Samuel is still only a young child, and does not realise it is God’s voice – rather he thinks its Eli who has called him and runs to him.
The lamp of the Temple has not yet gone out – there is hope – for the child hears the voice of the Lord, and Eli, even in his blindness and weakness, eventually understands what is going on and tells Samuel it is God calling him. The next time the Lord calls, Samuel says, as Eli has instructed him, ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’
What God then tells him is not good news for Eli and his sons – and Eli, to give him his due, does not flinch from what he can see is his fate.
God is about to do a new thing, to make a new start – and he has chosen a child to be the means of this.
Fast forward a 1000 years and here is another child, another miraculous birth, another new beginning and a shake-up of the old regime.
And a little further on – in today’s Gospel, here is Jesus, now grown in stature, strong in the Spirit and beginning his ministry. To do his work he will need help, and so he begins to call men and women to follow him as his disciples.
He goes to an unlikely place and calls unlikely people – he goes to Galilee, a fishing region, Bethsaida and Capernaum, small towns with not much going for them other than a strong smell of fish!
Mind you – this fishiness meant business and significance in 1st Century Palestine, and it also meant a lot of ordinary people, workers, families, children too.
And Jesus meets Philip and says ‘Follow me’ – just like God calling Samuel – and Philip follows, and then in his turn, goes to his friend Nathanael and says to him ‘Come and see.’
What Nathanael sees is remarkable!
Unlike the old priest Eli but very like Samuel, and very like the Magi, from our readings last week, Nathanael sees fully and clearly who it is who is calling him – he sees that here is God, here is a King.
In this season of Epiphany we see how Jesus is revealed as the one we are all waiting for – so that we too can see fully and clearly who he really is, and so follow him without hesitation and without doubt.
God calls Samuel, and Jesus calls his disciples – and now 2000 years on he calls us today ‘Come & See’
And what is it we see?
Great and glorious and wondrous things – heaven opened, the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
The Temple at Shiloh was one of the ancient sites of worship – another at Bethel was where Jacob dreamt of a ladder reaching up to heaven with angels going up and down upon it – a highway, a bridge between heaven and earth.
Jesus, the Christ Child, Emmanuel, God-with-us is now that bridge, the link between heaven and earth, between us and God.
And it is this Jesus who calls us today – just as God called Samuel, and Jesus called the disciples, men and women, adults and children, to know him, to see him, to follow him – the one who is God who makes all thing new, who heals the broken-hearted, who sets the captives free, who changes the darkness of death into the brightness of a new dawn.
And who calls us, to call others ‘Come & See.’
Service: Reverend Michelle Dalliston. 14th January 2023. (St Luke’s Church Peterborough UK)
Readings: 1 Samuel 3.1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139.1-5, 12-18 (139.1-9); Revelation 5.1-10; John 1.43-end