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John 1: 43–51
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Lord, may we hear your Voice in the words spoken in your name. Amen.
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We have entered the season of Epiphany now, a season in the Church that
celebrates the surprising presence of God in even the most ordinary
situations. So in our readings this morning, the child Samuel suddenly
hears the voice of God speaking to him as he lies down to sleep after a
long day of serving in the temple. Or, in Psalm 139 the Psalmist suddenly
realizes that God knows him intimately in ways he barely knows
himself . . . and is helping him see
himself through God’s eyes of love. And Saint Paul, writing to
the Corinthians, reminds them that through their spirits they are
inextricably linked with the Spirit of God. So he urges them to honor
God in everything they do; private matters and public ones too.
The Church’s Epiphany message is simple – that God is all
around us, if only we will watch for Him, listen to him with the eyes
and ears of our hearts.
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In our Gospel passage this morning, St. John is jumping back and forth
between sacred and secular ways of looking at things, hearing things,
understanding things. When he tells us that Jesus has just said to
Philip, “Follow me,” we might think he is simply asking
Philip to walk with him into the next room. But as we listen more
deeply, we realize he’s inviting Philip to become his
disciple – to follow him to the ends of the earth. And the
intriguing thing about John’s way of telling a story is that
we’re never sure which level he’s working on. Nor
do we know whether he’s speaking to us – the
twenty–first century listeners — or to characters in the
story. But that’s the way John does things – building layer
upon layer of meaning and forcing us to pay attention on all
channels — as we try to understand what he is saying.
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What John does make clear is that Philip has already seen
something significant – highly significant — in this young
rabbi he met a few days ago. And what he has seen is such good news that
Philip can’t keep it to himself. So he finds his friend Nathaniel
and tells him, breathlessly, that he and Andrew and Simon Peter have
found the one, the Messiah, that Moses and the prophets promised long
ago. “It’s Jesus, the carpenter’s son from
Nazareth,” Philip tells his friend.
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“Jesus from Nazareth?” Nathaniel replies
skeptically. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
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As we hear this response we have to understand, that Nazareth, in those
days, was just a sleepy little town of two or three hundred souls in
rural Galilee. It was the Podunk of all Podunks. Moreover, it never
had been anything. Unlike Bethlehem, another sleepy little town
we’ve focused on recently, Nazareth, in the old northern kingdom
of Israel, was nowhere mentioned in any Old Testament writings.
Bethlehem, on the other hand, in the former kingdom of Judah, was the
birthplace of King David. And the prophet Micah had promised that one
day Messiah would come from Bethlehem. But no one in the Old Testament
had ever written a word about Nazareth. So Nathaniel is having trouble
imagining that Jesus could possibly be the long-promised Messiah. The
man didn’t come from the right place. And just as it is in our
day, where you came from mattered.
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Philip doesn’t bother arguing with his friend. He just begins
to practice the gentle wisdom he has already learned from Jesus by
repeating to Nathaniel the same words Jesus spoke to Andrew when he
asked, at the Jordan, “Rabbi, what are you about? Where
are you staying?” “Come and see,” Philip
says to his friend. “Come and see for yourself.”
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When Nathaniel summons enough faith to do that – to move closer
to Jesus and see for himself — his eyes and ears are
opened . . . and he begins to see
things with the eyes of his heart. When he makes the effort to move
closer to Jesus, an epiphany occurs and Jesus proclaims,
“Ah! Here is an Israelite without a false bone in his
body!”
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Nathaniel is dumbfounded. He has heard a word about himself that he
knows to be true on some deep level. And he can’t, for the life of
him, imagine how Jesus knows this about him.
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“How do you know this?” he asks. “How do you know
this about me?”
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“Oh,” Jesus replies, “a while ago, I saw you, I
watched you as you sat under the fig tree.” Now, here again,
as we listen to these words, we have to hear them through the ears of a
faithful first–century Jewish believer. For in those days
everybody knew that the fig tree was an emblem of Israel. And
frequently, appreciating that symbolism, rabbis would teach the wisdom
of Israel to their followers in the shade of a fig tree. And St. John
has begun to pile up the images, one on top of another, to convey the
depth of what was going on here.
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Was Nathaniel a rabbi? We actually have no idea. But we
can know that Jesus, in telling Nathaniel he once saw him under
a fig tree, has honored him as a wise teacher of Israel. And with that
gentle affirmation, the tipping point has been reached. Nathaniel no
longer doubts who this man standing before him truly is.
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“Rabbi!” he exclaims. “You are the Son of
God! You are the King of Israel!”
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“Ah,” Jesus replies, smiling. “Do you now
believe because I told you I once saw you under that fig tree?
One day you will see greater things than these.”
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And here, St. John pulls one of those fast narrative tricks you could
only catch if you were hearing him tell you this story in person. For
when he adds the words, “Truly, I tell you, you will see
the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man,” Jesus is no longer speaking to Nathaniel
alone. He is suddenly using plural verbs and plural
pronouns — addressing all of us who are here this morning in
this place. Do you see what that does? We have become
Jesus’ listeners, his disciples, gathered around him and hanging
on his every word.
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And that’s not the only thing that suddenly changes in this
passage. Now the reader – or listener, perhaps – suddenly
realizes it is no longer wily old Jacob who will be privileged to see
the revelation of angels ascending and descending from heaven to earth,
thereby revealing God on this earth. Now, Jesus says, it will be
people like open–hearted Nathaniel, seeking to understand, who
will begin to receive such revelations, thereby becoming the new
emblems of Israel.
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But that’s what Epiphany is all about. When we choose to
approach Jesus, to draw near to him, the eyes of our hearts are
opened — and we begin to see our ordinary lives in completely
new ways.
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And maybe that’s what is called for as we begin this new year of
2021 – not just a change in our circumstances, which is
something everyone wants – but a change in the way we see the
world around us. Maybe, if we look at the world around us with
the eyes of our hearts we will see that world as Jesus does – not
as liberal or conservative, Red or Blue, black or white,
‘us’ or ‘them’ – but all as people who
need love, a love Jesus is equipping us to supply. As we draw
nearer to Him and see things with the eyes of our hearts.
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Come. Come and see.
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Amen.
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