You might be able to report similar experiences from your own life’s work during these unprecedented and challenging days.

We can take heart when we look at today’s readings, which reinforce the wisdom of the quip from one of our conference deans about God equipping the called. In the first reading from 1 Samuel, God calls the boy Samuel to speak a hard word to his spiritual father and mentor, Eli. Samuel is just a boy in the early days of his leadership formation. Eli is his mentor, the one training him. And yet, God calls Samuel to speak a word of judgment to the one who has authority over him.

Then there’s the fascinating exchange between Nathanael and Jesus in today’s gospel reading from John. Philip, who had encountered Jesus and recognized in him the fulfillment of what was promised in Moses and the prophets, shared this good news with Nathanael.

Nathanael’s response seems to be one of skepticism or cynicism: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth was not the kind of place you would expect the Messiah to come from.

Yet, when Jesus first sees Nathanael coming toward him, he announces: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is not deceit!” No treachery, craftiness. Nathanael is no fraud or fake or decoy.

Perhaps it was that Nathanael was honest enough to express his skepticism about Nazareth. Whatever it was, Jesus saw something in Nathanael that perhaps Nathanael himself and others did not see.

Nathanael asked Jesus, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

The Greek word that’s translated “know” – “where did you get to know me?” – implies an intimate, personal, experiential knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is not the casual implied by the simple statement, “I saw you under the fig tree.” How did Jesus know Nathanael in any profound way by simply by seeing him sitting under a tree? Jesus saw Nathanael with the eyes of God and with God all things are possible.

And what did Jesus see? Jesus saw in Nathanael one called to follow him.

“God does not call the equipped; God equips those whom God calls.”

You see this sacred dynamic of God equipping the called not just in Nathanael, but indeed all of the disciples, who are portrayed in Mark’s Gospel and other narratives as ones who just don’t get it at first. Jesus’ twelve disciples more often than not are stumbling and bumbling.

Yet these are the ones whom God calls, and equips. Peter, who denied his Lord three times, became one on whose confession of faith Jesus built the church.

This was good news back then, and it’s good news now when so many of us feel ill equipped to meet the challenges of our own days.

Pastors are not the only ones called by God. Martin Luther believed, as do we Lutherans, that God has a call to each one of us to serve God in our own particular ways by serving our neighbors in various capacities, callings, professions.

These are difficult times for us all in the work that God has entrusted to us.

Thanks be to God that in Christ, God sees more in us than we are able to see of ourselves.

Moreover, it’s not about us, it’s about Christ. We are beckoned to follow him, not wander off on our own to lead and serve according to our own whims.

We have entered the season of Sundays after Epiphany. This whole season features gospel and other biblical stories that are themselves epiphanies, revelations of the divine nature of Jesus.

There is an epiphany, a revelation, in today’s gospel. After Nathanael’s amazement, Nathanael has an epiphany that leads to his confession to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel!” Jesus’ response points to another epiphany: “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these… Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:49-51) This Son of God, who mysteriously emerges into our lives and circumstances from the fullness of God in Trinity, also reveals more about us. That is to say, Jesus saw more in people than their just being sinners and tax collectors and other marginalized people. In Christ, we sinners become epiphanies, revelations of what God is up to in calling us and equipping us as disciples.

Moreover, another feature of the epiphanies today in the calling of the disciples, in the call of Samuel, is the revelation of our own sacredness in the eyes of God, that we are children of God, created in God’s image.

This kind of thing is perhaps what the apostle Paul was elaborating on in today’s second reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul writes, “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? …Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:14-15a, 19-20)

God in Christ in the Spirit inhabits our very bodies, which we may deem unseemly, unclean. Yet, God is there, in us, and among us, an amazing thing and a central feature of our faith.

So, we are beckoned to follow Jesus, to come and see. We follow Jesus to the cross. We follow him from an empty tomb. We follow him to and from the bath that is baptism and baptismal life. We follow Jesus to and from the table where we are fed with his very presence.

We follow Jesus into our very troubled world of pandemic, political crisis, racial unrest and economic calamity for too many. We do this as Christ’s body, as temples of the Holy Spirit for the sake of the world in meeting Christ once again in the least of these of Jesus’ family in the neighbors we serve in love.

And in all of this, in all of these sacred epiphanies, we make our confession of faith just like Nathanael of old: Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!”

May God in Christ in the Spirit further equip us to meet the challenges ahead of us in calling us to be about God’s healing and reconciling work in the world. Amen.

And now for your reflection and holy conversation at home:

• In what ways might God be calling and equipping you for your share in God’s saving, healing, and reconciling mission in and for the sake of the world?