Revelation – the first disciples

1994 (Year B), 16 January / Epiphany 2

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Swimming in the sea in off Florida is one of the most luxurious things I have ever done. I’ve never experienced such warmth, such joy. We were having a marvellous time when a man swam by. Flop, flop, flop he went. ‘Hi!’ he said as Americans do. ‘Hello’, we said as English people do. A few minutes later he was back. Flop, flop, flop. ‘Say’, he said, ‘What denomination are you?’ Amazing. I couldn’t believe it.

Now translate that situation here. You’re going out in a lift with your family. Someone you’ve never met gets in and says, ‘Hello’. On the way back you meet them again and this time asks where you worship. You’d be back inside your house just as fast as you could go, muttering things about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Maybe you’re digging your front garden. The same thing happens. Somebody walks up the street, says, ‘Hello’ and on the way back starts talking about the church. You’d have the spade back in its place and be phoning Neighbourhood Watch or the Vicar just to warn them that there’s a very strange person about.

In this country, we talk about God with about the same enthusiasm and ease that we talk about how much we earn or our sex lives. There are some things polite people never mention.

Now I’m not for one minute suggesting that we go out and start accosting people in the street. Bringing them into church and on the way telling them what we earn or how many times the earth has moved for us. The mind boggles just thinking about it. But the story of the swimmer in Florida is useful as an illustration. It seems to me that for most people, in this country at any rate, there is an inability to talk in any meaningful way about God. Especially to those from a different tradition or of no tradition at all.

Two thousand years ago it was very different. It was relatively easy for Jesus. He called Simon, Andrew, James and John from fishing and they followed him. They followed, so the Gospel says, ‘at once’. They didn’t have to think. They just went. They all came out of the same tradition. They all had the same hopes and religious expectations. They had a common religious language and a shared vision that’s not true for us. It is true that here we can and do feel a degree of commonality, communion. We know somehow, when we’re here, that we’re about the same thing. But our communities contain people of other faiths and of none. Our religious language, our visions, our shorthand’s for God, which we use relatively easily here are either offensive to them or mean absolutely nothing. Away from here we become much more careful, much less willing to take risks.

That swimming advertisement for the Presbyterian Church. That’s where that man worshipped and where we went the following Sunday, serves not only as an example of the difference between our cultures but also as a warning.

You will recall that in the Gospel Christians are required to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Those words cause more guilt than most. We’re not good at it. Few of us have ever made new disciples. We know we should but we don’t. There are lots of reasons. We don’t know what to say. We’re lacking in confidence. Not clear how to do it. We don’t know what we believe. It said that, ‘You can believe anything you want in the Church of England – the trouble is nobody does.’

None of that in the end is relevant. The essential element in the encounter between Jesus and those two sets of brothers was that somehow God was revealed. God was present and was recognised. In the story in John’s gospel it all becomes much clearer. Andrew, after meeting Jesus goes off to find his brother. He said to him ‘We have found the Messiah’. The next day Phillip brought Nathaniel to Jesus and when he saw him somehow he too recognised God, ‘You are the son of God’, he said. Nobody in the story tries to talk about what particular branch of Judaism they belong to. All that comes much later. The crucial point is that God is present and can be recognised.

Now we are called to live lives in relationship with others were God is present and can be recognised by us and on occasion by others. We’re not called to convince them that we’re right and they’re wrong. We are not called to make Christians – even less members of the Church of England. Sometimes that might happen and we can rejoice when it does because we can share even more of our vision, our hopes and our expectations. But that is not our primary task. First and foremost we are to play our part in the revelation of God.

It’s the most exciting thing we will ever do because it seems to me that in these relationships we are learning at least as much about God as anybody else. So Good Lord, take our fear from us, so that we may find you in our lives, in our relationships and in our communities; and serve you all our days. AMEN