Epiphany 2 15th January 2012 8am

Last week we kept the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord with anointing in the oil of chrism representing the touch of the Holy Spirit.

I am pleased to report that one or two individuals experienced something afterwards that reminded them God was alongside them.

We are God’s Church and must be open to his surprises.

In today’s readings we have evidence of how God is in the business of surprising his devotees.

The call of Samuel was a great surprise to him. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. We are told. Yet 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, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’ and ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’

After two rebuttals we heard how Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.

Samuel – and Eli – have a surprise of the Spirit which they need to come to terms with. In consequence of Samuel’s recognition of God’s call Israel receives a new start that leads through Samuel to Saul, David and the Kings.

For our second reading we had a passage from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine. I have actually been to Patmos, the Island where we’re told John’s vision came to him when he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. I attended the Orthodox Liturgy on the Island and when you read the passage of the priestly elders falling down before the sacrificial Lamb you could imagine John dreaming at the eucharist which is so structured – led by elders we gather round the altar as Christ’s sacrifice is represented and we behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The book of Revelation is a mighty surprise of the Spirit to any who read it with devotion. We had a particularly upbeat section of it read for us today.

Then the Gospel reading has Philip found by Jesus. What a surprise! So much taken up was Philip, we read, that he went and got Nathanael, Saint Bartholomew, who, initially sceptical of Jesus was won over by the surprising knowledge Jesus had of his being under the fig tree.

Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! He says in homage to Jesus who presents him with this astounding promise that extends to all believers:

I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

Now that will be a surprise for us on the last day or on the day of our death as it was for those first disciples when they saw their friend and Lord ascending into heaven at the end of his earthly ministry.

So what can we draw for ourselves from today’s readings?

That God is a living and therefore surprising God.

We can’t tie him down in human categories since we are to him as dust to the heavens above. Indeed in God’s house whether you’re the greatest saint or worst sinner puts you either top or bottom of the carpet so to speak.

In that respect what’s most surprising is God’s actual interest in us humans in the first place. How he takes trouble to call Samuel, John, Philip, Nathanael – and, yes, you and I - for we too are called and to be equipped for his purposes?

C.S.Lewis wrote a book ‘Surprised by Joy’ to describe the confounding of his dismal atheism by a surprising encounter with the living God.

Sometimes it can be the same for us. We go through phases of practical atheism when God doesn’t seem to count much in our lives only to be woken up like Samuel by a voice from above spoken through our circumstances as were the people touched in last week’s anointing.

Here I am, for you called me, we find ourselves saying in obedience to God’s surprising intervention.

If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans. The point is we need an openness to his possibilities that’s bred in humility.

At the end of the day we’re not ultimately in control of our lives - God is.

God must many a time be amused at the presumption of humanity in the plans we make since we can’t possibly comprehend the variables as we look forward in life as he does.

Plan we must, as this New Year gets underway, but let our plans leave us open to welcoming the surprises of the Holy Spirit.