ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

EPIPHANY 2, 2006
HIGH MASS
ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Fr Alan Moses

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.”

Amidst the waste places of the Christmas television schedules; all those Christmas specials and murder and mayhem in Albert Square, I came across
a little gem: a new series on people with a passion of churches. The first was the Revd. Evelyn Davies and St. Hywyn’s Church in Aberdarron, a tiny village on the North West coast of Wales; the last place on the old pilgrimage route along the Lleyn peninsula to Bardsey Island.

Evelyn looks like everyone’s favourite granny. A widow - her husband too had been a priest of the Church in Wales - she had a recurring dream about St. Hywyns which had hot had a resident priest for 18 years. In the end, she contacted her Area Dean and then the Bishop. And after meeting with the two redoubtable lady churchwardens who had kept the parish going through those difficult years, she became the parish priest.

She saw quickly that restoration was necessary on two fronts. First, there was virtually no congregation and the church was at a low spiritual ebb. She had sensed an absence of God in the church when she first begun her ministry there.
“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” So as well as Sunday services, she began holding the daily services in the church – ringing the bell and saying Mattins and Evensong - whether anyone else was there or not. She celebrated the eucharist with groups of latter-day pilgrims on the way to Bardsey. During the holiday season she was seen drawing visitors old and young into the church, leaving intercessions written in pebbles from the beach - much as people leave them on scraps of paper here - making of them a pavement of prayer which at the end of the season would be returned to the sea.

At the same time she threw her energies into restoring the building – setting out to raise £200,000 - a huge sum for such a small community – talking and writing to anyone and everyone about it, drawing them in as collaborators.

As the programme progressed we saw the fruits of these prayers and labours in both the beginning of the work and also in a renewed sense of spiritual presence in the place: a sense of it being soaked in prayer; a place of epiphany, of revelation, which is what we celebrate at this season and our readings give us examples of..

Samuel’s story at a time when the word of the Lord was rare and visions not widespread, is not just a nice pious story. It is part of the story of the greatest spiritual figure in the history of Israel since Moses. It is about the intervention of God in the life of the people when its religious and political institutions were at a low ebb to bring renewed loyalty to the covenant between God and his people. Eli was an old and feeble man. His weakness meant that he did not always recognise the work of the spirit of God and he was certainly incapable of controlling his sons who preyed on pilgrims. But Eli is not entirely deaf to the voice of God – it is he who eventually figures out that it is God who is speaking to the boy. But the message he will hear from that boy will not be one of personal comfort - for it will confirm the words of another messenger of God that Eli’s sons will perish at the hands of the Philistine invaders. The shrine at Shiloh will itself be destroyed. But spiritual and national renewal will come.

The Jews felt at the time of Jesus that the same situation: no word or vision was theirs. The gospels see the coming of John the Baptist and then Jesus as the decisive intervention of God. In the story of Philip and Nathaniel’s encounter with Jesus they are shown one who is more than the Messiah they hoped for, the warrior king. They will see greater things than these: echoing Jacob’s vision at Bethel of angels ascending and descending - they will see the presence of God in Jesus Christ.

Another St. John,. the author of the Book of Revelation, writes at a time when things look bleak for the Christian Church: persecuted by Imperial Rome. In his extraordinary vision he sees into heaven, into ultimate reality, the presence of God.



At Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation, the revelation of God, of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Each of today’s readings speak to us of an experience of the divine by human beings: in each case an experience which is revealed to them, not something they manufacture by spiritual technique.

Thos story of the birth of Samuel to Hannah is read at Christmas time because it foreshadows the birth of both John the Baptist and Jesus. Barren Hannah receives a child in response to her prayer to God. She had promised the old priest Eli that if she received a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service for the whole of his life. That is why the boy Samuel is in the temple at Shiloh functioning as Eli’s servant.

The short version of the story we heard this morning does not tell us this or the wider spiritual context in which all this happens. It hints at this when it says the voice of God was not often heard. Eli is an old and feeble man – short of spiritual insight at times. he had mistaken Hannah’s prayers for the ramblings of a drunkard. Eli’s feebleness means that he is unable to control his worthless sons who share his priestly ministry but prey on pilgrims and women who come to the temple. But the lamp of God has not quite gone out and Eli is eventually able to recognise the activity of God.

