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Fr. Troy Beecham
Sermon, 2 Epiphany B, 2024
John 1:43-51
“Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 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.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 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.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
The day before this interaction between Jesus, Philip, and Nathanael (also called Bartholomew in the other Gospels), Andrew and Peter, who both had been disciples of John the Baptist, had become Jesus’ disciples. The Baptist had said to his disciples when he saw Jesus approaching, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” And so, Andrew, alone out of all the many disciples of John, became a disciple of Jesus from that moment. His first instinct is to go and say to his brother, saying “We have found the Messiah”, and to bring his brother Simon to meet Jesus. That was the day when Jesus said to Simon, after meeting him, “You will be called Cephas (Peter)”. This is the pattern that all disciples of Jesus are called to follow, to joyfully introduce everyone who wills to Jesus.
Andrew and Simon approach Jesus and ask him, “Where are you dwelling?”, and he answers them saying, “Come and see”. In the Gospel according to St. John, this is spoken in the form of a command, meaning something more along the lines of “come and, because you believe, you shall see”. But see what?
The next day Jesus decides to return to Galilee and the text simply says that Jesus finds Philip. Among the crowds who were following the Baptist, Jesus singles out Philip, and says to him, “Follow me”, and Philip immediately becomes a disciple. Now Philip, with Andrew and Simon Peter, were from the same small hometown, the fishing village of Beth Saida, and it is easy to imagine that they had a bond of friendship given that they had all traveled together to hear John the Baptist preaching and to be baptized by him. It was most likely Andrew who points out Philip to Jesus. In a manner similar to Andrew, Philip immediately goes to find Nathanael (called Bartholomew in the other gospels), and tells him that the three of them have found the one to whom the Old Testament points, saying to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Nathanael is obviously a new friend made in the company of those who were coming from all over Israel to listen to John the Baptist. This is seen as he quips, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” It had become a commonplace prejudice for Judeans to despise Galileans as country bumpkins, hot-headed radicals always ready to fight. Nazareth, being one of the main towns in Galilee, was held in little respect by Judeans. Rather than engaging in a lengthy remonstration, Philip simply says, “Come and see”, just as Jesus had said to Andrew and Peter. Surprisingly, Nathanael joins them, but he seems to be holding his judgment in reserve. Again, we can ask the question, “Come and see what, exactly?” Sure, John the Baptist had said to his disciples that Jesus was the Messiah, the Lamb of God, but from Nazareth?
When Jesus sees Philip bringing Nathanael to meet him, he exclaims, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asks Jesus how he knows him. Was it perhaps because of Philip? Had the Baptist spoken about him? Had his devotion been noticed and had he been singled out for praise? Well, as it turns out, it was none of these…nothing that would give him reason for feeling superior to anyone else. Rather, Jesus casually mentions that he had seen him sitting under a fig tree before Philip came to fetch him. Knowing that Jesus could have had no physical means of knowing the small details of how and where Philip found him is a revelation to Nathanael. Something sparks in his spirit and he knows that, even for something that might seem so trivial, only God could have revealed it to Jesus, something that had not happened among the Jewish people for centuries. Nathanael is stunned and electrified all at once, and exclaims, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel!” Nathanael’s exclamation comes from his knowledge of, and belief in, the writings of the Prophets, but also from the deep, expectant hope that God was sending a leader, a king, to deliver the people of Israel from their captivity to the Roman Empire.
This hoped for Messiah (Christ in the Greek language, one of the two common languages spoken by everyone in Israel – Greek and Hebraic Aramaic) was not thought of as being himself a supernatural being, even if he was called “the son of God”, as this was a political and military title reserved for the great leader who would defeat the Roman Empire and restore the Kingdom of Israel. It would take the crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus for his disciples to finally come to understand that Jesus was actually the Son of God, the eternal Lord begotten of the Father before the creation of the universe. It is this same stumbling block that keeps many from being open to the Spirit of God to begin the process of our being born again.
