Homily: The Second Sunday after the Epiphany [January 14, 2018] Trinity, Santa Barbara

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            The last several weeks have been trying ones for everyone here in Santa Barbara. The Thomas fire—now the largest in recorded California history—seemed to take over our lives for days without end. Then last week’s rain came and caused much more death and devastation—not here in Santa Barbara, but in Montecito, Carpinteria, and points south. The entire community is suffering and on edge—either because of what people have lost themselves, or on behalf of what others are going through. And it is particularly weird that life in Santa Barbara proper seems so normal, while there is extensive destruction only a few miles away.

            As with personal tragedies, so with social ones: all of us are at a loss for exactly the right thing to say. Like Job’s pious friends in the Bible, we are often tempted to make some kind of religious sense out of suffering and loss. “It’s all part of God’s plan” is a phrase that never brought comfort or healing to anyone. And it’s not even religiously orthodox. The God we meet in the Bible does not deal in pious nostrums. The God we meet in the Bible is right in there with those who are up against it. The fires, floods, and mudslides are not part of some divine strategy. They are disasters, and the real faithful response starts when we say, with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  As my late friend Bill Coffin said when his son died, with all this death and destruction, the first heart to break was God’s.

            To say that God refuses neat simpy slogans that explain away pain and that God suffers and laments with us is not to say that we are without hope. But Christian hope, like resurrection faith, does not stand in a vacuum. Christian hope, like resurrection faith, comes out of real suffering and tragedy and loss. If we are open to life and experience, we will find God in the midst of all this mess. But we must start looking for God as and where we are. And right now, where we are is in a mass of loss and confusion and pain.

            So if we are not going to call these fires and floods God’s plan or God’s judgment, where are we going to find meaning or comfort or hope? For me, it’s always best to start with the gospel, and the one we have this morning is from John [John 1:43-51]. It is the account of Jesus calling Philip and Nathanael. It may seem far afield, but let’s see if this strange and slightly funny story might have something to tell us about how to be and move on from where we are.

            According to John’s account, early in his ministry Jesus decided to travel from his hometown Nazareth to Galilee. He has already called Peter and Andrew, and he next chooses Philip and says, “Follow me.” Philip goes to his friend Nathanael and says, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Now Galilee was evidently hipper than Nazareth, because Nathanael responds with a real put-down: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael, the arch urban sophisticate, wants nothing to do with the country bumpkin, Jesus.

            I have always loved the next part of this story, because it so true to human experience. Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under the fig tree. Not a big deal to us, but apparently convincing to Nathanael, who suddenly drops his skepticism and just like that believes. And then Jesus says this:

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. . . . Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

            Jesus cuts through Nathanael’s cynicism to make this astounding offer: if you follow me you will see more than miracles. You will see “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending” where you are.

            This image of heaven opened and angels going up and down may sound like mere words to us, but it would have been immediately recognizable to any first century Palestinian Jew like Philip, Nathanael, Andrew, or Peter. This image comes from the biblical story of Jacob [Genesis 25-28] whose life was always lived under tension and stress. At one particularly nerve-wracking point in the story [Genesis 28: 10-22], Jacob dreams that he sees a ladder stretching up to heaven.  “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”  And right after Jacob dreams of this ladder and the ascending and descending angels, the voice of God speaks directly to him. God tells Jacob that, as crazy and stressful and unpredictable as his life appears right now, all will be well because he is the bearer of God’s promise. “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  Jacob is so moved by this experience and the resulting promise that he names the place “Bethel”. In Hebrew, “Bethel” literally means “House of God”. More broadly, it suggests, “God is right here.”

            The story of angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder and God’s promise is one of Israel’s founding narratives. God comes to Jacob not when everything is going smoothly (as nothing ever does for Jacob). God comes to Jacob in the midst of Jacob’s greatest distress, and God promises, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Jesus points Nathanael to this story and its promise because he is making the same point to him that God made to Jacob in this biblical story. I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

            As I think about our area and its suffering, I do not have a quick or easy answer. The trauma is real, and recovery will be hard. But today’s gospel points me as it points all of us to Jesus and Nathanael, and through them to God and Jacob and the ladder and the angels. And I hear two truths in these divine encounters that I believe God means us to hear and attend to in the present moment.

            The first truth I hear is the obvious one that God makes in those words said to Jacob under the ladder of ascending and descending angels. Even and perhaps especially in moments of pain and suffering and loss and stress, God may appear nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, if we keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, we will discover that God is in fact with us. God is not with us in some magical fairy tale way. God cannot give us a life free of suffering and loss. But God can take life’s tragedies and turn them around. And God keeps God’s promises. I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

            The first truth I hear is that we will, together, find God in the midst of all this rubble and loss. We will find God in each other, in the compassion and solidarity that emerge from this tragedy, in the new community we can build together, in the new life that emerges from real death and real loss. Resurrection life does not come cheap, but it is real and precious and holy. It is the life of promises fulfilled in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

            And then there is this second truth. Jacob named the place “Bethel”, “house of God”. He named it Bethel because it was where he knew God to be present. In pointing Nathanael and us to the place called Bethel, Jesus is reminding him and us that Jesus himself, and the community that gathers around him, is the new Bethel, the new house of God, the place where God actually dwells. Jews saw God in a place. Christians see God in a person. We call Jesus “Emmanuel”—God with us. The one we seek does not float above the clouds in some kind of gaseous fog. The one we seek is right here, right now, alive and at work in and among us. God keeps God’s promises. God is here.

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. . . . Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

            Yes, the pain and the loss of the present moment are real. And yes, God will take them and make of them something so hopeful and joyous that we could never have imagined it if we tried. God keeps God’s promises. God is here. The God who was faithful to Israel and Jesus will be faithful to us. Together we can find God’s comfort and bring God’s healing to those who mourn. These are not easy nostrums. They are hard won truths. They are the basics of resurrection faith. And they’re what we have, together, as we help our neighbors rebuild, and as we gather now around God’s table to give thanks. Amen.