Second in Epiphany -
Reading St John ch 1 vv 43 - 51
Jesus begins to call disciples and he starts off with those who had been followers of John the Baptist. John points Jesus out to two of his followers and says “Look, there There is the Lamb of God”
They literally follow him along the road spend the day with him and find that he has become their master One of these is named as Andrew. Andrew finds his brother Simon , brings him to Jesus who renames Simon as Peter
These young men have been stirred up by the message which John had brought a message calling them to a purer life and a closer relationship with God. John had announced himself as the forerunner the one preparing the way for the Messiah and now as Jesus appears John steps aside and his disciples become the disciples of Jesus. Andrew and Peter are today added to by Phillip and Nathanael. The gospel reading is a delightful story telling of this development In it we meet enthusiasm, prejudice, and extraordinary insight all in a few verses.
It is sometimes good for us to be reminded that the biblical characters the people of our Lord’s day were not two dimensional bit players, not to be taken seriously. Today’s gospel points out that we share with them not only a common humanity but the very same traits which enliven and sometimes taint our day-to-day lives.
Philip and Nathanael are two very believable characters not unlike you and me, prone to bursts of enthusiasm and capable of deep prejudice of which they are almost unconscious. Philip’s encounter with Jesus was obviously dramatic and life changing. Jesus was direct. He found Philip and asked him to join this small band of followers. He said Follow me - and Phillip did
There would have been more to the encounter than this. There would have been some background Jesus did not simply meet him by accident. He found him. He sought him out. He chose him. Phillip was, like Andrew and Peter from Bethsaida but after their encounter Phillip is not only convinced intellectually that Jesus is the one to follow but he is also enthused about it. Good news has to be shared Philip was hooked and his first reaction is to find his friend Nathanael.
He blurts out the life changing epiphany which he has just experienced and he is met with total cynicism Nathanael thinks Philip is crazy. To a pure Jew, the inhabitants of Nazareth were not only country folk with a country accent, they were a racially mixed community. Generations of aye been prejudice kick in to make Nathanael blurt out, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” It is interesting that the writer of the fourth gospel includes this detail. There’s no attempt to whitewash the words of the disciples. Despite our stained-glass views which tend to depict the first disciples as sainted beings. Today we encounter them as real people, warts and all. How could Jesus choose people who demonstrate the same dreadful failings we meet in human beings in our daily lives? But then if Jesus can choose them then perhaps he might also choose us? Philip, full of excitement could not help himself from finding and telling his friend Nathanael the good news Today, in our painfully inclusive society, he would risk being accused of trying to force his religion on others, of being ““evangelical”” or even a crank.
This story rings for me because as a young boy I had a personal experience In which I knelt by my bedside one night and prayed and felt that I something had happened to change my life. The next day I did what Phillip did long ago I went to visit my best friend from school and I told him what had happened I so much wanted him to be able to share this.
My limited words and understanding meant that although I did my best to explain the feelings which had been stirred up inside me and my school pal gave me a hearing. It did not connect for him or change his life.
However Philip had another option open to him he was sure that if he could just get Nathanael to meet Jesus, he would be convinced Despite the fact that for Nathanael there was a great roadblock of prejudice which stood in the way of him accepting that any good could come out of Nazareth. When they met Jesus saw in Nathanael a character who was direct and above all was totally honest “an Israelite in whom there is nothing false.” A straight bat That description is about all we shall know about Nathanael, except for the fact that he held a very low opinion of people from Nazareth.
We usually credit. Peter as the follower of Jesus who firstly blurted out that Jesus was the Messiah, the one for whom Israel had waited long, the one sent from God to establish the Kingdom. Yet in this story, a brand new convert, amazed that Jesus knew him that he had seen him under a fig tree blurts out, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
What was Nathanael doing under the fig tree? What was he saying? What made this statement so powerful and life changing?
We read the words of Psalm 139 and we sung Bernadette Farrell’s versification this morning “O God you search me and you know me “ we affirmed that God knows us in our depths but it is when that knowledge really comes home to Nathanael that he finds himself in an encounter with the living God. It is the same for us. When we realise that all of our lives our past our prejudices the best bits of us with our highest aspirations the lowest bits of us with our meanest streaks All is transparent before the one who made us and formed us in our mother’s womb. Nathanael encounters Jesus, something life changing takes place that day for Nathanael but Jesus says this is only the beginning. This was one small step at the start of a great journey. Jesus says: “Nathanael You shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man.” To us this may seem a very strange statement to make to a new convert but Nathanael would recognise the profound meaning for Jesus is recalling the story of Jacob and Bethel, how one night on his journeying Jacob had placed his head on a stone, he had dreamed that he wrestled with an angel and then he saw angels ascending and descending on what seemed to be a ladder. Joining earth to heaven This all might seem pretty obscure to us, but to a faithful Jew, the story of Jacob is one of the key symbols. It is a defining moment, marking a new level of understanding. As God touches a human life in a transforming way. The place comes to be known as Bethel the house of God the front doorstep of heaven it becomes the site of the first temple the place where people worshiped God. Jesus is saying to Nathanael You have encountered me You will now see the spiritual within the everyday. Richard Hooker who was the founder of Anglican theology back in the time of Elizabeth 1 famously described all worship as our encounter with angels ascending and descending. Which is a poetic way of saying that like in the vision of the ladder joining earth to heaven.
