You Will See Greater Things.

John 1:43-51.          (January 25, 2015)

I.

            It is now the day after the events we talked about last week, and the fourth day since John had that conversation with those emissaries from Jerusalem with which the gospel begins.  Jesus decides to go to Galilee, probably a couple of day’s walk from where they are, maybe 50 miles. 

            He has just called at least three disciples who are from Galilee, Andrew, Peter, and one who isn’t named.  Before he goes however he finds Philip, who is also from Galilee, and simply invites him to follow.  Philip may be the unnamed disciple Jesus met the day before with Andrew, which would explain his familiarity with Jesus and his quick response. 

            He goes in turn and explains to another man, Nathanael, that they have found the one written about in the Bible, specifically in the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets.  Philip must have known what John meant when he called Jesus the “Lamb of God.”  He was referencing passages in Exodus, Leviticus, and Isaiah, that is, the law and the prophets. 

            But it is interesting that when Andrew goes to Peter, he says, “We have found the Messiah.”  Then when Philip goes to Nathanael, he says, “We have found the one about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.”  The way we communicate the good news has to do be appropriate to both the speaker and the one being spoken to.  We have to speak authentically from our own experience and situation; and at the same time we have to speak to the other person where they are. 

            Andrew knows his brother.  He knows that the title “Messiah”, Anointed One, is something that has meaning for both of them.  They had probably discussed it many times.  And Philip apparently knows Nathanael well enough to know not to lead with “Messiah,” but with Scripture.

            This is important because we inside the church don’t always have a clue about how people outside the church hear what we are saying.  Even here in this gospel, if people don’t understand what “sin” is, or what a lamb signified in the Bible, then “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” is incomprehensible to them.  I mean, in advertising today, the word “sin” is a positive selling point!  It means edgy, sexy, risky, and fun!  It is something that only stuffy, clueless, judgmental, repressed, control freaks care about.  And in our experience, lamb is something you find in the meat aisle at the supermarket, and little else.

            If we invite someone to church by telling them we have found the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away sin, or the One written about in the Old Testament?  That’s probably not going to be all that effective.  Trust me on this.  What works is speaking from our own experience in normal language.  We’ll see this in chapter 4 with the Samaritan woman.  It has to be real.  It has to be authentic.  And it has to speak to something people already know they need.

II. 

            Even Philip makes an apparent mistake in his invitation to Nathanael.  He gives Jesus’ name and hometown.  He says the one to whom the Scriptures point is “Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth”.  So while Nathanael may have been willing to listen if it was just a discussion about the Bible, when he finds out that this is about somebody from Nazareth, he just scoffs.  “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”  Nazareth?  Seriously?  A town that full of pagans and foreigners?  Please.  Anyway, the Scriptures only talk about someone coming who is born in Bethlehem.  Not Nazareth, of all places.

            Everybody has their baggage.  For Nathanael, Jesus can be written off because he is from a disreputable place.  And it is the same with us.  We mention the name of Jesus, and people immediately associate that name with a lot of negative experiences they have had.  They assume that nothing good can come out of the church, just like Nathanael assumed nothing good can come out of Nazareth.

            So we have this weight of bad associations to slog through.  First there is the list of historical atrocities with which the church is associated: crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, slavery, the oppression of indigenous peoples, religious wars, witch burning, mind-numbing hypocrisy, corruption, divisions, and so forth. 

            Then there are the even more powerful barriers of people’s actual experiences of churches and church-people who did them serious personal harm.  The epidemic of pedophilia and sexual misconduct; the bigotry about gays; the rejection of divorced people; the ridiculous and selectively enforced rules; the deliberate and intransigent irrationality; the advocacy of flags and guns; the self-righteous cynicism… all of which leads people to scoff like Nathanael: “This Jesus Joseph’s son might be a good guy, but the fact that he comes from ‘Nazareth’, that is, the fact that he comes out of a place, an institution, that in my experience is rotten to the core, means he’s got two strikes against him to begin with, in my book.”

