Sermon — January 17, 2021

The Rev. Greg Johnston

I think young Samuel would have made a good Episcopalian. He’s always ready. He’s always there to help. When he hears the call, he says, “Here I am!” He’s exactly the kind of person you want on your Vestry.

Like many characters in the Bible, Samuel had had something of a miraculous birth; and his mother promised God that, in exchange for the gift of a child, she would make sure that Samuel’s life was dedicated to God. So when he was a young boy, he went up to the temple at Shiloh to serve under the priest Eli. Samuel’s clearly learned how to be a good member of a religious community. Even in the night, he’s bubbling with energy and activity. He hears someone calling his name, and assumes it must be Eli; there’s no one else around. Maybe a lamp needs to be trimmed. Maybe a candle needs to be lit. Maybe someone needs to form a committee! So he runs up to his priest, ready to help: “Here I am! You called me.” He springs into action like a faithful member of any small church today.

But Eli says: Wasn’t me. You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.

And so he does, but he hears the voice again, and again he’s ready for action. “Here I am! You called me.”

And again, Eli says: No. It wasn’t me. Go back to sleep.

And then a third time—because in every human story, there must be three times—a third time Samuel hears a voice calling his name, and this time he’s probably hardly even fallen asleep, but he goes back to his seemingly-forgetful guardian and, with what I can only imagine is a thin layer of politeness spread over increasing frustration and confusion, he deploys his favorite phrase: “Here I am! …You called me.”

And Samuel still hasn’t realized what’s going on, because “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (1 Sam. 3:7) But Eli has. So Eli says to him, “Go lie down. If you’re called again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (1 Sam. 3:9)

And he does. And oh, what a difference it makes. All along, he’s been hearing his name being called and immediately jumping into action. Samuel assumes that he knows what’s going on. He assumes that he knows what needs to be done. He hears a voice speaking out of the Ark of the Covenant itself, and he leaps into action, ready to be busy somewhere else with important temple business.

But now he stops, and actually answers the call. “Samuel! Samuel!” the voice cries out. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (1 Sam. 3:10) And the patient voice of God finally gets to have its say.

In Hebrew, God uses nearly the same phrase that Samuel’s been relying on all along. Samuel says over and over again, Hineni, Hineni, Hineni—“Here I am; Here I am; Here I am.” What do you want me to do? And God turns it around on him: Hine anoki–“Here I am, doing such a thing in Israel that’ll make your ears tingle.” (1 Sam. 3:11)

And Samuel finally hears the word of the Lord.

It’s not until Samuel stops trying to respond and really listens that he understands what’s going on. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s not until Samuel stops trying to do something for God that he learns what God is going to do through him. The moment he gives up his preconceptions about what it means to serve in the temple of God is the moment he learns what it really means to become a servant of God. He’s not meant to help Eli with little tasks around the church forever. He’s been set aside for something more.

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We see that same moment of transition in a second call story this morning, in the call of Nathanael to be one of the first followers of Jesus. Samuel’s assumptions about what it means to serve God are industrious and helpful, even if they distract him from what God is really trying to say. Nathanael, on the other hand, is kind of a jerk.

“We’ve found the Messiah!” Philip tells his friend. And Nathanael skeptically replies, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:45) Rude. Nathanael’s just recycling a city-dweller’s disdain for a small-town boy; this is what John’s trying to tell us when he says he comes from Bethsaida, a bigger city down the road from Nazareth.

But his friend Philip insists. “Come and see.” (John 1:47) And Nathanael does. The results are an exaggerated comedy. Jesus offers a casual compliment—“Here’s an good honest Israelite, if I’ve ever seen one”—and Nathanael is shocked. “Where do you know me from?” He asks. “I saw you over there under the fig tree, before Philip called you.” (Before, in other words, you were just being rude.) And Nathanael, inexplicably, loses his mind: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49)

I’ll admit that I was baffled as to what was going on in this story. What on earth is going on to transform Nathanael’s casual skepticism into such an incredible statement of faith, so early on in Jesus’ ministry? (This is only chapter one of the Gospel of John!) I consulted my various study bibles and commentaries, finding nothing satisfying, and eventually I ended up deep in the commentary written by Raymond Brown, an absolute prince among 20^th-century Biblical scholars and the expert on the Gospel of John. He surveys a number of wild theories about where the fig tree was and what it means and even what Nathanael was doing under it that was so remarkable, and concludes simply: “We are far from exhausting the suggestions, all of which are pure speculation.”^[1]

As dumbfounding as Nathanael’s faith may be to the modern scholar, though, I think Samuel’s story helps make it clear. Why was Nathanael so skeptical about Jesus? Because, like the young Samuel at the beginning of that fateful night, he “did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (1 Sam. 3:7)

It’s not that Jesus said anything particularly profound. It’s not that he saw deep into Nathanael’s heart and told him his deepest secret. Jesus does do that other times, and John tells the story well. In this moment, though, it’s nothing that Jesus is speaking about that transforms Nathanael’s life. It’s just that Jesus is speaking. And Nathanael is listening.

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I don’t know about you, but I find myself acting like Samuel and Nathanael before their respective enlightenments all the time. I hear someone calling to me, and before they’ve even gotten to speak I’m already formulating a response, making a plan; coming up with five reasons it will never work or lacing up my shoes to go do what I think they need. And that’s at my best, when I’m trying to be helpful. At my worst, when I’m tired or angry, I’m more likely to pull a Nathanael and dismiss them right away. (“Can anything good come out of his mouth?”)

This happens in our prayer lives, too. We’re too busy being human doings to be human beings. We’re too busy talking to God to listen to what God’s trying to say. And maybe—just maybe—sometimes our preconceptions close off an opportunity for a deeper conversation with God. (“Can anything good come out of Leviticus?”)

But sometimes, in a moment of grace, we stop. We listen. We hear each other’s voices—not filtered through our own thoughts and preoccupations and prejudices—but as they are. We hear God’s voice calling to us, and we listen, and something breaks through, and transforms us. In these moments of epiphany we catch a glimpse of truth shining through all the confusion of our lives.

And at our best—at our very best—we’re no longer Samuel and Nathanael but Eli and Philip, no longer doers and doubters suddenly turned into listeners, but listeners transformed into bearers of good news. When we’ve listened long enough for the word of God, we learn to find its signal in the noise of the world, and we gain an incredible power to tell others how to find it as well. We gain the wisdom to say to a friend, “Go, lie down. If you are called again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (1 Sam. 3:9) We gain the courage to say to another person: “Come and see.”  (John 1:46)

Amen.

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^[1] Raymond, E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, The Anchor Yale Bible. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 83.

Sermon — January 10, 2021

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Sermon — December 27, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Sermon — December 24, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Do you know the Christmas carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”? I didn’t grow up with it, but it’s grown on me over the years. This year, especially, it seems to say it all:

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” we gather in the cold, the earth frozen “hard as iron,” the water “like a stone.” We gather at a moment of great darkness, and great light; of great suffering, and great hope; of painful sadness, and joyful anticipation.

We gather, in other words, in a moment that distils to its purest essence what it is to be human. This is it. This is all it’s ever been: sickness and death and compassion and hope, powerlessness and pain and rejoicing and love; the mixed-up emotional soundtrack to life. In ordinary times it’s fainter, with the volume dial turned halfway down, but this is it. This is what it is to be human beings: fragile, and beautiful, and loved.

And this is what it is God chose to be.

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If there’s comfort, in any year, in the compassion of the Christmas story, it must be this year. At Christmas, we make the extraordinary claim that in Jesus, God became human. God looked down on our world, as beautiful and broken two thousand years ago as it is today, and God had a choice. God could wash everything away in another Flood and start afresh. God could give up, set an out-of-office reply to our prayers and fly away to another part of the multiverse. God could delegate, could send another prophet to tell us where we’d gone wrong and how to make things right.

 But that’s not what God did.

God saw how often we say “no” to following the way of love, and invited one woman to say yes. God saw how powerless we are over the circumstances of our lives, and chose to walk among us, not as a mighty warrior or an influential legislator but as a newborn baby, the most helpless creature in the world. God saw the mess that human life’s become, and did the only thing a loving Parent could; God drew near to us, became one of us, became Emmanuel, “God with us.”

In Jesus of Nazareth, God walked among us. God knew the hunger and the fear of a newborn waking up for the hundredth time in a night. God knew the frustration of a toddler trying to stack his blocks too high. God knew the sorrow of losing a close friend, and the joy of eating and drinking together. God felt the deepest pain a human being could feel. God knew what it was to be betrayed; God knew what it was to die alone.

