Rev. Christine Dudley

With thanksgiving for God's Spirit which is always present, whether we know it or not, let us begin this time of reflection with heartfelt prayer:

We have come to see to you, O God,
to experience your presence
surrounding us in this community of faith.
We hope to feel the warmth of your love
in the smiles of children, in the sweetness of song,
revealed in sacred story and in the earnestness of prayer.
We come desiring to know you,
not only with our minds, but with our whole self.
Open us that we might understand your wisdom
and guide us in your ways of love and understanding.
In Jesus' name we gather and offer ourselves
in your service. Amen

This morning's scripture stories contain many wonderful themes to reflect upon. The stories from 1 Samuel and John are "Call Stories" which are rich with detail and metaphor. In 1 Samuel, a young boy, Samuel, experiences a call from God which he does not understand at first but with the help of his mentor, Eli, he recognizes God's call and he responds. In the gospel passage, Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael. Philip heeds the call quickly but Nathanael is skeptical. Philip invites Nathanael to meet Jesus and Nathanael experiences Jesus as knowing him in a profound and mystical way. Call and response is the overarching theme of these two stories but the sub-theme which caught my attention this week is that of seeing and listening with the heart of faith rather than with the regular senses. 1 Samuel notes at the beginning of today's passage, "The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out..." A person reading this passage today might think that Eli was blind in a physical sense only but Eli's contemporaries would have known that with corruption and scandal dogging his family, Eli's time as a prophet had past and it was time for him to pave the way for a new prophet. And so, Eli, with his failing spiritual vision, helps Samuel to see God's call, to listen carefully and to respond with faith. The gospel story also has the invitation to see with faith. Philip says to Nathanael, come and see, then Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under a fig tree (a symbol for Israel) and that Nathanael will see heaven opened if he responds to his call.

Each of these stories speak about vision, or lack of vision, and offer the invitation to respond to God's call and see for ourselves; to see with the eyes of faith.

Psalm 139, on which I will now concentrate the focus of my reflection, proclaims in poetic fashion God's faithful and loving presence and intimate involvement in human life. The psalmist understands that God sees and knows him intimately and with a profound and faithful love is his constant companion. At the end of the psalm the writer requests that God watch him closely, lest he follow the wrong path, and asks to be guided in God's way forever.

Psalm 139 is a rich and complex look at the nature of God and God's relationship with human beings. God is both transcendent and immanent. Transcendent, as a wondrous and mysterious creator who can never be fully known by human understanding; and immanent, as an intimately close companion who knows and understands everything about us, will never abandon us, and loves us despite our shortcomings.

I remember clearly, at the beginning of my theological studies wrestling with whether or not God was transcendent or immanent. It seems funny to me now that it did not occur to me that God could be both but I remember vividly the moment of revelation when I realized that God was indeed both transcendent and immanent. In that moment, I understood that God is present not only in the perfection and beauty of creation but also in the suffering and struggles, the pain and sorrow of human existence. And I also realized that the only limits that God had were within the limits of my own imagination. I realize now that I could have come to that conclusion much more quickly if I had spent some time with Psalm 139; it's all there for those with the eyes of faith to see.

I borrowed David's new resource book, Feasting on the Word, this week and found this interesting commentary on Psalm 139:

"Greek philosophical categories have done a disservice to Christian theology by conceiving God as superlative, unchanging perfection. They present an aloof, static God far removed from the cares and affairs of finite human beings. The psalmist, on the other hand, offers a Jewish vision of God as intimately and profoundly concerned as well as transcendent." (Year B, Volume 1, page 248)

When I read this, I immediately thought of all the hymns I learned as I was growing up which reflected God's transcendence. The first line of one hymn which came readily to mind is, "Immortal, invisible, God only wise; in light inaccessible hid from our eyes; most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, almighty victorious, thy great name we praise." While there is nothing wrong with hymns that speak of God as transcendent the error comes when there are not an equal number of hymns which speak of God's immanence. It does not surprise me now to remember that my favourite childhood hymn was "This Is My Father's World" from the Blue Hymnary. This was the only hymn, that I knew of as a child, which spoke of God's presence being known and experienced in the everyday occurrences of life, "... in the rustling grass I hear God pass, God speaks to me everywhere." Interestingly, we sang this hymn last week with it's new title, "This Is God's Wondrous World" and slightly revised words from Voices United. Thankfully, today there are many hymns in our hymn books which speak of God's presence and active involvement in our lives and in our world.