            To his credit, Philip does not then start to defend Jesus or Nazareth.  He does not indulge in the sin of Uzzah who thought he had to protect and save God.  No.  He doesn’t answer Nathanael at all, except to say, “Come and see.”

            Again with the, “Come and see.”  That’s what Jesus says when he calls his first disciples.  Come and have your own experience.  See for yourself.  Interact.  Share.  Have a conversation.  Feel something.

            And that is our invitation as well.  We can’t change somebody’s experience of “Nazareth.”  We can’t make them forget what happened to them or to someone they know.  We can only lead them to a new experience that will hopefully overwhelm and cancel out the former one.

III.

            But that has to happen!  The worst catastrophe would be if the Nathanael came and saw… and all his prejudices, trepidations, fears, and biases were confirmed.

            In the 1960’s the Presbyterian Church embarked upon an advertising campaign.  They hired a cool comedian named Stan Freberg, which would be like getting Craig Ferguson today.  And they produced these hip, wry, funny radio spots.  I still have my dad’s recording of them somewhere.  And they worked!  Young people decided to come and see what these Presbyterians are all about.  They came.  And they saw.  And what they experienced was a church still pretty mired in the hierarchies, bigotries, prejudices, allegiances, and attitudes of the 1950’s.  Few ever came back.

            If we’re going to ask people to come and see, we can’t then bring them to something that only reinforces their most negative stereotypes about us, the church, or even Jesus.  We can’t bring them to something that is boring, out of touch, hypocritical, judgmental, exclusionary, self-righteous, and cold.  Otherwise it will be “I came, I saw, I left, and I’m never going back.”

            Nathanael decides he will come and see Jesus, and while he and Philip are going to find Jesus, Jesus sees them coming.  And when they get closer Jesus exclaims with a smile, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

            Jesus uses the word “Israelite,” instead of “Jew”.  In the gospel the people termed “Jews” are usually the leaders of the establishment.  They tend not to come off very well.  “Israelite” is a more inclusive term, but it also literally means “one who struggles with God.”  It is the name God gave to Jacob in Genesis after Jacob wrestled with God’s angel.

            So when Jesus sees Nathanael, he sees someone who is really grappling with what it means to be a believer.  He is not pretending to be anything he isn’t; he is not putting anything over on anyone.  He has no pretenses to piety.  He is a true seeker who is dealing honestly with doubt and suspicious of easy, pat, rote, doctrinal answers, even to the point of cynicism, as evidenced by his opening snarky quip about Nazareth.

            But this is the first encounter of Nathanael with Jesus, so he asks Jesus, “How do you know me?”  Do we know each other?  Have we met?  How obvious is it that he is so non-deceitful?  When a stranger knows us it makes us uncomfortable.  We get defensive.  Especially when it is something we might consider flattery.  Our next question is, “Okay, what do you want?”

            I mean, he came with Philip and now he is seeing Jesus, and Jesus starts off with this glad-handing, buttering him up thing that preachers are infamous for.  It raises Nathanael’s suspicions even more.

           

III.

            Jesus answers, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  Jesus sees him.

            I found two places in the Hebrew Scriptures where the phrase, “under the fig tree,” shows up.  Both times it is a metaphor for peace, prosperity, hope, and security.  It refers to God’s coming deliverance and liberation, the image for which is when each family will live under their own fig tree and grape vine.  They will not be slaves or tenants on someone else’s land.  They will be home and sustained by God’s blessing symbolized by these life-giving trees.

            For the prophet Micah it means living without fear.  For the prophet Zechariah it means living without guilt.  When Jesus says he saw Nathanael “under the fig tree,” I think it means he had a vision in which he saw Nathanael finally safe, forgiven, free, and blessed; he saw Nathanael delivered of his fear and cleansed of his guilt.  He saw the true, real, essential Nathanael, finally home, “under the fig tree.”