The story of the call of Samuel in the Temple can be enjoyed on its own - particularly perhaps as a story for children at Sunday School or in a Family Service. But there is rather more to it than that. It is the beginning of the story of the greatest spiritual leader of Israel since Moses, one who would bring a renewal of the people’s relationship with God.

The time of Jesus was another in which people felt the the spirit of prophecy was dead. They longed for the coming of the Messiah, the anointed one of God, the king who would restore the political and religious fortunes of Israel. Philip tells Nathanael about Jesus who has called him to “Follow me”. Nathanael is sceptical: “Can any good come from Nazareth?” It’s a bit like saying: 2Can any good come out of the Church of England?” But when he encounters Jesus his mind is changed and he calls him the Son of God, the King of Israel.

Jesus speaks to him of a greater revelation still – echoing the story of Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel when he sees the vision of a ladder set up between heaven and earth with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. That ladder is now not above a place but above a person - Jesus. That ladder is to be found wherever Jesus is to be found.

Our second reading, from Revelation gives us another vision, of God and the heavenly city. In that vision our attention is drawn to the scroll and lamb.

The scroll contains is God’s redemptive plan, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, by which he means to assert his sovereignty over a sinful world, to achieve the purpose of creation. John will trace the operation of this plan from its beginnings in the Cross to its triumphal conclusion in the new Jerusalem.

But God will not himself break the seals of his scroll and put it into operation, He has set this limit to his own omnipotence: human destiny, and with it the destiny of all creation, must be achieved by a human being. The divine decree waits, sealed with seven seals, for the emergence of a human agent, willing and worthy to put it into effect, one who will be unreservedly at the disposal of God’s will.

When no one in all creation is able to open the scroll, John begins to weep. These are not the tears of the prophet, thwarted in his expectation of seeing into the future. His frustration goes deeper than that. Until the scroll is opened, God’s purposes remain not only unknown but unaccomplished. John’s tears are checked by what he now sees and hears. It always worth checking the connexion between what John hears and sees:

“One of the elders said, ‘…the Lion…has conquered…’ Then I saw ….a Lamb” What John hears is couched in the traditional messianic imagery of the Old Testament; what he sees is rebirth of images.

“The Lion of the tribe of Judah” is a title with obviously martial ring. “The Root of David” reminds us of David the warrior king. This would be a militant Messiah who would drive out the tyrannical and impious Gentiles and establish the reign of God with Israel as the imperial nation. The words of the elder encourage John to think that all the hopes and aspirations of the Old Testament are now on the point of fulfilment; and so they are, but only after being totally transformed by Christ. John looks for the Lion of the tribe of Judah and sees a Lamb.

By this one stroke John gives us the key to all his use of the Old Testament. Throughout the welter of OT images in the chapters that follow, almost without exception the only title for Christ is the Lamb and this title is meant to control and interpret all the rest of the symbolism. John is saying to us: Wherever the OT says Lion read Lamb. Wherever the OT speaks of the victory of the Messiah or the overthrow of the enemies of God, we are to remember that the gospel recognises no other way of achieving these ends than the way of the cross.

The Lamb has seven horns and seven eyes. The horn is the symbol of strength, the eye of wisdom. Christ possesses in all their fullness the omnipotence and omniscience of God. He is the ‘power and the wisdom of God” 1 Cor.1.24

John invests Christ with the attributes of deity, but he does something more important still: he redefines omnipotence. Omnipotence is not to be understood as the power of unlimited coercion, but as the power of infinite persuasion, the invincible power of self-negating, self-sacrificing love. This is the ultimate epiphany, the manifestation of the nature of God.

The new song of the four creatures and the elders proclaims: “You are worthy because you were slain”. John’s heavenly symbols are firmly anchored in historic fact. But the once-and-for-all fact of the Cross is not for John an isolated incursion of the divine into history, with repercussions only in heaven. It has its factual continuation in the earthly life of the church. Christ has ransomed people for God and made them a royal house of priests in God’s service. To be a Christian is to be part of this. John does not think of Christ as having withdrawn from the scene of his earthly victory, to return only at the end of all things. In and through his faithful followers he continues to bring revelation and meaning and hope to the people of the world.