We affirm that the earthbound part of us aspires and seeks to be connected to the spiritual realm.
To put it simply, just as Nathanael was looked at and looked into in an unlikely situation, We can encounter the power to be changed. Jesus looks at us and says, “I saw you in your garden” or “I saw you at the supermarket.” he reminds us that we are known at the deepest depths even in the most trivial of situations. Not just in the special moments when we come in communion and pray “Almighty God to whom all hearts are open, all desires are known and from him no secrets are hid.” At all times Christ sees us and knows us : our potential and our prejudices, our talents, and our sins; and still he chooses us.
That is amazing.
If the Messiah can be born in the backwaters of Nazareth in a mixed community, anyone can live in Jesus as he lives in us. Jesus calls us to be Nathanaels, whose past prejudice and past lives can be changed by an encounter with the Lord. People who in our excitement may bring others to Jesus to hear the good news. To say to them come and see!
Come see what goes on on Sunday morning What it is that drives us and come and join with us and follow the one who searches hearts and draws us to follow him on a journey that may lead us to see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending as the temporal and the spiritual embrace in a vision of God’s Kingdom in all its glory May it be so
AMEN.

Communion Sunday -
Readings Psalm 147 & St Mark ch 1 vv 29 - 39
Most of you can look back to the time when Communion was the one service which no one dared to miss. It was a service at which the attendance was counted and often the attendance at communion would be vastly greater than the attendance on other Sunday mornings.
Part of that was a social response It was a measure of respectability to be at communion. There was a formal sense of obligation to attend In fact to miss more than three communions in some Kirk sessions could see you struck off. Removed from live membership and placed on the supplementary roll.
There was a sense in which attendance at communions was almost a legal obligation a transaction between us and the kirk in which we ticked a box that kept us in good standing. That attitude has largely changed along with many other more visible changes in society.
Visiting Waterstones this week I noticed another of those really splendid books of Perth in bygone times full of photographs which remind us of the changes to our city and all those grand buildings and sometimes not so grand buildings which are now gone. The crowd scenes are always of great interest too with grand old boys in top hats or bunnets and ladies in dignified dresses or layers of pinnies and not a sign anywhere of jeans or T shirts or bare midriffs.
What is also noticeable is that in those days there was considerable uniformity of dress. The options the choices of colour and cut and material simply did not exist. That has changed as Society has changed. We are much more free standing as individuals. We are much less likely to feel pressured by our peers and our neighbours. Take a look around on any Saturday afternoon at the variety of dress styles that are disported now in Perth High street. Even elderly males, the former bunnet brigade, can turn up in the most astonishing garb
We look around and often the familiar line from Robert Burns about “seeing ourselves as others see us” rushes to mind but if folk really do not care what others might think. That issue goes off the agenda Many evidently don’t care at all what others might think of their appearance or of their behaviour. People simply suit themselves and the pressure to conform to the opinions of others has gone.
That is reflected widely in society and not just in the High street on a Saturday
We have become a society of free choice. When it comes to church People choose to attend not because they HAVE to but because they want to and that in itself is no bad thing. Nobody forced us to come here this morning so what is it that we are looking for as we come to worship Sunday by Sunday and particularly on a communion Sunday?
The answers to that question will be as varied as we are. For some the answer might be that They come to Church because that is where they meet with friends / and enjoy the Fellowship of those who are like minded. Some might answer that they come to find peace and quiet and time to think Goodness knows, there are few enough places left in our lives for reflection
Then church is the place where we almost uniquely join our voices to sing together. For there are few other places where that can happen and singing is quite a special human activity.
It is a place we may come hoping to be nourished in our inner being and strengthened spiritually for what may lie before us in the week ahead.
But the the bottom line is that we to come to church because we feel better for having been to church
The pressure is off nowadays If we fail to attend church the boss won’t call us in on Monday morning to ask why we were missing. At least we hope that he won’t!
Our readings this morning offered some very clear light on the motives which have always led people to worship
Psalm 147 speaks about this business of praising God and how good it is to do that. How it is that as we worship we are reminded of his goodness to us. That this great God who is the creative force in the universe who sustains the earth and our living upon it deserves our praise and delights in those who worship him
The Psalm spoke of the joy felt at every level how good it is, the delight it brings and how pleasant it is.
