Get your 3D glasses on!

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Get your 3D glasses on! 15 January 2012 The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• 1 Samuel 3:1-10
• Psalm 139
• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
• John 1:43-51

I had a new experience while on holiday in Nelson recently. My 12 year old nephew Elijah took me to the movie of Tintin - or perhaps I took him! This was the first time I'd experienced a movie in 3D, wearing those highly unattractive 3D glasses. The movie was great fun and I enjoyed it, once I'd got used to things coming at me from all directions, and stopped putting my arms up to protect me, much to Eli's relief! It was all a matter of perception - and that is the essence of all of our Bible readings today. Just how do we see and hear things? In how many dimensions? And how do we respond?

The well-loved story of the call of the child Samuel to be God's prophet, beloved by many of us from Sunday School days, is chock full of references to seeing or hearing - or not. We're told straight up that the word of the Lord was rare in those days, visions were not widespread (1 Samuel 3:1). Things were at a spiritual low ebb, and they were too for Eli the priest, who had lost control of his priest sons who were desecrating the temple worship by their lawless behaviour. So we're told Eli's eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see (v2), and spiritually he'd lost the ability to see what was happening before his eyes.

But all is not lost: the lamp of God in the temple had not yet gone out (v3). God's presence is still there for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. And Samuel, with all the wide-eyed, missing- nothing responsiveness of a child, is open to hear the voice of God. True, he needs a bit of direction from his mentor, who thankfully is not so far gone spiritually that he fails to recognise God at work. He points Samuel to the way of response to God: 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening'.

Little did Samuel know that he would be given a message of judgement for Eli and his family, a message 'that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle' (v11). Here begins Samuel's lifetime of learning not only to hear and listen to God, but also to respond to God in obedience, to speak forth God's word without fear or favour, and to live it out before God.

It's the loss of this integrated vision of hearing, listening and responding to God and to the good news of the Gospel that Paul critiques in his letter to the Corinthian believers. We can find this tirade of Paul's rather startling, but Paul is frustrated that the Corinthians have heard and rejoiced in the good news of the freedom won for them through the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they are now distorting that liberty by ending up in a sort of antinomian, 'anything goes' libertinism.

We hear what we think are some quotes from the Corinthians themselves: "All things are lawful for me" "Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food". Their logic seems to be, as a Christian, I'm set free in Christ, and can do anything I like. Bodily drives are pretty much the same - hunger for food, hunger for sex. So why not gratify those hungers any way I like? There has always been a strand in Christianity which tends towards dualism - what really matters is the spiritual world, and so it doesn’t really matter what I do with my body, which is after all disposable. This dualism pushes body and soul apart. Some of this sounds astonishingly contemporary. Our society needs to ask is sex more than just an exchange of services, a recreational activity without consequences, does it matter if there's no link to a relationship or to commitment or love? It's part of that whole sacred/secular, mind/body, private/public split so beloved of our culture, Tony Blair's spin-doctor's 'We don't do God'…

Perhaps rather than squirming at Paul's words, we need to come back to the five great affirmations he does make about the goodness of our bodies:

• 'The body is…for the Lord, and the Lord for the body' (1 Cor 6:13)
• 'God raised the Lord, and will also raise us by his power' (v14)
• 'Your bodies are members of Christ' (v15)
• 'Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit' (v19)
• 'You are not your own, for you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God with your body' (v19,20).

This is profoundly good news for many of us who have a love-hate relationship with our bodies or with our sexuality. This is a profoundly integrated vision of body, mind and spirit, created in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ, bought with a price. That we, individually and corporately, are temples of the Holy Spirit of God is the working out in our flesh of the mystery of the incarnation we have just celebrated at Christmas, the Word made flesh - in our human flesh.

It takes a bit of getting your head around, doesn’t it, this being 'a temple of the Holy Spirit', the awesome truth that in baptism, God takes up residence in us, the Spirit of God makes a home in us. Perhaps for some of us we still retain childhood pictures of asking Jesus into our heart, and does that mean Jesus lives in our tummy?!

I find more helpful the image Jesus uses in John's Gospel chapter 14 v 23: 'Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them, and make our home with them.' It feels more like an expansion of the life of the Trinity, an extension in the circle of God's love which is able to stretch to include another, just as the love in a family stretches to include a new member.

Some of us too have had to get over images of God as Big Brother watching you. I still recall a Sunday School song which used to make me quite uncomfortable: O be careful, little hands, what you do, for the Father up above is looking down in love, o be careful little hands what you do. I seem to have not heard the 'looking down in love' bit!

Or the sort of excruciating youth group talk I recall where we were told to only go where you would be happy to take Jesus with you… This can be the impression we could gain from Psalm 139, which some find oppressive in its sense of God's omnipresence, and ever-presence with us, that sense that we cannot escape from God's presence even if we want to, the Hound of Heaven ever pursuing us.

But this same Psalm 139 is so dearly beloved by so many of us, because of its sense that God knows and loves us intimately from our birth, that God has created us, indeed, knit us together (Ps 139:13), we are intricately woven (v15) with love and care. And that same God is committed to us throughout all the days formed or ordained for us (v16). This God knows our hearts and thoughts, knows our anxieties and challenges, yet will lead us in the way everlasting (v23, 24). This relationship with our God is what we can rest in as we approach all the unknowns of 2012, this is the God in whom we find our security.

Our Gospel reading gives us a lovely little cameo of that relationship between God and one who follows God, in the characterisation of Jesus and Nathanael. Here is Jesus calling disciples to follow him. Here is all the excitement of first Andrew telling Peter, 'We have found the Messiah', and then Philip telling Nathanael, 'We've found the one that Moses and the prophets wrote about - and guess what, it's Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth (John 1:45).

I love Nathanael's beautifully sceptical and deflating reply - 'can anything good come out of Nazareth?' (v46) Or Nelson, or Eketahuna, or Inangahua? There's obviously some local rivalries going on here, and it's not just about football clubs! Especially as we think Nathanael is probably from Cana, just up the road, and equally as small as backwater as Nazareth! And we know that even in Cana, miracles will happen, and the glory of Jesus will be revealed, but that is still to come…

Well at this stage at least Nathanael gives Jesus the benefit of the doubt, goes along to meet Jesus, and is given the amazing greeting, 'Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!' - a pun on the Israelites' forebear Jacob, known as the deceiver. Nathanael can't get his head round this at all - how do you know me? And when Jesus says he saw him under the fig tree even before Philip called him, Nathanael, stunned by Jesus' knowledge of him, comes out with an amazing response: 'Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! ' Did Nathanael have any idea what he was saying? Yet that response began for him a lifetime of discipleship, of learning who Jesus was, of following him to the death and beyond, a journey of faith and obedience.

Jesus promises Nathanael he will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. He will see in Jesus a new Jacob's ladder, the one who bridges heaven and earth, the bridge-builder restoring the lost link between God and humanity.

Nathanael will form a link in that chain of those who carry on the bridge-building ministry of Jesus, and we are called to be part of that chain in our day too.

We are called to live life in all its dimensions, to put on our 3D glasses, so we live before God, seeking to glorify God with our bodies, minds and spirits. As we are known by God and intimately loved, so we learn to know and love God more, and to know and love more those alongside us, made in God's image with us.

So put on your 3D glasses as we head into this new year together, and be amazed by what God has to show you. In the name of that God, Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life, Amen.