God knew, and God knows, what it is to be human, and in our deepest, darkest moments God sees us, and knows us, and loves us. And in the moments of our greatest pain, God himself is there with us, because the Christ whose birth we celebrate this Christmas is above all else the compassionate, loving God made flesh, bringing our pain up into God and God’s healing love down among us.

But this isn’t the whole story. Our God is not just a compassionate friend, a “Wonderful Counselor,” but a “Mighty God,” (Isaiah 9:6) a “Prince of Peace” sitting upon “the throne of David” “from this time onward and forevermore,” whose “authority shall grow continually,” and in whose kingdom “there shall be endless peace.” (Isaiah 9:9, 9:7)

God, in other words, didn’t just come among us to feel our pain, and then to return to heaven with a bit more empathy for the human condition. God came to change the world. In Jesus, God comes as a leader, a ruler, a “Prince.” God comes to us and starts a movement, and invites us to follow. God teaches us to love one another. God empowers us to love one another. And then God asks us to love one another, with Jesus himself leading the way.

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The one line of “In the Bleak Midwinter” that gets me every time is this: “Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. “Our God, heaven cannot hold him.” God’s love is so great that it spills out of heaven and splashes onto earth. God’s Holy Spirit flows out and fills us all, fills us to the brim and keeps pouring, so that God’s love overflows out of us and we love one another. Sometimes we don’t even know that it’s happening. Sometimes we don’t believe that it is. Sometimes we look at the world and we ask, “Where is God?”

And the answer is: Right here! Right now. Yes, God is up “in heaven” empathizing with us, and loving us. But “heaven cannot hold him.” God is not locked away in heaven. God is here, now, with us, acting in us and through us and for us, the hidden force in every act of human love. In every nurse’s gentle touch, in every neighbor’s grocery run, in every single sacrifice we make for one another, the Holy Spirit flows through us, the light of Christ that shines brightly on this holy night shines through us.

So look for that light. Carry that light. Spread that light this Christmas season and forevermore. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (Titus 2:11) Amen.

Sermon — December 20, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

About this time in December, about ten years ago, I decided that I was just going to start saying “yes” to things. Now, I’m an outgoing guy, but I’m a homebody and a rule-follower, and already by the summer before my freshman year of high school, the seniors on my cross-country team had nicknamed me “Gramps” for my attitude toward fun and shenanigans. But it was a few years later, I was in college, and I wanted to get out of my dorm room and my small circle of friends—to start saying yes to things, and see what happened.

So when, a few weeks later, a friend who lived down the hall from me invited me to a party, I said yes. It was not the sort of party I would normally go to—a Harvard Sailing Team party; I’ve since learned, by the way, that the Harvard Sailing Team is not quite as preppy as you’d think, but… is still pretty preppy—but I’d decided to say yes, and so, even though it was cold and dark I would rather have been at home, I went. And the moment I walked in, I saw a girl named Isabel from my economics class and standing next to her, by far the loveliest young woman I’d ever seen. So I walked over to them. Isabel and I said hi to each other, and then I turned to her friend.

“I’m Greg.”
“Hi, I’m Alice.”

“Where are you from, Alice?”

“New York.”

“Oh,” I joked, “so are you a Yankees fan?”

“No—Red Sox! My dad grew up in Cambridge.”

Love at first sight.

Needless to say, ten years later Alice and I are married, and Isabel’s our first child’s godmother and one of our best friends, whose marriage to another sailor I’ll be officiating at St. John’s this summer; they live down the street from us and sail out of Courageous now.

All of which is to say: Saying yes to something small can lead to something quite big.

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Mary, of course, says “yes” to something big; to something huge. On faith alone, unable to understand how it’s going to work out but trusting in this angel’s word and in God’s love, Mary listens to what the angel has to say, and replies, “let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) And “then,” and only then—only once she has agreed— “the angel departed from her.” (Luke 1:38) The angel comes not to announce an inevitability but to invite Mary into an absurdity: unmarried, inexperienced, vulnerable as she may be, to bear within her womb the living God.

