wonder how you experience God? And, what is your expectation of how God will show up in your life? The whole of Epiphany – this time of unveiling, of seeing newly, and of God-revealing-Godself – centres around various possibilities. Who are we? And, how can we cultivate an open-hearted, expectant, ears-aware, eyes-wide sense that God knows us well enough to speak to us in familiar ways? And, although God is mysterious and Other, how can we allow the good news to seep into us: God – who was, and is and is to come – wants to know and be known.

The passages today all circle around these ideas. In Samuel, this young boy, a temple worker, used to being at the beck and call of the old priest, hears God’s voice in the night. At first hearing, the voice and its cadence is so familiar in tone he thinks it’s his Master. But the Master, who knows God, whose life hasn’t lived up to what he knows, understands too that if the boy is hearing a voice it isn’t his own. So, he urges the boy to be responsive: to listen well. To set aside his expectations and listen. Listening to God directs you in ways you wouldn’t have imagined – and this gift of a boy becomes a prophet-priest like no other. The boy is given a message: a grim, vivid, undomesticated conversation between God and a listener that changes the young Samuel’s life forever.

In the witness of this encounter with God we learn many things about how God speaks and about the demands placed upon us when we listen: discernment, hard realities, bravery, truth-telling, fear and courage – as this lad’s life takes a new direction towards his future as God’s trusted prophet and Kingmaker.

In the Psalm, the King, the poet, the singer, the author, reminds us that our very beings are known to God – knitted, woven, the intimacy of our DNA beloved, imprinted. The temptations or actions – to flee, to escape, to hide – do no good in the face of the persistent and pursuing God whose making of us means that God also knows us, fiercely and faithfully, so that no matter where we might run, there’s love, and hope and faithfulness here. We cannot hide our deepest selves in all their complex beauty from God. And when we realise this, it sinks in: at the end of all ends, at the last of our days, we have the possibility of belonging. God’s forever.

In Corinth, as similar to them as if they lived now, we encounter all the temptations of every age: to rest in our salvation and act as if nothing else matters. To believe that our freedom means we can do what we want, when we want it, no holds barred. But, in this reading, in that time and ours, we’re brought up. These same beings, our bodies, so finely knit – we are reminded – are precious. We are members of Christ, our bodies are not our own, but rather we are sites of grace, belonging to God, recipients of new life, rescued from sin and death, shame and pain. Our very essence is captivated by God, whose Son we’ve just seen swaddled, a gift to the world and to us. And, Jesus – whose life shapes ours – is now the heart of our own heart, beating and glowing with the understanding that we are now and always to be faithful, attuned, alive to a whole new way of life – where what we do with our bodies – the whole of us – matters to God. And so, as people committed with our whole selves, we follow, and trust, and give ourselves to God time and time again.

This impulse, to follow, to experience Jesus, to see for ourselves, to become disciples, comes into sharp focus in the Gospel reading: ‘Come and see’ we hear the message from one disciple to another that echoes through time and space: This Jesus is a poor-yet-rich, rabbi-and-friend, Nazarene-and-Israelite, and he is worth following. Come and see for yourself that Jesus is life. Hope. Friend. Teacher. World-changer. Love-bringer. Worth meeting. Above all things, one worthy of following into an unfolding future. Where God who is love continues to speak, to reveal, to ask of us everything – and gives us all hope of life in the best of encounters – the revealing of new possibilities at the heart of this season. Come, meet him once more at the table.