| The Foundation of Lady Katherine Leveson at Temple Balsall | ||
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St
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Open or closed minds for God? Second Sunday after Epiphany Sermon preached on 15 January 2006 by During a conversation with a group of Christians before Christmas a majority view emerged about older people in Church congregations. One of the reasons that people found older people in significant quantities in congregations problematic was because they were experienced as resistant to change ; reluctant to move and respond to anything different or unsettling. One participant put it like this: ' When you reach a certain age you tend to make up your mind about things and that includes your religion'. The calling of the disciples is an event which offers us some questions about our minds and whether they are open to the new, open to change, open to how God would have us to live. First, let's look at the response of Nathaniel, which is biased, plainly unbelieving and which challenges us to think about our faith or lack of it. It is interesting to see how prejudices work - Nathaniel is distracted by the origins of Jesus, - nothing good could come out of Nazareth. It is impossible that any Messiah can be found there. Nathaniel is closed-minded only willing to see the world as he has known it so far. And what he knows is that nothing good comes from Nazareth. Nathaniel is not the only one who suffers from this kind of closed-mindedness. We all have biases that keep us from seeing how God might be at work in the places and people we least expect to find God. God knows that we would rather stick with our prejudices than learn something about the ways God is at work in the world. There is a bit of Nathaniel in all of us - think of the ways in which your mind is closed - where you are not prepared to have your horizons broadened. Notice how the story develops. Nathaniel is not left to wallow in his prejudices. Instead, Philip tells Nathaniel to step outside his own closed mind and to see Jesus - and Nathaniel does. And when Nathaniel meets Jesus, he encounters a Nazarene who knows him in a way that blows his mind wide open. Jesus can see that Nathaniel is a trustworthy man, Jesus can tell Nathaniel where he has been, and in this encounter Jesus promises Nathaniel, that he will see God's authority and power and love that rest on Jesus' shoulders. As Nathaniel's mind opens, Jesus promises to reveal the full extent of his power. So we are asked with Philip to come and see Jesus. We are asked to encounter him. We are asked to have our hearts and minds open to see how gracious and forgiving he is to us in the face of our doubts and disbeliefs. When we keep company with Jesus, he opens our minds to our neighbours and the world as well. Faith in Jesus makes it possible for us to think beyond our once closed minds. No longer do we live with the old assumptions about we can expect from God or the world. Instead, keeping company with Jesus opens our lives to all kinds of new possibilities about where faith will lead us, and with whom we will keep company. Faith in Jesus as the Messiah means that good things can come out of all kinds of unexpected places; and, it means that just when we think we've seen the best, we'll see greater things than these where Jesus is involved. So let us raise our eyes and hearts and spiritual expectations so that our faith might be enlarged and deepened; enlivened and re imagined. Let us beware of impoverished and closed minds that take no risks for discovery and surprise. The Reverend Dr James Woodward |
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