This was a unique event, to say the least. But our mother Mary’s act of faith is a model for each one of us in our lives of faith. God speaks a holy word to each one of us, and invites us to carry it deep within ourselves; God plants a seed within us and waits to see what fruit we’ll bear. Again and again God invites us into a deeper relationship, a more mysterious journey, and waits, patiently, until we’re ready to say “yes.” And when we do—who knows where we end up?

So what does it take to say “yes” to God?

Well, first it takes the honest, humble recognition that we have only a very little idea what’s going on. “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” says the angel. (Luke 1:28) And Mary is “much perplexed”—“greatly troubled,” another translation goes (ESV)—and wonders, “What sort of a greeting is that?” (1:29) The angel tries to explain: Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you’ve found favor in God’s sight. You will conceive, and bear a son! And he will be named Jesus! And also, “Son of the Most High!” Oh, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father—you know, your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather-in-law—a throne that’s been empty for six hundred years. And Mary waits and nods while the angel declaims, and then cautiously asks: “But how will this be?” (Luke 1:34) Joseph and I, we haven’t, you know—? And the angel helpfully replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1:35)

What?

Gabriel is not making this very clear. But it never is, is it? We don’t ever hear God’s voice speaking clearly and directly to us. In fact, the moments when we think we know God’s will most confidently are often the moments when we’re wrong. But we do catch snippets through the static, hints of what God’s voice in our lives. And as long as we admit that we’re not sure what it means, and we’re not sure where it leads, we just might be ready to say yes.

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But second—and this is important—we shouldn’t try to figure it out on our own. It takes a community to help us understand the invitation and to know how to react. The first thing Mary does is to take off and go to her cousin Elizabeth’s house, and stay with her for a while. Elizabeth, like Mary, is pregnant, awaiting a strange and holy birth—the birth of Jesus’ cousin John, who will one day be called “The Baptist.” Mary is young, Elizabeth is old; Mary is pregnant much sooner than she’d imagined, Elizabeth much later than she’d hoped; but together they will try to understand what God has in store for them and for their two remarkable sons.

There’s a reason we have things like a Rector Search Committee to call a new Rector, or discernment committees to help figure out whether a person is called to the priesthood. There’s a reason that we have churches, and not just individual spiritual lives. There’s a reason, in fact, that we have multi-generational churches, with people from all parts of our community, and not just niche lifestyle brands, with one church for families with young kids and another for retired folks and another for golf enthusiasts. It’s in our relationships across lines of difference that we come to understand our own calling most deeply. Elizabeth has lived many years, and Mary just a few. Elizabeth has long been married, and Mary’s just engaged. And their different perspectives help each one understand her own path. Our mentors and our friends, our communities and our families, help us understand what God is inviting us into and what it means to answer “yes.”

It’s been a sad week for St. John’s, with the news of Marie Hubbard’s death. I hope some of you can join us for her funeral service on Zoom tomorrow morning at 11. She was a true pillar of this church, a mentor and a friend and a teacher to many, a woman who’d lived and prayed in this place for some eight decades. We mourn her loss today. And we pray for her, in the sure and certain hope that one day we will see her again.

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And it’s that third part of saying “yes” to God that can be the hardest: the waiting. We read this story from Luke’s gospel announcing Mary’s pregnancy on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, and then we celebrate Jesus’ birth on Thursday night. But we’ve traveled in time. This story takes place “in the sixth month” of the year (Luke 1:26)—that’s around March in the Jewish calendar, not June—and we can all do the math. December 25 minus nine months: March 25, or so; and indeed, on March 25 we celebrate the Annunciation. But we all know nine months is a long time to wait. Picture your life on March 25, 2020. How many lifetimes ago was that?

So as a dark year ends, and one that’s hopefully better begins, we make our resolutions for the year ahead. But we can do this as people of faith any time. We listen carefully for the word of God, inviting us into something new. We admit humbly that we don’t know what it means, that we don’t know where it leads, but we answer the call. We turn to our friends and our loved ones for guidance, we seek out the wisdom of those who’ve lived lives different from our own. And then we wait. We wait and wait and see what God will do. We wait, and watch, and grow, as the day draws near when something new will appear in our lives and they will change, forever.

So wait, these last five days of Advent, these last ten days of 2020; and watch; and wonder where it is that God’s inviting you to go in 2021. Because it’s not always easy to say yes. But when we do—we just might end up in love.

“For I am persuaded,” O God, “that your love is established for ever; *
you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.” (Psalm 89:2)

Amen.