Let loose in the world - the end is where we start from

There was a time when the Sunday after  Easter was known as Low Sunday.  Low, perhaps, because it was an anti-climax after the great celebrations of Easter.  A moment to come back down to earth.

I’m not sure I like that.  Easter isn’t something you build up to for it to be all over.   Easter isn’t something that happens and then it’s all over.  I think Easter is but the beginning.

In his most moving account of the crucifixion Nikos Kazantzakis hints at Easter in the most moving of ways.

“He uttered a triumphant cry: IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!

“And it was as though he had said:  Everything has begun.”

John Masefield in his play, The Trial of Jesus has Procula, the wife of Pilate ask the centurion a telling question.

PROCULA:        Do you think he is dead?

LONGINUS:       No, lady, I don’t.
PROCULA:        Then where is he?
LONGINUS:       Let loose in the world, lady, where neither Roman nor Jew

can stop his truth. Let loose in the world

Best of all is TS Eliot in the Four Quartets

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning

The end is where we start from.

That’s how I want to see Easter – not as an event that rounds everything up.  But as something momentous that opens up a whole new world of wonderful possibility.

Not low Sunday.  The lectionary used to think of it another way and call it, the First Sunday  After Easter.

A bit better.  But still it sees Easter as the culmination an event that is now passed – and this is the first Sunday after Easter.

A more recent lectionary came up with a different way again of describing today.  Not the first Sunday after Easter, but the second Sunday of Easter.

On the front of our Orders of Service I have used prayers written by Angela Ashwin extensively.  I am using a devotional book of hers in my daily prayers this year Woven into Prayer.  She describes it as a flexible pattern of prayer through the Christian year.

She explains why she is drawn to that description of Easter …

“Whereas the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the 1980 Alternative Service Book call the first Sunday after Easter just that, the 1997 publication, The Christian Year: Calendar, Lectionary and Collects (using the Ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary) calls this day ‘The Second Sunday of Easter’.  This is to remind us that we continue to celebrate Christ’s resurrection well after Easter Day itself, and that we are still in Eastertide, rather than following on after it and wondering what new themes to focus on.”

I rather like that.

In this Easter time, I am drawn to focusing on some of those who are named in the Easter story and thinking of them as Easter people.  But as I do that I want to think of us as called to be Easter people.

He is simply named as one of seven fishermen disciples who push out on to the Sea of Galilee fishing one night in this very period.  They catch nothing, until a stranger on the shore urges them to cast the net to the right side of the boat.  When they do, they catch a remarkable number of fish, 153 in total … and they recognise in that stranger, the risen Lord Jesus – It is the Lord!

And the named person on that boat I want to think of this evening … Nathanael.

My invitation is for us to see ourselves in Nathanael.

He is simply one of the seven – he has no startling role to play, he is not a key figure, his words are not recorded, what he does particularly we do not learn.  He is simply there.   But he is known by name.

We may be simply one of the crowd, one of the congregation – we may feel we are not particularly noticed, we do not have something dramatic to do, we are simply there.  But we each of us have an importance – it is important that we are there.  We do count.  We are known by name.

The name we each have is important.  And God knows each of us by name.

Nathanael’s name has a meaning.  It is that kind of special meaning that makes it a special name.  I found it moving to watch the acceptance of the new Pope as he came out on the balcony, invited the people to bless him in silent prayer before he blessed them, and bent over, as it were, to receive their prayers and their blessing.  And the name he chose was filled with significance.  The first pope in, was it 600 years, to come up with a new name.  Francis.  A statement of intent – of humility, of service, of affirmation of the environment, of concern for the poor.  So much in a name, so swiftly and simply chosen.

If we were to be another Francis we would be committing ourselves to that care of the world of God’s creation, that commitment to the poor, that humility.

My invitation this evening is for a moment to adopt the name of Nathanael.  It simply means ‘Gift of God’.  I now want us each to think of ourselves as ‘a Nathanael’, as a ‘Gift of God’.

I have on my shelves at home a book that was popular in Victorian times, Samuel Smiles in his book Self-Help told the stories of great men, mostly men, who had as it were pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and were self-made men.  Such an ideal is often held up.  But this evening the invitation is for us to think of ourselves not as self-made men, or self-made women.  But as the gift of God.

