Standing Under the Scriptures
January 25, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Jonah 3.1-10: When Jonah finally heeds the Lord’s command to warn Ninevah, Ninevah heeds him.

Mark 1.14-20: When Jesus calls them, Andrew and Simon and James and John unhesitatingly follow him.

Openness to what God is saying to us may be seen as the common concern of our readings last Sunday: the Lord’s speaking to Eli through Samuel (1 Samuel 3.1-18) and Jesus’ calling of Philip and Nathanael (John 1.43-51).

We began our consideration of our first reading by noting what great stories are to be found in the Old Testament, in which we like ancient Israel can delight. We also reviewed Samuel’s pivotal role in Israel’s history. The time prior to him was one of disorder. For in the wake of Israel’s conquest, under Joshua, of Canaan, other peoples attempted to occupy the land as they had done. Provisional leaders arose to unite Israel against them, but once the threat was removed Israel would lapse into disunity. This is the period which the Book of Judges is concerned with. There was spiritual disorder as well, as reflected in verse 1 of our reading: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” But after Samuel came cohesion and consolidation. The monarchy was begun under Saul to counter the Philistines, who threatened to overwhelm Israel. And David, after they were finally disposed of, established a kingdom of a considerable extent, the splendors of which were developed in Solomon’s reign. That Samuel played a significant role in this transition is indicated by his anointing first Saul and then David as king.

But that was the function of the mature Samuel. In our passage we saw him as a young boy tending the sanctuary at Shiloh under the supervision of Eli its priest. As he was doing so, one night the Lord called to him. But he did not recognize the call; he could only suppose that it came from Eli. It was when Eli, discerning the Lord, told him how to respond that the Lord imparted his message. The message concerned Eli, and it was a terrible one. On account of Eli’s failure to curb the licentiousness of his sons, destruction was to come upon his house, as indeed it did. Eli’s response, however, is not to deny this judgment or to seek to turn it aside. Instead it was to accept it, as coming from the Lord.

This passage has layers of meaning. It is a good story, to begin with. But it also reflects the human tendency to see new things in terms of what we already know---Samuel hears the Lord’s call as Eli’s summons, to which he would have been accustomed. But if we are limited to this, we may never get beneath the surface of things, beyond the culture, mainly upper middle class, which we inhabit. To do this we need an interpretive framework, such as Eli gave to Samuel. But for this framework to be effective we must be open to it, as the boy Samuel was, and not resistant as is our adult inclination. It can come from preaching, insofar as it is based on Scripture, and also from Scripture itself. This in fact is the primary reason for our class, so that through our study of Scripture we may acquire the framework which will enable us to see the Lord in what befalls us, in my formulation as Judge and as Redeemer.

Turning now to our passage from John’s Gospel, it also concerns a call from the Lord, in this case Jesus’ call to Philip and Nathanael to follow him as his disciples. (Just previously he had called Andrew and Peter and an unnamed disciple. The section as a whole thus shows Jesus’ gathering of his disciples.) We puzzled for some time over the apparently insubstantial basis on which they responded to him. To Philip he simply says, “Follow me,” and he followed him Then Philip, in speaking of him to Nathanael, unreservedly declares, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote.” Finally Nathanael, when Jesus tells him merely that he has seen him under the fig tree, acclaims him as the Son of God, the king of Israel. And what, we wondered, was the significance of the fig tree anyway?

If there are definitive answers to these questions, I am not aware of them. Nevertheless we may suppose that an element in them is the openness of Philip and Nathanael, as previously Andrew and Peter, to Jesus. As for the interpretive framework which enabled them to see God in him, the significance of the fig tree may lie here If we take it as representing the tradition of Israel, it would mean that this tradition when undistorted---Jesus speaks of Nathanael as an Israelite without guile---points to Jesus as Messiah. And Philip and Nathanael in their perceptive openness stand in contrast to the religious establishment, the scribes and Pharisees, when Jesus encounters them later on. They reject Jesus, and in John’s view they have also have distorted the tradition.

In our own response to Jesus we may suppose that as believers we are in accord with the disciples and in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees. But have we not also distorted the tradition, in this case that with which the Church began? And have we not, without rejecting Jesus overtly, ignored essential aspects of what he is about? To the extent that this is so, does not the Lord’s judgment fall, and fall heavily, on us? This is not an easy conclusion to come to. But even if it forces itself upon us, we need not despair. For reverting to our first reading, we can have recourse to the instance of Eli. When the Lord’s judgment fell upon him, his response was, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” Thus Eli was obedient to the Lord, as Job in the end was obedient. And surely in Eli’s obedience also there was an essential salvation, which we are enabled to see through Christ.

We may note here a resonance with the obedience to the Scriptures, even when we find them uncongenial, that we aim for. Our obedience is not out of some doctrinal rigidity. Instead it is because in it, in our standing under and not over the Scriptures, we find our peace and our joy, indeed our salvation. We may balk at the apparent surrender of our freedom involved here. But in fact our only real freedom is freedom to obey the Lord, whose word the Scriptures are. In an article about the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who gave the benediction at Obama’s inauguration, he was reported to have expressed this Barthian conclusion as follows: you are not free unless you are doing what you ought to do.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted