Second Sunday after Epiphany Sermon
I’m struck today, as I read this story of Jesus’ call to Nathanael, of one element in particular: Jesus’ revelation to Nathanael comes in the context of Nathanael making a move towards Jesus. As I think over the course of my life I recognize that those handful of moments when the veil has been pulled back and something true of the Kingdom of God has been made manifest, it has always happened when I was looking in that direction to begin with. It’s like a friend of mine said: The only substantial, mystical experience he ever had came when he was turning towards God, with his heart on the line, begging to know if Jesus was for real, or not.
Now, I don’t want to put God in a box (because I can’t!), but experience suggests that God’s call to us rarely happens against our will. We’ve got a role to play – and that’s what we see in the Nathanael story. He’s skeptical about this whole Jesus thing. But he goes to check it out anyway. And I find that to be very encouraging. It’s alright to come to church with skepticism. It’s alright to read your Bible and be filled with doubts. It’s alright to participate in some outreach project, not convinced of its worth or efficacy. But try it anyway! Come to church. Read your Bible. Join in a ministry. If the best our faith can do is to make a tentative, questioning step towards the God who may or may not be real, take the step; see if Jesus will meet you there. We do have control, after all, of what we choose to do. And we do have control of releasing our heart’s deep yearning. “I want you, God, the real you. But this is as close as I can get on my own. Can you meet me halfway?”
That seems to have been the experience for Nathanael. He goes with Philip, doubtful that anything good could come out of Nazareth, of all places. It’s like somebody telling us the second coming had happened, and that Jesus is waiting for us now in Enumclaw. But Nathanael goes all the same. And when Jesus sees him he says, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” I’m not sure, exactly, what Jesus meant by that. But Nathanael seems cool with the description: “How do you know all this about me?” And Jesus replies, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip even called you.” And at that point Nathanael is gob-stopped and shouts out, “You are the Son of God! You’re the King of Israel.”
Wow. Not really the effect I’d expect. Someone says he noticed you sitting under a fig tree and, BAM! you’re ready to declare him the son of God? I’ve noticed lots of people sitting under trees over the years, and I assure you, that hardly qualifies me to be God’s son. Which means, there must be more than meets the eye in this exchange. And what I suspect, is there’s some unspoken communication happening here, and Jesus and Nathanael both know what’s he’s talking about. It’s like a kid seeing her parents give each other “the look” over the dinner table. She knows they’ve just communicated with each other, but she has no reference point to interpret that message. When Jesus says he saw Nathanael under the fig tree, I think he’s saying, “Not only did I see you, I know what was going on for you when you were under that tree. I know you,” such that Nathanael would reply, “You are the Son of God.”
Cynthia and I were talking about this other day. She has this memory from years ago when she was just getting into an elevator on her way to work, when – all of sudden – that elevator was filled with the sense of God’s presence. And she worshiped. And she told me, “All these years later, if some would-be-Messiah told me he saw me in the elevator, I’d follow him wherever he went.”
We want God. And we want God to want us.
I was nineteen years old when a friend invited me to go to a house-church across town that was hosting a traveling prophet from England. At the time I’d never even heard of a modern-day prophet. I went expecting something of a freak show – some kind of hippy spiritualist, spouting off all manner of vague and symbolic nonsense. So I went … and was totally caught off guard by what I saw. This prophet was a dignified looking older British gentleman wearing a tweed coat with elbow patches. And when he began speaking, he was gentle and simply preached the gospel and God’s love. Standard stuff. Then towards the end of his talk he began looking around the room – not knowing any of the people who had come – and he began prophesizing about them. He’d point to someone and say something very specific, like, “You’ve been struggling in your relationship with your mother and have just about decided to give up on her. God wants you to know: Don’t give up. Now is the time to pursue her again; she is ready to receive you.” Really specific things like this. And he does it for several people. And I can tell by the way they’re responding, he’s hitting the nail on the head every time. It’s not long before I’m totally convinced he’s an honest-to-God-prophet. And the way he’s describing God desire for them and their well-being was completely consistent with the nature of God we see in scripture – for healing, redemption, hope.
As the evening wears on, I believe he is surely gifted by the Holy Spirit, that everything I’m witnessing is real. But I also believe nothing will happen for me. At this stage in my life, this taps deep into my greatest fears about myself, that I am the forgettable one, the overlooked one. And it’s these deep feelings of inadequacy and undesirability that are coursing through my spirit as he wraps up his time and takes his seat on the opposite side of the room.
But then, just as he’s sitting down, he pops back up and stares at me and points his finger at me and says, “You. You’ve been sitting here all evening, watching what’s happening for everyone else, and believing it was true, but also believing God has nothing for you. And that’s not true. God loves you and has good things for you, and wants to make up for lost time.”
What, exactly, did he tell me, but that God loved me? – the most familiar tenant of Christianity. And yet the way it happened spoke directly to my heart and made the universal gospel message intimately true. “I know you. I see you. The God of redemption is here, for you.”
It’s like what we read in Psalm 139: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar… and are acquainted with all my ways…. For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
Our God is all-knowing. And the nature of this knowing is one saturated with compassion. The depth of God’s knowing is not simply to call us out on our shame and sin. Yes, in the life of faith those things will be revealed, and when it happens it is painful. But they are revealed only so they can be done away with, that we, the true “we,” can be restored. “You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me.”
For this is the purpose of God, to draw us in and restore our relationship with God and with one another. I’m struck in the Nathanael story how often the author uses the word “see” to describe what’s happening:
- Jesus sees him under the fig tree.
- Philips invites Nathanael to “come and see” this Jesus
- Jesus sees Nathanael approaching him
- And when Nathanael believes, Jesus promises him he will see greater things.
We are not called, simply to believe – to believe far-fetched religious dogma, or to believe the authority of the church and its demands. We are invited to see: to come and see for ourselves the substance of God’s love; and to see God seeing us, knowing us, reaching us in the privacy of our hopes and fears. “Come and see” is the call to us all, to take actual steps towards Jesus, with the hope that he will be taking steps towards us, that we would see each other in truth.
It is my deep hope that, when we are seen by Christ, then we will begin to see ourselves the way he sees us, and that will be freedom indeed.
There’s an old story about a young rabbi named Zusya who was sharing with an older rabbi how discouraged he was by his failures and weaknesses. The older rabbi heard him out then said, “When you get to heaven, God is not going to say to you, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ No, what God is going to ask is, ‘Why weren’t you Zusya?’ So why don’t you stop trying to be Moses and start being the Zusya God created you to be?”[1]
A wise person told me something similar once, “Eric stop feeling bad about yourself that you don’t pray like a monk. You’re not a monk. Learn to pray the way God made Eric to pray.” It was intimidating advice and made me feel lonesome and incapable. But at the same time, there was a sense of promise: There’s hope yet, of what still may be – of finding God and finding me.
For that is part of this journey of faith: It lasts our whole life long. There is always more. And it is never too late.
May this be our Epiphany discovery. We are far more lovable and desirable than we believe ourselves to be. And nobody can reveal this more than the God who created us, who knows us through and through, who knew us when we were being knit together in our mothers’ wombs. As the years go by, as we continue to take our steps towards Jesus, may we see and learn and come to share in the psalmist’s prayer, “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.”
Come and see. Come and see.
[1] This story appears in many sources. I saw it quoted as coming from James Limburg’s commentary on Psalm 139