THE SEASON OF EPIPHANY
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“IF ELECTED I PROMISE YOU, MY FRIENDS …”

“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’” John 1:45-46

A presidential election year brings a mind boggling stream of stump speeches, baby kissing and arm pumping, debate after debate after debate, and a media blitzkrieg of advertisements, few proclaiming a message of hope but most directed at destroying the opponent. We hear again and again, “If elected I promise you, my friends …” and our hearts soar with the hope of the promises, but our stomach lurches in doubt. The blessing of our democracy is that the President does not wield dictatorial power and must work in collaboration with the legislative bodies of Congress. In the most recent years, we have seen little progressive participation and more partisan paralysis stymie progress by the wheels of government. I continue to say and believe that if one candidate would say, “For my campaign, I am pledging all the money I have raised not to countless advertisements, but to aiding world hunger issues … or needs for healthcare for all people … or defeating infant mortality rates still much too high in our world …” they would have my vote in a heartbeat, and I suspect many others! Sometimes our doubts are real, and sometimes they need to be balanced by steps of faith with another.

Nathanael hears of yet again another “messiah sighting” from his friend Philip, this one called Jesus of Nazareth. His reply to Philip belies his “been there, heard that before” doubt, let alone the messiah being someone from Nazareth … really, Nazareth? It would be like one who knew old Tom, the town drunk for years, who one day appears for church dressed and groomed neatly, clean and sober as a judge, yet saying, “Tom, old drunk Tom? You must be kidding, that cannot be him. He will NEVER change!” Our hearts soar with the hope of the promises, but our stomach lurches with doubt, and sometimes those doubts are clouded by our preconceived perceptions of another. Our ability and willingness to see the saving power and presence of God before us, REALLY SEE God before us, is hard. In the book Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Frederick Buechner writes about “doubt” –

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep us awake and moving. There are two principal kinds of doubt, one of the head and the other of the stomach. In my head there is almost nothing I can’t doubt when the fit is upon me – the divinity of Christ, the efficacy of the sacraments, the significance of the Church, the existence of God. But even when I am most skeptical, I go on with my life as though nothing untoward has happened.”

“I have never experienced stomach doubt, but I think Jesus did. When he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ I don’t think he was raising a theological issue any more than he was quoting the Twenty-Second Psalm. I think he had looked into the abyss itself and found there a darkness that spiritually, viscerally, totally engulfed him. I think God allows that kind of darkness to happen only to his saints. The rest of us aren’t up to doubting that way, or maybe believing that way either. When our faith is strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by Light.” [p. 23]

Philip’s answer to Nathanael is not dismissive of his doubt, nor is it a historic or histrionic view of the Hebrew scriptures about the promised Messiah. Philip simply yet profoundly said to Nathanael, “Come and see.” And Nathanael came to the one called Jesus of Nazareth, and his head and heart and stomach replied, “… you are the Son of God.”

In this New Year, filled with many promises and many words, may the Light of Epiphany’s promised Messiah guide your living faith this day, and all your days.

In peace always, your servant in Christ,
Paul+