This week we didn’t record our service, so I don’t have a podcast episode to share. Instead, I will share my manuscript.
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John 1:43-51
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you,[o] you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
My youngest child has a lot of spunk, which is probably a good thing to have when you are the 5th child in a family. Some of her siblings had greener parents that were fumbling around, trying to figure out how to navigate the whole parenting thing. But she has us, and at this point we’ve pretty much seen and heard it all. She has to work pretty hard to pull one over on us, and it’s kinda fun to watch her try. One of the strategies she has been trying lately goes like this:
Mom? Yes, baby. OK so I was wondering - D-D-D-DON’T INTERRUPT ME - I was wondering if maybe - LET ME FINISH!
Sometimes by the time she spits it out I actually do just give it to her because she has worn me down!
I can picture Philip coming up to Nathanael under the fig tree and being like, Hey Nate! Get this. I met this guy from Nazareth – LET ME FINISH – he is the one that Moses wrote about – DON’T INTERRUPT! And Nathanael is like, you can’t be serious. Saying that someone is from Nazareth is like saying they are from Startup, WA. Anybody know where Startup, WA is? Between Sultan and Gold Bar on Highway 2? Bustling metropolis of about 600 people. Did anyone here grow up in a place like Startup?
Nazareth isn’t mentioned in the Hebrew Bible anywhere, it’s not prophesied about, it’s just a town of a few hundred people that doesn’t have anything special about it to speak of. So Nathanael’s skepticism is very fair. But when his friend says, “Come and see”... Nathanael gets up and goes with Philip. He is willing to see for himself what his friend is talking about.
Just a few verses earlier, Jesus said those same words, “Come and see,” to Peter and Andrew. Then Jesus goes to Galilee, finds Philip, and now Philip turns around and echoes Jesus’ words to his friend Nathanael, come and see. Philip is following Jesus – he’s doing and saying the same things as Jesus, following his example. This is the pattern that has repeated again and again and again for the last two thousand years. One person encountering Jesus, following him, and then turning to someone else and saying, “Come and see.” This is, in large part, how the church is still alive today.
It sounds simple enough, but it’s not easy. Living in the 21st century, at a time when we are reckoning - or at least we ought to be reckoning - with all the ways that the church has failed to live up to its calling… our participation in colonialism, genocide, the slave trade, segregation, and political extremism… it is not an easy time to say, “Hey come and see what’s happening at my church.” Sometimes when people ask me what I do for work I feel like my daughter, “OK so I work for a – don’t interrupt! I know what you’re thinking but it’s not like that - I work for a church.” I often say something like, “I’m a pastor… but not like you’re probably thinking.”
I think it’s important to say that people are right to be suspicious of the church, and even suspicious of Jesus or God based on the actions and legacy of some of their followers. I would call Nathanael the patron saint of the rightly suspicious… but he’s also the patron saint of the curious and willing. Philip says come and see, and Nathanael gets up and follows Philip to go find Jesus. This tells us something about their relationship, right? Suspicious and sarcastic as Nathanael’s response was, he obviously trusts Philip enough to be like, “OK then, I will check it out.” His suspicion doesn’t prevent him from being open.
The two of them approach Jesus, and after a relatively short interaction Nathanael has gone from sarcastic come-backs to exclamations of praise. He calls Jesus “son of God” and “King of Israel!” - a huge shift in a very short time. Philip’s interaction with Jesus was even shorter, it was just “Follow me,” boom that’s it. And right away Philip calls Jesus “the one Moses wrote about in the law, the one the prophets told us about.” Both of these disciples have brief encounters with Jesus, and they are immediately captivated. Philip said, come and see, and Nathanael had barely seen anything - no miracles, no sermons, nothing super noteworthy - before he was ready to say, “Yep! This is the guy!” His suspicions were overcome by belief before he had time to examine all the evidence or make a logical and fully-informed decision.
What was it about Jesus that made people drop everything and follow him? Some say he must have been really charismatic, that he must have had one of those magnetic personalities that just draws people in immediately and that’s what made people follow him so readily. I don’t know, maybe. In my experience, the kind of people who rely on charisma and charm to captivate people are usually selling something. Sometimes Christians act like we’re selling something. A lot of “evangelism” is basically marketing for Jesus, like he’s a product at a store. Come and see! We’ve got the best religion out there! Try Jesus for yourself, he comes with a 30 day money back guarantee! Sometimes this text is used as an example of effective evangelism. Is that what is happening here?
Why does Nathanael change his mind? “When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Philip told Nathanael “come and see” and Nathanael sees the one who has already seen him. This isn’t about Nathanael using his human powers of perception to rightly judge whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. This isn’t Nathanael browsing through available products and choosing Jesus. Jesus, the incarnate Lord of all Creation, the word made flesh, already knows, already sees Nathanael. Karl Barth calls this “the preexisting bond established by God’s incarnation in Jesus.” There is a connection. It isn’t based on personality or data collection or human decision. It is pure grace.
I love the way Karl Rahner describes grace. He says that God’s grace is already and always present in the fabric of creation. It is neither invasive, nor extrinsic, to the natural life of humankind: it is the substrate of all natural experience and reality. If you’re a visual learner, picture it like walking to the edge of a lake and dipping your hand into the water, and suddenly realizing that you have been surrounded by this water, enveloped and held within it all along. The separation between land and water was an illusion, and now you can see it all around you. This is grace. It was always there.
Nathanael recognizes that he is seen by Jesus, and that allows him to see Jesus for who he is - the Son of God. “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” I love Jesus’ reaction to this. He’s like, if you think that’s impressive… stay tuned for more. “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” This is a reference to Jacob’s Ladder, from the dream Jacob has in Genesis 28. Jacob sees a ladder stretching into heaven and the angels ascending and descending on it, and God standing next to it. God tells Jacob, “I am the Lord your God, God of Abraham and Isaac, and I am going to multiply your offspring and give you this land and be with you forever.” It is a pinnacle moment in the history of Israel.
And now Jesus says to Nathanel, “You are the new Jacob. YOU will see God face to face. You will experience the opening of the heavens and the connection between heaven and earth” – remember last week we talked about the heavens being “torn open” at Jesus’ baptism. But what’s interesting is that when Jesus says “You will see…” it is plural. “YOU ALL will see” these things. YOU ALL are like Jacob, because you will see God face to face, you will see the barrier between heaven and earth, between God and humanity opened up.
This is our reality. The invitation to “come and see” is not limited to our first encounter with Christ. We are always being invited into deeper communion with God. When we extend that invitation to others, we are saying “come and see the one who already sees you.” There is nothing to prove, nothing to fear, nothing to earn.
Through Christ, God has found us, God sees us, God knows us… our part is to simply find out that we are found, to see that we are seen, to know that we are known by God. May we continue to accept God’s gracious invitation and may we follow Christ in extending that invitation to all the world. Amen.