The Wings of the Morning

Texts: Psalm 139, John 1:43–51

The great Hindu sage of the 19th century, Ramakrishna, told a fable about a motherless tiger cub who wandered out of the jungle, nearly starved to death. The cub was adopted and nursed back to health by goats and brought up by them so that this young tiger acted in almost every way like a goat. Knowing no other mother or siblings, the tiger walked like a goat, ate like a goat, and sounded like a goat.

Then one day, the king of the tigers came upon the scene. All of the goats scattered in fear, leaving the young tiger all alone to confront tiger king. He was afraid, and yet, somehow, not afraid. The tiger king asked him what he meant by seeming to pretend that he was goat. But the young tiger could only bleat nervously and continue to nibble on grass. The tiger king took him to a pool of water and had the young tiger look at the two reflections in the water, expecting that the young tiger would see how much he resembled the tiger king and so learn of his real identity. But the young tiger could not see it. So then the tiger king brought the young tiger a piece of raw meat. At first, the young tiger recoiled at the unfamiliar taste, but as he ate some more, as he dug in his claws and used his sharp teeth, the truth became clear to the young tiger. The nourishment from the meat began to warm the young tiger’s blood, and soon, he swished his tail and raised his head, and the young tiger let out a roar. Then the whole jungle shook with the knowledge that there was a new king in their midst.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all religions with profound differences of opinion about the nature of God, but they all agree on one general and basic idea about human nature: human beings, as we exist in this world, are not what we were created to be. As in Ramakrishna’s fable where the tiger thinks he is a goat, human beings don’t recognize the truth about themselves. Our holy texts tell us that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, but somewhere along the way, something has gone awry. Like a mirror with a crack in it, the image that we show to the world is a badly distorted image of the divine. The story of Adam and Eve is more than a myth or a fable; it is also a personal story for each one of us. We were created to serve God and each other in love, but more often, each of us chooses to serve himself or herself as god; so our most basic relationship—our relationship with the Creator—is broken. We all have a notion of a Paradise lost, and yet, we carry Paradise around inside of us, in the form of a longing for, a distant memory of, a hazy dream of a blessedness that is no more, but may be again.

When Jesus walks into the scene in the gospel of John, John the Baptist takes a bony finger and points at him, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John’s disciples look up and see a tiger of a man, a man full of the glory of God; they see the one who can baptize with Spirit and fire. In the first chapter of his gospel, John identifies Jesus by a multitude of titles: he is the Logos, the Word made flesh, the Light of the world, the only-begotten, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Son of Man; he is rabbi, teacher, the one Moses wrote about, the son of Joseph, son of God, and the King of Israel.

When Jesus walks beside the lake in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he is fishing for disciples who will follow him. But here, in John’s gospel, disciples are looking for him. They have been hoping and yearning for some one like Jesus, and when they see him and follow him, they share the news with others who have similar longings. First Andrew and an unnamed disciple of John, then Peter, now Philip… and then Philip invites Nathanael to come and see this Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth… the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote. Nathanael is doubtful and why wouldn’t he be? “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Nazareth and the district of Galilee is well known for many protests against the establishment in Jerusalem and the Roman occupiers. Many people have come out of Galilee claiming that God is on their side.

Jesus sees and hears Nathanael and compares him to Jacob: “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Jacob is the one who deceived everyone, but at least to Jesus, Nathanael’s life is an open book. “So where did you get to know me,” he asks. And Jesus says that he saw Nathanael under the fig tree. It is another way of saying that Nathanael is a son of Adam, a sinner and a seeker, one who is searching for a way back to the garden.

Apparently, it is because Jesus recognizes his full humanity that Nathanael then makes his profession of faith: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel.” Again, Jesus refers to Jacob: “You will see greater things than these,” he tells Nathanael. “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending.” That is what Jacob sees on the night when he stops in the middle of nowhere as he runs away from his angry brother. In a place so inhospitable that all Jacob can find for a pillow is a rock, Jacob dreams, and in his dream, he has a vision of a ladder stretching into the heavens, and angels ascending and descending on that ladder. In the morning, Jacob’s dream still seems so real that he names the place Bethel—the house of God—declaring, “Surely God was in this place all along, and I never even knew it.”

‘Stay near to me,’ Jesus is saying to Nathanael, ‘and you will see the holiness of God everywhere you look.’

For us, living here 2000 years later, Jesus seems like a very distant figure. It is as much a problem of our hearts as it is of our heads. We know in our heads that in the whole history of the world, 2000 years ago isn’t such a very long time. We’ve seen that 24 hour clock that condenses the history of the earth into one day. For 23 hours and 45 minutes there is nothing on earth but rocks and gases. Then there is the age of the ameba and other microscopic creatures. There is the age of dinosaurs, and finally, about 2 minutes before the end of the day, human beings appear on the earth. Jesus is born with only 5 milliseconds to spare.

I remember leading a group of children in this lesson at a summer day camp. We used a rope stretched a great distance, using small flags to mark off the ages of the earth. We got near the end of the rope and just a couple of centimeters away from this moment in time was the flag marking the birth of Jesus. I asked the class to reflect for a minute about what this might mean. One 10-year-old boy who was obviously working on his theology degree answered: ‘It means that Jesus was here like yesterday.’ Thus endeth the lesson. Amen and Amen. We know this truth, but we also can’t help but think how different his time was from our time.