The apostle, Paul, captures the essence of Psalm 139 in a Christian context in his letter to the early Christian Church in Rome. Paul says that, "I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus..." (Romans 8:38-39)

God knows and loves us, nothing can separate us from the love of God through the persistent loving actions of Christ and others. That is a bold statement which I personally believe but I pondered it this week and wondered if it could always be true. And, without being able to offer definitive proof I simply offer an example so powerful as to leave me personally content with the veracity of this claim.

I offer, as example, the life of Helen Keller and the faithful persistent love of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Helen Keller was born a normal healthy child in 1880. When Helen was 18 months old an illness left her completely blind and deaf. Helen was trapped in a world of silent darkness with little understanding of the world around her and no way to communicate with others or have others communicate with her. Helen's parents loved her and did the best they could for her but she was like a wild animal trapped in the body of a small child. When Helen was nearly seven years old, a 20 year old graduate from the Perkins School for the Blind, named Annie Sullivan, came to live with the Kellers and became Helen's teacher. In what was an amazing testament to the power of love and the stubborn faith of Annie Sullivan, Helen began to learn sign language through the sense of touch as Annie painstakingly repeated signed letters on Helen's open palm. Through constant and determined work Helen gradually began to connect the words she was learning with objects and then with feelings and relationships. Later when Helen learned to read books in Braille a whole new world of understanding and knowledge opened up to her. As long as she lived, Annie was Helen's constant companion assisting Helen in every aspect of her life including a university education, career as a writer, advocate and lecturer. After Annie's death in 1936, Helen continued her work with the assistance of others. When Helen died, in 1968, a few weeks short of her 88th birthday, she was buried, as she had requested, beside her beloved teacher and companion.

I believe that Annie Sullivan was the embodiment of the persistent and steadfast love of God which reached out again and again to Helen. I'll share just a few of Helen Keller's quotes which reveal some of her beliefs and understanding of God which are congruent with the psalmist's experience:

"It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears."
"Once I knew only darkness and stillness...my life was without past or future...but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living."
"Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness."
"Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."
"What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me."
"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."

And, returning for a moment to the commentary on Psalm 139 in Feasting on the Word, two excerpts which I found illuminating:

"Psalm 139 invites us to receive an identity rooted not in the things we say about ourselves or the labels others assign to us, but in the One who knows us more deeply and more lovingly that we could ever know ourselves. ...Because the God who knows us thoroughly loves us fully, our lives have a worth that cannot be taken from us - by others or ourselves. The value of our lives does not come from what we achieve or possess or what others may think of us. It comes from the God who knows and names us, from whose steadfast love nothing in all of creation can ever separate us." (Year B, Volume 1, page 252)

And so, knowing ourselves to be loved and blessed by God we can ask ourselves, "How can we be God's presence to others as individuals and as a community of faith?" Like God in Psalm 139 and Annie Sullivan in the life of Helen Keller, what are the ways in which our steadfast and faithful love is known to others? Are we persistent in our faith even when the obstacles are great and we feel discouraged? And, in what ways does our community of faith reflect the presence of God in our lives?

These are questions not to be answered glibly but pondered at length and so I leave them with you for your own reflection. I'll also leave you with my favourite quote from Helen Keller which is both affirmation and blessing:

I believe that God is in me
as the sun is in the colour
and fragrance of a flower,
the Light in my darkness,
the Voice in my silence.

May it be so for each of us, this day and always. Amen