PSA 15 January 2012

Ken Howcroft. “Being Seen and Seeing Truly”. A sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany. When Jesus calls Simon he renames him Peter to show the role he was to play as the rock on which the other disciples will be built, just like after Jacob the cheat discovered that you cannot run away from people, from yourself or still less from God and he was in turn cheated but committed himself to return and take up his role, he was renamed Israel, the one who see God. When Jesus encounters Nathanael, he does not rename him: he is already a gift of God. Moreover he is not like Jacob, but a real Israelite. he sees things clearly and tells them bluntly: can anything good come out of places like Nazareth? But like Philip had promised him, everything they had learnt about God seemed to make sense when you met Jesus. Nathanael, a true Israelite, sees that Jesus is his king, the King of Israel. Jesus says that like Jacob he will see ladder of communication from God to people on earth. But the ladder will come down now to Jesus not Israel. And at the same time, Jesus himself will be the ladder down which God’s communication will come. The readings were 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 and John 1:43-51.