The Calling of Nathaniel

Sermon for Sunday 15th January 2012
John 1:43-51
Dr Harold Hill

The Calling of Nathaniel

“An Israelite in whom there is no guile” is how we usually remember Nathaniel. You probably know people like that. They ring true. Or as a colleague of mine once said to me of another, with whom he’d been at Training College, “Ah, Keith was head and shoulders above the rest of us for integrity.”

We’ll come back to that. But first, the story.

It starts with Jesus deciding to go to Galilee. Nothing odd about that – Nazareth, his home town, was on the southern borders of Galilee. He was heading home. He’d been down to the river Jordan to be baptised by his cousin John, and while there had made an impression on some other Galileans – including Cephas and Andrew – who decided to follow him.

But Galilee was not well regarded by many. The north of the country was rather more Hellenized than the south; it was more a melting-pot of cultures and religions and races than Judaea. People from Galilee were not quite… well, as even today some ratepayers of Whitby would rather not be known as living in Porirua City.

But the case of Galilee involved more than a hint of geographical snobbery; it was a matter of religious orthodoxy. If Jesus was going to make a good impression as a Rabbi, was Galilee the best place to recruit his disciples? Probably not, but Jesus was beginning the way he meant to go on – identifying with those who didn’t quite cut it with the respectable. But of course, Jesus himself was one of them. He was on their wave-length.

We have in embryo the way the Church would spread, and can spread. Like calls to like. Because Jesus’ new friends then found other friends, also people like themselves. So Philip – and there’s a suspect name for starters, the name of a Hellenized Jew – Philip went and found his friend, Nathaniel. “We’ve found the one we’ve been waiting for – he’s Jesus bar-Joseph, from Nazareth.”

But even amongst the northerners there were evidently local snobberies. Nathaniel, who came from Cana in Galilee, wasn’t that easily impressed by anyone from nearby Nazareth. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” he asked. Now Philip proved to have some Greek subtlety as well as a Greek name. He could have argued, but he didn’t try. All he said was, “Come and see.”

There’s a place for apologetics. Someone has to do it, and I’m glad there are those able to. But do you think anyone is going to argue Richard Dawkins into faith in God? To those of us not so ready with the cut and thrust of debate, who usually remember some time next week the decisive argument or convincing rejoinder that would have clinched the case and won over our unbelieving friend, Philip is a great encouragement. If all we can offer is an example of how Christianity actually works, perhaps we’ve something more convincing than an argument. We can say, “Come and see.”

Nathaniel came, and saw.

Jesus greeted Nathaniel as “a real Israelite, without deceit.” To which

Nathanael replied, “How do you know me?”

Which could imply, “You don’t know anything about me!” Or it could mean, “Well, yes, actually, I am a pretty upright sort of chap, but who told you?”

Jesus’ reply evidently stopped him in his tracks. “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Had Jesus actually seen him earlier, or is this a case of the celestial CCTV camera in operation? Nathanael evidently thought it was. He replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” That’s a bit over-the-top if he’d simply thought Jesus must have seen him sitting under his fig-tree some time. And anyway, what would that have proved about Nathaniel’s character?

Some commentators fill out the circumstantial detail a bit – like, Nathaniel, under his fig tree – which was a favourite place for meditation – was obviously meditating about the prospects of the Messiah turning up. That was every good Jew’s preoccupation, so there would be nothing odd about that. Did the writer mean that Nathaniel realised he’d been rumbled supernaturally, and that there could be only one explanation for Jesus’ insight? That he was the messiah. That’s what John means us to think.

Jesus’ response would then follow naturally: “You think that’s good? Boy, have I some surprises coming up for you! You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

And then the punch line of the story: ‘And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”’

Pardon?

Nathaniel would have made the connection a little more quickly than we might today. Jesus was referring to the story of one Jacob, found in Genesis chapter 28. About 1600 years earlier, Jacob, camped in the wilderness, on the run from his brother whom he’d just cheated out of his inheritance, had a dream. Jacob was often on the run from somebody or other, because he was a lying, cheating scoundrel. Today, he might have run a finance company. Despite this, God gave him a good dream, of the sky opening, unzipped, and what we usually call “Jacob’s ladder”, its foot on earth and its top in heaven, and angels coming down and going up upon it.

It probably wasn’t a ladder like Ulrich’s Aluminium ones. Jacob’s religious imagination would have been shaped by Mesopotamian mythology. He would have recognised a ziggurat, a step pyramid with ramps up the sides. People of his time in what is now Iraq built them in order to facilitate commerce between the gods and men. In that flat land of his ancestors, in the absence of natural high places from which to reach the sky, they built their own hill-tops – like the celebrated Tower of Babel. To his terror Jacob realised that his unremarkable camping spot was one of those “thin places” between the worlds, as much “the house of God, the gate of Heaven” as the highest ziggurat in Babylon. He named the place “Beth-El” – the house of God.

The point Jesus was making by referring to the messengers of God coming and going upon the “Son of Man” (meaning himself) was that Nathaniel would come to see Jesus as the “thin place” between God and man; Jesus himself the way by which heaven would draw close to earth, and secure for mankind that longed-for access to the Kingdom of God.

All of which gives a delicious irony to Jesus’ greeting of Nathaniel as an “Israelite without guile”. Jacob, in the First Testament story, had been quite full of guile – the proverbial deceiver. I am relieved that we Jacobs, with our own baggage and subterfuges and mixed motives and struggle for integrity, can catch a glimpse of the ladder upon which angels ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. Jesus has opened to all of us, not just the Nathaniels among us, the gate of heaven. The door in the sky is now accessible, at ground level.

And to underline this application, John uses the Greek plural for you twice at this point. “I am telling you (plural) the truth; you (plural); that is, you and you and you… will see heaven open…” The conversation with Nathaniel has just opened up to include a wider circle. The Evangelist means that Jesus is not just talking to Nathaniel here; he is speaking to all of us. He means that in Jesus, we may all find the way to God.

But are people generally looking for such a way? It was always assumed to be so. 1600-odd years ago St Augustine prayed, “Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you”. More recently, but still over 350 years ago, Blaise Pascal wrote of the God-shaped vacuum in peoples’ lives. But 50 years ago in Honest to God, Bishop John Robinson claimed there is no longer a “God-shaped blank” in our lives which we want filled. People don’t need that now. Was he right?

These days we don’t see many Nathaniels meditating under fig trees on the possibility of the Messiah turning up. Does that mean people are not looking for something? Of course many are not, but in our society the decline in church attendance is perhaps equalled by the rise of “spirituality”. Prayer may no longer be cool but a karakia is almost compulsory. Perhaps the secular project hasn’t been such a runaway success after all, though many people no longer expect to find the alternative in church. That’s a challenge for us.

People may not call what they seek “the Kingdom of Heaven”, but most long for justice and peace without; and integrity and fulfilment within. Not to mention Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness. People may be looking for the Messiah as eagerly as Nathaniel was, hoping to learn how to find God?

So, if Jesus is calling disciples today, today’s Gospel story might remind us:

Firstly, that they may well be people like us, people we know;

Secondly, that to them, as to us, as to Nathaniel, the promise has been given that we may find in Jesus that access to God for which we long.

Thirdly, that they might be impressed as much by example as by argument, if we too are able to say, “Come and see.”

Amen

A pdf of the sermon above is available here.

Cross references for the above sermon are listed below.

John 1:43 : [ver. 35; ch. 2:1]
John 1:43 : [ver. 28]
John 1:44 : ch. 12:21
John 1:45 : ch. 21:2
John 1:45 : See Luke 16:16; 24:27
John 1:45 : See Matt. 2:23
John 1:45 : ch. 6:42; Luke 3:23
John 1:46 : [ch. 7:41, 52]
John 1:47 : Ps. 73:1; Rom. 9:4, 6
John 1:47 : Ps. 32:2; [Zeph. 3:13; Rev. 14:5]
John 1:48 : ch. 2:24, 25
John 1:49 : See ver. 38
John 1:49 : [ch. 6:69; 11:27; 20:28]
John 1:49 : ch. 12:13; Zeph. 3:15; Matt. 27:11, 42; [Zech. 9:9]
John 1:51 : Ezek. 1:1; Matt. 3:16; Luke 3:21
John 1:51 : [Gen. 28:12]
John 1:51 : See Dan. 7:13