            For the Israelites, which is the term Jesus uses for Nathanael, this liberation, forgiveness, cleansing, and protection used to be accomplished ritually every year in the Temple on the Day of Atonement.  The blood of a goat or lamb which was dedicated to the Lord, who was the true King of Israel, was spread and sprinkled all over the Temple as a way of recovering and reestablishing the membrane of life that connects the people to God and at the same time protects them from God’s awesome holiness.  Remember that blood was life.  If sin is separation from God, this covering of life took away that sin by reestablishing the connection between people and God.  And then the sins of the people were ceremonially placed upon another goat or lamb and driven away into the wilderness, back to the demon Azazel.  Thus in this ritual the people’s fear and guilt were taken away, along with their sin.

            When Nathanael now hears that he has been seen by Jesus as finally living happy at home “under the fig tree,” he suddenly experiences the forgiveness, acceptance, safety, blessing, and liberation this entails.  And he knows Who is the only One capable of accomplishing this.  Only the Son of God, the King of Israel, the Lamb, can do this.

            And Nathanael’s utter lack of deceit, guile, pretense, hypocrisy, even politeness and decency, his bluntness and directness, his brutal honesty and ruthless questioning, his ripping away all facades and his cutting through all self-serving spinning, applied first to himself, and then to everything else, that is, the very things and attitudes that might have brought him into all kinds of grief and trouble would be vindicated, and lifted off of him.  Taken.  Away. 

IV.

            The heart of Christian faith has always been an experience of forgiveness, freedom, release, acceptance, and blessing, that we then try and talk about and identify.  When Nathanael comes into Jesus’ Presence, I think he feels a quality of liberation like a heavy load of suspicion, doubt, and cynicism has been lifted off his shoulders.  Like dense blinders have been taken from his eyes.  To be so fully known and so completely welcomed is something so powerful and profound that only God could do it.  And since Jesus does it, therefore Jesus must be God.

            So Nathanael confesses, “Rabbi, you are God's Son. You are the king of Israel.”  You are the Lamb who restores my soul to God and who removes the consequences of my wrongdoing.  You are the One who sees me “under the fig tree,” in a place of peace, justice, righteousness, and life.  You are the One who sees and shows me my true self and my destiny.  You are the One in Whom I see who I truly am.

            The Lord Jesus is like a butterfly preaching to the caterpillars.  In him we see our future, if we will but assent and be who we were made to be.  He sees what only God can see, which is inside our heart, inside our spiritual DNA, as it were, to our truest and most real selves.  His light penetrates our darkness, and his life restores God’s life in us.

            I assume that at this point Nathanael is rather a mess, having just had his soul turned inside-out.  Picking him up perhaps, Jesus assures him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?  You will see greater things than these!”  Do you trust me now because I revealed your true self and destiny to you?  You will see way bigger things.   

“I assure you that you will see heaven open and God's angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One.”

            Literally, the words are “Son of Humanity” or “Human Son;” most translations say “Son of Man”.  But the point is that all these titles – Word, Light, Life, Lamb of God, Messiah, Son of God – all refer to the same figure whom Jesus now identifies with another title: Son of Man or Human One.  And they are all him.  And because they are all him, and because in him is realized once for all our true humanity, there is a sense now in which we also receive his life.  The channel by which God came to us may also be used for us to reach God. 

            The ladder, the way of the Lord that John comes to make straight, it works in both directions.  God becomes one with us; we may become one with God.  And the ladder is, as Jesus says, the Human One, the Son of Man, that is, himself.  He is God’s way to us; and he is our way to God.

V.

            Jesus Christ says to each one of us.  “I saw you under the fig tree.”  I saw you happy and healthy, blessed, free, and good.  Jesus’ vision of us is as forgiven, loved, healed, and whole.  He made us for life and joy.  Now it is up to us to live into that vision.  The world is not only a safe place, but a place where we can grow into our greatest potential, and realize the immense gifts God has given to each one of us.

            Then he says that we will see even greater things.  For our life extends and reaches beyond even that picture of redemption, release, and renewal.  We will see not just ourselves under our blessed fig trees, but the redemption, release, and renewal of the whole universe.  In him we will see behind the scenes, under the hood, as it were, to the schematics and blueprints of the way creation really works.  We will see that there is this permanent interaction and exchange between the Creator and the creation.  That all things are being held together in God’s love, epitomized by God’s living Word, Jesus Christ.

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