Sermon for Epiphany 2, Year B

I have three funerals still to officiate at this week, a first draft of a doctoral dissertation to complete, as well as all the usual stuff of ministry and life….so I’m going to try and get ahead of the game a little: here’s a sermon for this coming Sunday. Hope it inspires and encourages you! You are loved and cherished by God – God loves us and knows deeply, and listens to us. Are we speaking enough? Are we listening enough? Blessings for the rest of this week and throughout this Epiphany Season.

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I was once given a mug for my birthday with the name “Jonathan” written on it. Underneath the name was a list with all the characteristics of Jonathan. Uncannily, most of the characteristics fitted me quite well. Uncannily that is, until I browsed amongst similar mugs in a shop and read the characteristics of Brian and Richard and Margaret and Hilary and discovered that they nearly all fitted me too!

The stars in the paper each day can sound very convincing, especially around the turn of the year when your ‘future’ for the coming year appears. Again, the characteristics often seem to fit, until you read everybody else’s predicted future and discover that almost all of it seems to fit.

There are some people who seem to be able to look into your very soul, and read your character just as if they’re reading a book. I wonder whether all of this is some sixth sense, along with astrology and fortune telling and spiritualism, or whether it’s a trick that can be learned, or whether it’s something else…

Perhaps it’s just an ability to listen well. I have come to realise, more profoundly than ever in my ministry as a Hospice chaplain, that the first principle of good listening is to reflect back to the other person in different words, what they’ve just said. In a way, it’s like holding up a mirror. But it’s often greeted with an astonished, “How did you know?” Some people can actually hear what isn’t said – almost being able to listen deeply to the soul. Sadly, many of us fail to listen to each other, to our own inner voice or even to the voice of God. Perhaps we’ve forgotten how to even make spiritual space to hear God.

Jesus was undoubtedly an excellent listener. But his powers went beyond simple listening into the realms of really seeing into a person’s soul. He always seemed to know exactly what a person needed to hear. It might not always have been what that person wanted to hear, but it was always the truth about them, and a truth which may well have been hidden deep in their own unconscious.

So Jesus saw immediately into the hearts and souls of the Pharisees and called them whitewashed sepulchres (Matt. 23:27). And when the rich young man asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him to sell all that he had and feed the poor (Matt.19:16-22). But when a lawyer asked him the same question about eternal life, Jesus didn’t mention money but told him to love God and to love his neighbour (Luke 10:25-28).

Jesus saw into Nathaniel before he’d even met him, and he liked what he saw. “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” Jesus said about Nathaniel.

I think that perhaps one of the most attractive features of Jesus was his ability to instantly know at a very deep level the person to whom he was talking. It was especially attractive because he didn’t reject anybody, no matter what they were like inside.

Jesus knew the rich young man had a tendency to be selfish and greedy, and that his money was more important to him than life itself. But Jesus still offered him the route to eternal life anyway. And when the young man rejected it we’re told that Jesus was sad, because he loved the young man despite all his imperfections.

And the reason that Jesus was so ruthlessly and painfully honest with people, was that the honesty gave those people an opportunity to see themselves as they really were and to do something about it. Honesty holds up a mirror to the real person.

But it’s the most difficult thing in the world to receive real honesty from other people, because it means not only hurt pride, but also relinquishing cherished illusions about ourselves. And that’s a very painful process.

Jesus hasn’t changed. He still has the ability to instantly know us at a very deep level. We may no longer see him face-to-face, but he still sees us under the fig tree and knows all about us. In fact, if God is within us as well as being out there and up there, then he is involved in everything we do, in every thought we think, in every emotion we feel.

We can do nothing apart from God, for he is as much a part of us as breathing. But we can hide from him, by pretending he doesn’t exist, or even by using church and ritual and tradition to keep him in a safe box where he can’t threaten our cherished illusions.

But if it’s eternal life we want, life overflowing with deep joy, then we need to allow Jesus to see us under the fig tree and to know all about us. We need to open ourselves to his deep listening and seeing into our souls, not in fear and trembling that he will discover our worst secrets, but confident that even when he discovers those horrors deep within, he will still love us.

And once we allow him to gaze upon those dark, hidden secrets, they will disappear, because darkness is instantly changed when the light flashes up on it. And secrets are secrets no longer when they’re out in the open.

And then perhaps, Jesus will say to us too, “Behold, here is one in whom there is no deceit.”

 

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