Timothy Dudley Smith really captured the sense of the psalm 147 in his words which we sang earlier
Fill your hearts with joy and gladness
sing and praise your God and mine.
Praise the Lord for times and seasons
cloud and sunshine wind and rain
spring to melt the snows of winter
till the waters flow again.
Fill your hearts with joy and gladness
peace and plenty crown your days
love his laws declare his judgments
walk in all his words and ways
he the Lord and we his children
praise the Lord, all people praise

So this is not a new idea: From ancient times folk had a view that worship was good for you. And that reason remains valid for us today but there is more - Psalm 147 also mentions the sense of healing that comes from being in God’s presence and perhaps even moreso as we come to communion
In our NT reading Jesus is at the start of his ministry He has called his disciples and he himself had been with them at worship in the Synagogue at Capernaum. Hey! That’s another good reason for attending worship If Jesus did it so should we!
That day at capernaum in the service He would have heard the torah read. There would have been prayers and probably singings as well But after the synagogue service they have gone back to Simon Peter’s house where it turns out that Peter’s mother in law is sick with a fever.
In the days when there was no paracetemol or antibiotics there was little help to be offered except a wet cloth on the forehead and TLC / tender loving care
Jesus has come from worship which had no doubt been good for him and had taught him and had fed his spirit and all the other things we have considered but he brings with him something more. He goes into where this woman is lying ill in her bed and he touches her he takes her by the hand.
He is not afraid of contagion or infection or plague. The touch of Christ has an instant effect The fever leaves her, she is so restored that she rises from her sick bed and begins to serve them.
Healing flows out of worship, Worship is not just enjoyable it has positive health benefits. There is something healing which comes from being in God’s presence Our past pains Our present fears Our future worries Our griefs and losses all are brought under the healing touch of Christ as He restores our souls
Not healing in the sense of Lourdes and miraculous events and lame who walk or diseases that disappear and pilgrimages at the end of which crutches and zimmers are abandoned. Though that is not beyond the scope of the touch of Christ but Healing in a more general sense. The fact is that every service of worship is a service of healing Because at its greek root the word salvation/ the process by which we come back into relationship with God also means healing :
Harmony restored and the past forgiven and the path into the future turns into a journey into God
The first thing that Jesus does as he begins his public ministry is to bring wholeness and healing to those he encounters and that is available each time we meet. Where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst and where his spirit is present we may not be surprised to feel better than we did previously
As we come to worship coming of our own volition Not because of peer pressure Not because of duty Not because we must but because we delight to be here because we recognise that it good for us on every level of body and mind and spirit to worship God It is therapeutic to attend church as the psalmist discovered so long ago:
How good it is to sing praises to our God how pleasant and fitting to praise him
Prayer
Lord as we come around the table again today
We come in weakness for your strengthening
We come in sickness for your healing
We come in trouble for your calming
We come in our lostness for your guidance
We come in our lonliness for your love
We come in our dying / our mortality for your resurrection
Meet with us and draw us closer to you and to each other in your love
Touch us as you touched those you met when you walked this earth and bring wholeness to our lives
Through Christ our Lord we pray
AMEN

Fourth in Lent -

Snakes and Crosses -
Readings Numbers ch 21 vv 4 – 9 & John ch 3 vv 14 - 21
Surely the Minister has made a typing mistake with the heading for his sermon today. It must be either snakes and ladders or Noughts and Crosses
Everybody knows that! Well, no, it is snakes and crosses these are the two topics presented to us in the lectionary
Our first reading came to us from the book of Numbers. Perhaps even the idea of a reading from a book called numbers may make some of us smile at the thought. But there is more in the book of Numbers than just numbers. The title really only applies to a census taken in chapter one where the numbers of the men in the tribes of Israel over twenty years of age and able to serve in the army were recorded and to chapter 26 when another census was recorded but alongside that there are some thirty-four more chapters.
The title of the book is quite misleading But with an unwelcoming name like numbers It is a wonder that the book is read at all. Yet Numbers is quite a treasure trove of tales about the desert experiences of the Israelites.
