Sermon texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-20, John 1: 43-51
It’s likely no surprise to anyone here that I spend a lot of time on the Internet. I usually use it for legitimate purposes: sermon research, news browsing, communicating with friends via email and Facebook. You know, a lot of the same things many of you use this wonder of technology for. And yes, that also extends to looking at cat pictures and memes.
I was on one such website earlier this week, one I typically use to view pictures of cars like Maserati, Bugatti, Aston Martin, and various other brands that I will never ever own on a pastor’s salary. Interspersed with the car photos are various other pics that you might typically find on a “Guy” site (nothing too risque, however), including the occasional humorous quotation. And I spotted one that both made me laugh and slam my hand down on the table and say “I have my sermon for this Sunday.”
It was a picture of a billboard. On it was written, “Well, you did ask me for a sign. God.”
God does have a sense of humor and the Scriptures are truly filled with stories that are truly ridiculous, bordering on slapstick. God is always doing the unexpected, the surprising, and what’s probably the funniest is that God warns us about this. He tells us countless times that he does not view life the way we do. He does not judge the way we do. He does not evaluate the world the way we do. God’s ways are God’s, not ours, and yet despite all those warnings, we still get caught flat-footed all the time.
That picture on the Internet just seemed to me to be the precise sort of thing God would do. You want a sign? Well, here’s one. Just not the one you expected.
Samuel, the subject of our first lesson today, gets two such surprises from God. They’re almost pranks. The first is our first lesson, when Samuel is a boy and God surprises him by coming by night. Samuel keeps running back and forth to Eli because he doesn’t realize what’s really going on here and there is something funny about how he just doesn’t get it. But that’s not the only time he doesn’t get it.
At the other end of his life, he’s called to anoint the new king. So Samuel goes to the household of Jesse. And God tells him outright, “Look, I’ve sent you here to anoint a king, not the next Hollywood star. It’s not about height or good looks or strength or any of those things. It’s about the heart and soul of the person.” But Samuel is still astonished that the one chosen by God to be king is the ruddy runty little David instead one of his tall statuesque brothers. He doesn’t get it then either.
God does the unexpected. The surprising. Now he’s got a good reason why he does this to us. It is humorous, but it’s less a belly laugh than it is something akin to satire. It’s designed to make us think and re-evaluate the way we look at the world.
Jesus is himself, in a sense, a joke. Something unexpected. Something surprising. Something to, of course, make us think. Consider the birth narratives, the Christmas story. That story is nonsense. This is the king of kings and lord of lords. His birth is heralded by visions and angels, by portents in the sky, and he’s born in a barn.
Folks, if you don’t think that’s ridiculous, you’re not paying attention. I know it’s familiar to all of us, perhaps too much so. The whole premise of Christmas is nonsense. And it’s meant to be. That’s the joke. The one that makes us think. The one that makes us re-evaluate what we think about the world.
And then we come to Nathaniel.
The Scriptures don’t tell us a whole lot about him. The lists of the Twelve Disciples in the synoptic Gospels do not mention him, leading some to believe he’s either not one of the 12 or he uses another name. This story from John is the only tale we have about him, but it does tell us a few things. “Saw you under the fig tree” is likely a euphemism. Biblical scholars speculate that may mean that Nathaniel is a reader and therefore likely a Rabbi, well versed in the Scriptures. If that’s true, then he really should know better than to be surprised that the Messiah is someone unexpected. But like Samuel before him, he doesn’t get it.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Well, that’s the joke, isn’t it? Nazareth is this tiny little backwater town and yet indeed that is the home of the Messiah. Just like the greatest king of Israel’s history was not some Schwarzenegger-like Adonis, but a short pipsqueak named David. Just like the liberator of God’s enslaved people was an exiled murderer named Moses. Or the first to proclaim the core message of the Gospel, that Christ is risen, was woman of potentially questionable background named Mary. God is not what we expect. Nor does he act as we expect him to.
He doesn’t play by our rules. And that’s the Gospel. It’s a surprising thing. Jesus goes through the whole of his life upending people’s expectations. But the biggest surprise at all comes at the end of his life. His greatest moment of triumph? His ultimate victory? It’s to die a vicious brutal death on a cross. You want to talk about something that doesn’t make sense to us? Something that has to be a joke? The greatest human being that ever lived dies like a worthless hated criminal. And yet, that’s not defeat. That’s the greatest victory humankind has ever known.
And who saw that coming?
God is not what we expect, nor does he act as we expect him to. He’ll keep doing that to us. We’re constantly the butt of his jokes because we just don’t get it. He’s lives in a backwater called Nazareth. He’s born in a barn. He dies an ignominious death and yet it’s a victory. But the biggest surprises are not the elements of his life on Earth or the stories of God’s interaction with his people. It’s the way he responds to us.
He knows everything about us, including the things we’re too ashamed to admit even to ourselves and yet he loves us beyond words. He knows how often we’ve broken his laws and hurt other people, and yet he showers us with blessings uncounted. He is fully aware of our every vice, our every mistake, our every nasty habit, and yet he wants to be with us. And he wants that so badly that he even endured the cross for us. You want to talk about the unexpected? The surprising? God loves me. God loves you. And he died and rose again for the sake of us all. Amen.
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