Sunday, January 14 - Seen

 This sermon was preached on Sunday, January 14, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow for the second Sunday after Epiphany and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. The texts for this sermon were: 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20), John 1:43-51, and Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17. 

If you haven’t heard of StoryCorps before, it’s an American oral history project that collects audio recordings of conversations between friends and relatives. Their archives are filled with beautiful stories that have captured and preserved what it is to be a person in America. One of my favorites is a story told by Ramón Sanchez. Ramón grew up in a small farming town in the 1950s. His teachers Americanized his name and the names of the other Mexican-American classmates. So Ramón became Raymond and María became Mary, and Juanita became Jane. That is until second grade, when a new kid showed up: Facundo Gonzalez. The teachers held an emergency administrative meeting because they couldn’t figure out what to do with his name. There was no Americanized name equivalent and they certainly couldn’t shorten Facundo to its first syllable, so Facundo got to keep his name. Facundo got to be Facundo, at home and at school. Facunco got to remain himself in this fundamental way Ramón couldn’t - and so Ramón never forgot Facundo and his victory.

The story reminds me of another memory from Nigerian-American actress Uzoamaka Nwanneka Aduba . When her Boston classmates struggled to pronounce her name, Uzo came home and asked her mom to call her Zoe. Her mom refused, telling Uzo, "If they can learn to say 'Tchaikovsky'  and 'Michelangelo' and 'Dostoevsky’ then they can learn to say 'Uzoamaka.” 

In other words, don’t twist and hide and change yourself to fit what’s easiest for everyone else. Make them learn to say and see your full self. Both stories, at their heart, are about how meaningful it is to be seen the way you long to be seen, known the way you were meant to be known. 

This, too, is at the heart of the Nathanael story. We remember Nathanael for his recognition of Jesus Christ’s true identity. If we look closer, this story is also about Nathanael being seen for who he truly is, too. 

“Come and see,” says Philip to a skeptical Nathanael. Even as Nathanael is still walking toward Jesus, Jesus tells the folks around him about Nathanael’s essential character: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” We don’t know what emotions lie behind Nathanael’s response, “Where did you get to know me?” Was it anger? Shock? Suspicion? Appreciation? “I saw you,” Jesus replies simply. “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

I like the twist The TV show The Chosen adds to its retelling of this story. The show starts Nathanael’s story a bit earlier. In a sort of prequel scene, Nathaniel has a breakdown alone, under an isolated fig tree. He screams at God in anguish, demanding to know if God sees him. It’s only later on that Philip invites him to go meet Jesus. Then when Jesus says to Nathanael, “I saw you under the fig tree,” this TV show version has Jesus add the explicit reassurance, “When you were in your lowest moment I did not turn my face from you.” Yes, God had seen Nathanael that day. In that belated answer to his heart’s deepest cry, Nathanael realizes the truth of Jesus’ identity as the son of God.

When Jesus says, “I saw you,” he is saying, “I see the best of you, Nathanael. I see how you are upright and trustworthy.” but also “I have seen you at your lowest, most desperate.” I see all of you.

The miracle that brings Nathanael to the faith is the miracle of being truly seen. Sure, on its surface the miracle is that Jesus had some sort of prophetic vision of Philip’s friend. Jesus also implies that this sign is nothing compared to the wonders that are to come. But I want to give Nathanael some credit here. It is no small thing to feel fully seen. 

Especially since we humans get it wrong all the time. 

As a ministry leader, for instance, I live in fear of getting people’s names mixed up and mispronounced, or that I’ll leave someone off of a big list of thank yous during the announcements. I still haven’t heard the end of accidentally skipping over greeting a table of wedding guests at my wedding reception. I am reminded daily that toddlers will do all sorts of egregious things to get you to look at them - and that adults are constantly doing the same. Because it hurts to feel invisible. To be made to feel unworthy of recognition. 

The opposite is rough, too, though isn’t it? When someone sees you, but not the whole of you. Writes you off as something you’re not, or maybe something you are, but it’s not all of you. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But even the people who love us the deepest, who’ve known us the longest can mess this up. Do mess this up. 

This, to me, is what’s so vital about staying in relationship with God, especially God who has lived and walked among human beings as a human being himself. I can put all my longing to be seen and heard and fully known on to God. When I focus on knowing, really believing, that God sees all of me, then somehow it gets easier to forgive and give grace for the ways and times I am misunderstood and misheard and overlooked by others. But perhaps most crucially, it gives me the courage to stay curious about others, too, the ones I’ve written off or think I already know. To ask myself, how does God see them? To look more closely - what does God see in you and her and him and them that I have missed?

The most transformative experiences I could offer teens in youth ministry were not the community service opportunities that collected the most clothes or fed the most people. They were the trips and experiences that brought teens into relationship with the overlooked. When they got to hear stories from the homeless themselves. And what they were told was all about how powerful and life-giving it is to be seen as a whole person, and how defeating it is to be dismissed as just a nuisance, just a junkie, just a beggar. To hear our homeless guide at the CityReach Program tell it to my high school youth group, the need to be seen and acknowledged is just as essential and human as the need for food, warmth, and shelter. 

Whether or not the well-off teens I brought on those trips had ever faced actual hunger or a night on the streets, that need to be known served as a key point of connection for teenagers, who themselves were in the midst of that weird, stressful time when young people both desperately want to stand out and also ache to blend in. 

This weekend our nation pauses to remember a pastor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who led a movement of people willing to risk everything: their jobs, their physical safety, even their lives, to demand that our Black siblings be seen as full human beings. King’s dream was not, is not for a colorblind world, where people learn to look past the hue of each other’s skin. King’s dream is for a colorful world, where all people are recognized as worthy of dignity and celebration for all of who they are - hard to pronounce names and all. We pause to remember this weekend because that movement is still ongoing, that demand is still unmet. And it’s a dream that’s been taken up by many more groups of people, other folks who also long to be respected for their true selves. 

All this is why I start most introductory meetings with folks with the strange question, “What do I need to know about you?” It throws people off a lot, but it’s a sincere question. Help me to see you as you most need your priest to see you.

When Jesus said to Nathanael and those around him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” I wonder, did a part of Nathanael leap for joy that this Messiah could see him the way he hoped others would? What would you long for Jesus to say about you as you approached him? What does God see in you that others miss? 

And when we look around at the people in our lives, the strangers and the ones we’ve known and loved for many years, can we give them room to surprise us? Space to be understood even that much more? Can we see what God sees and can we let them know? Turns out even small gestures can be so meaningful - things as simple as learning how to pronounce someone’s name or calling them by the one that feels truest who they are. 

In the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, we are taught to pray: “may I not so much seek to be understood as to understand.” It’s a beautiful, humble prayer. And, and let me pray for you that you will, too, know what it is to be fully understood, known, and seen. If not by others, then by Jesus Christ.