There is an account of the miraculous provision of manna for the Israelites as they travel through the desert which would have fitted very well for lent. There is also a highly amusing story about a Prophet called Ballam who stops listening to God but who ends up being spoken to by the ass on which he is riding. I seem to recall a very flamboyant preacher in my youth who enacted this story with great dramatic excess capturing our imagination as he pretended to ride this disobedient creature around the platform of the church in which he was speaking
Today’s story for us is less amusing and more threatening It is the story of an attack on Israel by serpents which takes place in the middle of the wilderness journeyings
The lead up to the situation was introduced last week as Moses descended from Mount Sinai and became angry with the Israelites who had begun to worship other Gods whilst he was up on the mountain receiving the ten commandments and that story was told as a parallel to Jesus anger when he arrived at the temple in Jerusalem and drove out the money changers and chased out the animals which were there for profit
In the wilderness of Sinai the frustrations of leadership continue for Moses in a series of stories that are referred to as the “murmurings”. Having misbehaved badly in last week’s incident The Israelites continue to murmur / to complain. This week it is about the menu 'Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?' 'there is no water and we detest this miserable food “
The Israelites were scunnered the food was monotonous.
They are eating God given manna Miraculously provided but they begin to long for the flavours which they enjoyed in Egypt in that fertile land along the Nile. They are looking back to the “Good old Days “ and forgetting the reality of the situation forgetting that there in Egypt they were slaves
In my youth over a period of years I admit that I developed a bit of an aversion to Mince and tatties . Mince and tatties is perfectly good and wholesome food but my memories of endless mince and tatties with the only variation on odd days of tatties and mince remains. I became quite Scunnered of it. When I went to London to work at the age of 17 I firstly discovered the joys curries and my eating habits were transformed. Looking back I wonder if perhaps friendships were less close as a consequence of my curry obsession! The high point in this new flavour experience came with the invention by me of curried porridge a delicacy which I have not encountered since
Now I have come back to quite enjoying mince and tatties Just not every day. The monotonous food was a problem for the children of Israel and they complained. Looking at the OT it is evident that the Israelites often complained to their leaders. They had a go at the middle management but only rarely did they complain directly about God.
On this occasion the complaint is directed at both: 'The people spoke against YHWH God and against Moses' (21:5).
Particularly vicious serpents turn up But this is not just a natural event; the attack has been divinely ordained. The serpents bite many people and they die. Under threat the people prove to be quite quick at theological thinking . They put two and two together they recognize the hand of YHWH in this. They recognise that they have overstepped the mark They confess that they got it wrong and they ask that Moses intercede: 'Pray to Yhwh to turn the serpents away from us' (2,1:7).
Moses does pray, he complies with their request but God, Yhwh does not comply by taking away the serpents. Rather than destroy the serpents Yhwh instructs Moses to 'make a 'serpent of bronze' and put it on a pole; God then declares that anyone who is bitten and looks at this shall live
Moses makes this snake on a stick and as promised, 'whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live'
Healing is provided through this strange this inexplicable means. A serpent on a pole is still a familiar symbol in medicine. The world health organisation has it on their badge as do many other medical groups. Its origin is shared between Moses and the healing staff of Aesclepius in Greek mythology
This fearful symbol of the serpent on the cross and fearful symbol of a man on a cross are there as part of the necessary processes of healing for humankind
A divinity professor recently suggested that The serpent is not just an antidote for snakebites; it keeps the source of affliction in view and so represents not only weal but also woe.
Good and evil. The cross on public display in churches as the symbol of Christianity has the same uncomfortable overtones as the serpent. We are reminded of something full of dread but something which contemplated actually brings healing and wholeness to our souls
God is always speaking through the past into the present He builds on what people have come to understand but he adds new layers of understanding.
Jesus picks up a strange a peculiar incident from the old testament with which the folk around him are familiar and he stretches its meaning and he transforms an odd piece of historical tradition into a powerful image to which the listeners can relate. We reflect on this this morning and we realise that there is a connection to the snake from the garden of Eden which has bitten all of us in Adam. The human race has been poisoned in a manner of speaking. It has received a fatal wound.
In the beginning God could have destroyed the serpent in the garden but it is allowed to live or he could have wiped the slate clean and started over again with a new world and a new humanity as he could have destroyed the snakes in the desert
He could have removed from this world all that might hurt or injure He could have done a classic health and safety ananlysis and ruled out from reality all that might in any way have caused us to stumble physically or spiritually
But by placing humanity in cotton wool he would have changed the potential and the nature of the human race. So in his divine wisdom He leaves creation as it is He leaves humanity at risk of failing and falling short and sinning but he does not finish off at that point. He provides a cure as he did in the wilderness of Sinai so long ago
If you were among the children of Israel in the desert and were bitten by a snake and you felt the poison beginning to course fatally through your veins The cure was available. By the same token at the moment when any member of the human race begins to become aware that there is a poison of sin at work in their life and they recognise that this bias to do the things that they would rather not do is at work in your soul.
When the penny drops and awareness comes that like all humankind each of us has received what is literally a mortal wound For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God
Then there is an answer. The message is so simple. Turn your eyes to the cross and you will find that God’s healing is there for you.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so the son of man must be lifted up. That whosover believes in him may have eternal life
So Glory be to God the Father
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning
is now and shall be evermore
AMEN