We are who we are, we are what we are, simply by the Grace of God.  We are a gift of God.  All we have, the families we have, the care, the love – it is all a gift of God.  To fill our hearts with thanks.   Good to see ourselves as ‘a gift of God and to give God our thanks.

If John’s Gospel comes to an end that is but the beginning of wonderful new possibilities in the company of this Nathanael, the Gospel also opens in his company too.  There is an intriguing symmetry about the Gospel.

John 1 opens leaving us in no doubt as to the identify of the One at the centre of the Gospel story – he is nothing less than the Word of God, the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth – to see him is to see the very glory of God.

Then as Jesus is introduced a number of people identify exactly who he is – John the Baptist sees in him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Andrew and, is it the beloved disciple, see in him a great Teacher. They are convinced they have found the one who is the Messiah, the Anointed one.

Philip points to Jesus as the one about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus.  But for Philip this Jesus is essentially an ordinary person, one of us, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.

Then comes Nathanael.

I invite you to see yourself in Nathanael.

He is quite the sceptic.  There’s almost a sneer in his voice.  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

I think that gives us permission.  Permission to express our doubts. To off load our questioning.  Even to be open about our scepticism.   Do you have doubts, questions … be open about them.  Is there a scepticism about his faith we share?  Be honest about it.  It’s a year of anniversaries – and this year sees the fiftieth anniversary of a book by Bishop JAT Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, Honest to God.   At its heart it was a plea for us as Christians to be honest in our faith.  To be as Nathanael – and open about our questioning.

Philip says simply to Nathanael in response, “Come and see”.  And Nathanael goes to see for himself.

Let’s be ready to pursue our enquiry – and come and see.  There’s a lot we can be critical of in the Christian Religion – in the church – in the organisation.  The invitation that Nathanael accepted was to come and see Jesus.  The best antidote to that questioning scepticism that can sometimes get the better of ourselves is to go beyond the trappings of the religion that is Christianity, even more the church and its organisations and to come and see Jesus.

There then comes an intriguing exchange.

When Jesus saw Nathaneael coming towards him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”  In whom there is no guile.

The invitation this evening is to be a Nathanael.  Can it be said of us that there is no deceit, no guile within our hearts.   Something to strive for.  Something to aspire after.  Something to draw on maybe as a gift from God.

Nathanael then asks Jesus a question, “Where did you come to know me?”

What I pick up from that question is the willingness of Nathanael to question, to probe, to enquire.  Tennyson, when overwhelmed with grief at the death of one of his closest friends, said,

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the creeds …

Nathanael  has a spirit of enquiry that we would do well to take to heart.

If for TS Eliot the end is to make a beginning and the end is where we start from, I love the way he goes on to speak of the importance of questioning, of exploring

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we stared

And know the place for the first time.

Then comes a wonderful moment when Nathanael responds … at first sight it seems to say it all.  But this is but the beginning of Nathanael’s pilgrimage of faith.

Nathanael replies,

Rabbi, teacher, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!

This is wonderful faith.

Rabbi – let’s look to Jesus as the teacher and heed his teaching.

You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!

Let’s look to Jesus as the King of Kings the one who demands our allegiance – the one to follow.

One of the commentators at this point suggests that still Nathanael’s vision is limited.  He is the Israelite – and as a true Israelite he sees in Jesus the one his people had been expecting.

Jesus then opens up his vision with the climax to the whole of this opening of John’s Gospel.

You will see greater things than these … and Jesus speaks of the way he will be the one to span heaven and earth, bringing heaven to earth and raising earth to heaven.  A wonderful vision for all humanity.

Nathanael is not named again – but he is there as Jesus teaches.  He is there as Jesus heals.  He is there in that last week.  He is there at the Supper.  He is there at the cross.  He is there in the Upper Room.

And now he is named once more.

There in the boat.

Prepared to venture out,  to take a risk, to respond to the suggestion of a stranger.

He meets with Jesus.

And it is but the beginning of something that will be going on.

It was as though …everything has begun

The invitation is there for us to in our mind’s eye accompany Jesus on his travels.  Go with him to the table, beyond to the cross, and share in resurrection.

We too, like Nathanael, can come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and more than that through believing we too may have life in his name.

Through our lives this Jesus is let loose in the world.

This is the wonderful thing we celebrate in this Easter period – as Easter people.

to make an end is to make a beginning

The end is where we start from.

And all shall be well

And all manner of things shall be well.