Knowing this, Jesus says to him, “Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than that!” He then added, speaking to them all, “Very truly I tell you all, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” From the start of his public ministry, Jesus informs his disciples, and us, that he is indeed the fulfillment of the Prophets’ vision of the coming of the Messiah, the “son of man”, the great end time representative of God who reveals God to the world and to whom all judgment is given. But they understood Jesus through the filter of their cultural and personal hopes for national sovereignty and victory over their enemies. Here, Jesus is claiming that from now on God is communication with the people of Israel, and all of the nations, directly through him. He, Jesus, is, as John has said only a few verses before this, the Word of God Incarnate, the living embodiment of the mind, voice, and will of God. These words are nothing less than thunderous, earth shaking, life altering…if we can actually hear it through the confusing noise of our desires, our political ideology, our poverty, our wealth. Truly this is why faith is a gift from God, because only God can reach out spirits with His Truth underneath the layers of all the lies and prejudices that we have been taught to believe about ourselves, each other, and the world.
If we are indeed able to receive this gift of faith, what is being revealed to us? It is a bit like staring into the abyss, without any points of reference, and it is meant to disorient us from all the noise of the world…except the only point of reference that is true: that God is love, and is reconciling us all to himself through his Son Jesus. If we can focus solely on him, we will discover our stability and hope. This blazing revelation, which Jesus has invited us all to accept, a revelation that requires us to be born again, made entirely new people free from our cultural programming, can begin to be seen in what Jesus says to Nathanael. Jesus uses of the term Israelite; not Judean, not Galilean, not sect. Jesus in so doing demonstrates that he is calling on all the scattered and divided people of Israel to respond as one people, letting go of centuries of rivalry and mistrust in each other, and turning back to God as a united people, the people of the covenant, the people of the Law and the Prophets. The self-revelation of God in Jesus to his disciples begins with his call for them to return to faithfulness to their covenant with God as one people. None of his disciples would have missed the significance of what Jesus had said using the term Israelite, and in the years to come they would learn a hard discipleship through being required to radically expand their concept of who God loves, accepting into their company Galileans, Judeans, tax collectors, Gentiles…even women!
We, like his first disciples, have to unlearn all that we think we know. We have give up our ideas that God is going to do what we desire when we desire it, and learn that God is absolutely sovereign and free to be and do as he wills (his name in Hebrew means, after all, ‘I Am’, or ‘I will be who I will to be’). We have to learn that it is not we who tell God who he is, but rather that it is God who tells us who we are. We are being invited to allow the Holy Spirit to slowly melt away our prejudices and all the lies that surround us telling us who we are or should be, an often painful, disorienting, and frightening process. Being born again, brought back to inner innocence and absolute dependence, is not easy, and only possible by the one who created us. It is also a time of great vulnerability as many will seek to hijack the reshaping of our hearts and minds to suit their desires. For good reason the Scriptures warn us to beware of false teachers, false leaders, false messiahs, and they give us wisdom to recognize these wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The coming of the kingdom of God among us who are his disciples begins when we start leave behind all the false judgments we have learned based on our nationality, our political ideology, cultural prejudices, economic prejudices, and be born again…like babies, innocent of all the propaganda and trauma of life, full of trust in the love of Jesus and to be raised and nourished in the glorious revelation of God in his Son Jesus, who reveals to all creation the heart, mind, and will of God…that God is all self-sacrificing love, and that we are called to love one another as Jesus loves us. This change, this being born again, is often a slow, even a lifelong process. Change, including the perennial hope of us all – the healing of the world – begins with each individual who has learned to first love God and begin the long work of being transformed by the Spirit of God, learn to self-sacrificially love each other until all of our old judgments about each other have been swallowed up in the love of God. It is not up to us to complete the healing of the world; only God can do that. It is not up to us to change each other; only God can do that. Our calling is only to love each other as Jesus loves us, and to invite each other into the fellowship of his disciples. If we will welcome being transformed by the love of Jesus, of being born again by the Holy Spirit, as terrifying and wonderful as that process may be, then we too shall come to see the glorious self-revelation of the God of all creation in his most beloved Son. This is what Jesus is inviting us to accept and become when he says, “Come and see.”
Won’t you come and see?
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of the glory of your only begotten Son, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
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