Jesus is long ago, and so far away. We can go and hang out at the places where Jesus walked, but whenever I read the reports of people who have done that or listen to people tell of trips to the Holy Land—whether it is St. Helena’s record from the her pilgrimage in the 4th century or looking at photographs from our church group who went to Israel 5 years ago—they always express how much the land seems to long for his presence. Those who have travelled to the Holy Land, who have walked on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, and had water from the Jordan splashed on them, they only express how much more acute is their longing for Jesus. How much that geography seems to ache for the real presence of Jesus of Nazareth.

Long ago and far away, and so very different from us; Jesus is so different from us. He is just so darn good. At our first confirmation class last week, some of the kids expressed the gap between us and Jesus by asking, ‘How could Jesus be raised from the dead and not want to just take apart all the people who destroyed him?’

We are beings who sometimes let our human desires and impulses get the best of us. We do things and say things that are not in our best nature; things that do not reflect the divine image that has been planted in us from Creation. Knowing this about ourselves, we often want to run and hide from ourselves, from one another, and from God. Our first impulse is not to seek the solace of God in Christ, but to find some deserted place, hide out and hope the whole thing blows over.

Psalm 139 can be read as the confession of David the sinner who wants to hide from God… the confession of Adam and Eve who seek some place far away from the intense and loving view of God. When Adam and Eve hide th4emselves, God goes looking for them. When Cain kills Abel, he tries to act like there is nothing out of the ordinary here. When David sins against Bathsheba, and Uriah, and God, David is oblivious to his murderous and abusive acts. Once he becomes aware, David falls to his knees in shame, only to discover that God does not cast him out, but calls him to repentance and atonement that is full of suffering-love and costly discipleship. Nonetheless, David knows that he has not been abandoned: “If I go into the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths of Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and travel to the place where the sun meets itself rising and setting… even there, God is present... I cannot even cover myself with darkness, because darkness is as light to You.”

In Margaret Wise Brown’s pre-Christian classic that many of us read to our children and grandchildren touches these very same themes, often even using explicitly Christian imagery. That little runaway bunny is as rebellious as Adam and Eve, as disobedient as David. Your heart and my heart are no less rebellious. We often seek to run away from the very love and acceptance that we truly desire. So, like the bunny’s mother, God becomes a tree (I am the vine and you are the branches. God becomes a mountain (my Rock and my Redeemer). God becomes a fisherman or a gardener… becomes flesh and blood and dwells among us… comes to us in the form of a servant, recognizing that equality with God is not a thing to be grasped… and continues to seek us, no matter how often we run away.

So what are we to do? Live as if God in Christ is present now. This was a powerful part of the genius of martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King sought to make the presence of Jesus Christ real in the political and social life of America in the 1950s and 60s. He used the language of the church and took it to the streets in ways that were so powerful that many have not yet gotten over it. He proclaimed: “I can never be what I ought to be, until you are what you ought to be. And You can never be what you ought to be, until I am what I ought to be.” This sort of radical interdependence that transcends race and color and economic division is exactly what Jesus preaches and teaches and then models for us. We are invited to recognize that Jesus is present now; that God’s kingdom is, in fact, right in this place and time and we never even knew it.

So live as if Jesus is here. One of the long-time businessmen of Okemos died this past week. A few months after I arrived in Okemos, a man named Val Korrey came to visit me in my office. He introduced himself to me as the manager of the Sip and Snack restaurant in downtown Okemos. He wanted me to know that whenever hungry and needy people came to the church, I could send them to his restaurant along with my business card and he would see that they got fed. I had a similar arrangement with a local gas station. They would fill up the gas tank of a needy traveler and send me the bill. I told Val that we could have the same arrangement: he would feed the needy and I would pay the bill.

Over the last 15 years, I sent dozens of people to Val Korrey and his little restaurant. I saw how he treated the hungry and the homeless. He invited them to choose anything on the menu. He treated them like a customer – like a guest – and he never once sent me a bill. He treated hungry strangers like friends. He greeted everyone who came into the Sip and Snack as if they were old friends. I would say, he acted as though Jesus were here, sitting in the corner, sipping coffee and watching a disciple proclaim the kingdom of God.

You see, Jesus may be different, but he calls us to be different people as well. He teaches us that we are to be different in this community of faith than we are able to be on our own. While other religions instruct human beings in methods to overcome their human desires, to sublimate and quiet all desire… in other words, to become something other than human. Jesus invites us to transform our God-given desire and to give it a God-shaped direction; to claim our full humanity and reclaim the image of God in which we are made.

Seek, knock, ask, Jesus says to us. Don’t run and hide. For in Jesus, there is power to turn goats into tigers, to give life to the half-alive, and even to the dead. When Jesus says, “Come and see,” and then, “Follow me,” he also has the power to give us exactly what we need. This is the power of God that he has and that he is, and that is why men and women continue to call him the Christ, the Son of God, the king.

What he gives us is ourselves—our true selves. He calls us by name – and knows who we really are—God’s sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to one another. He offers us water, bread, and wine, wisdom and courage to warm our blood and make us powerful and compassionate with the sheer mystery and joy of it all. Amen.