The first part of this sermon is cute. The second part offers a Girardian influenced take on the tricky passage from John’s gospel.
Year B, Epiphany 2
January 18th, 2015
By Thomas L. Truby
John 1:43-51 and Psalm 139:1-6
Beyond Our Capacity to See
On the Sunday of the Christmas Pageant, after the Pageant was over, the Young Disciples and I gathered in front of the pulpit to debrief. The group consisted of the two Watson girls, Jade, Andrew, with three teenagers in the background. The rolling donkey stood in front of us and we had a gold star with a beautiful face in the middle of it, holding a stick from which another gold star dangled. A dark-skinned angel in dazzling white had briefly appeared above us but was not present for this conversation having returned to her parents in the child friendly rear of the church near the exit.
I asked our participants for their favorite character in the Christmas story. The two older girl’s hands shot up and each claimed Mary. I expected that. They had each been Mary and this year it was Natalie’s turn. Jade had been demoted to “just a shepherd” but she was learning to share and I suspect that’s a part of the story too, hard as it is. The surprise came when the littlest voice piped up and said her favorite character was the star. It turned out the star was speaking, claiming herself as her favorite character. We all laughed as we recognized that in claiming the star as her favorite she had made herself the star and we delighted in her. When we spontaneously laughed she had no idea what we had seen that was so darling and funny. She just experienced us delighting in her and she loved it. But the reason for our delight was beyond her. There was truth here beyond her capacity to know.
I think God sees us like we see the littlest voice in the Christmas Pageant debrief. The Psalmist tried to get at this truth when he wrote:
LORD, you have examined me. You know me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. Even from far away, you comprehend my plans. You study my traveling and resting. You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways. There isn’t a word on my tongue, LORD, that you don’t already know completely. You surround me—front and back. You put your hand on me. That kind of knowledge is too much for me; it’s so high above me that I can’t fathom it.
We can’t see ourselves like God sees us. God has a perspective we can’t, by ourselves, fathom.
We return to our debriefing. At a certain point I decided to throw a wild card into our conversation. I roughly slapped the rolling donkey and asked if anyone had picked the donkey as their favorite character. Silence ensued and then Jade replied that she thought the donkey didn’t play a very significant part in the story. I was impressed with the use of the word “significant” but said nothing. Andrew than said he thought the donkey was very important since Mary had needed him to get to Bethlehem. I thought Andrew had a very good point but again said nothing. Natalie, agreeing with Jade and standing with the girls, noted that Mary could have walked to Bethlehem. At this point every mother in the congregation burst into laughterand the men joined them. They weren’t laughing at Natalie. They were laughing because they saw the delightful innocence and limits to a child’s knowledge.
We know Natalie is precocious for a nine-year-old but there are some things you just don’t know at that tender age. She has no experience when it comes to giving birth and we know that. We see things she can’t, even though she is very smart.
In this morning’s time with our young disciples we said that all humans suffer from a kind of blindness. There are just some things we can’t see without help like we can’t see in the dark like an owl. The gospels, those four very different stories of Jesus, were written to give us eyes to see what we otherwise will be absolutely blind to.
Today’s story is taken from John’s gospel. Jesus has just been baptized and he is gathering disciples willing to follow him. He has just asked Philip to follow him and Philip is from Bethsaida, a very up and coming town along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The story points out that Andrew and Peter also came from this town. I suspect all three are quite proud of their hometown since it is in a rich area that fishing, farming and the travel industry have made quite prosperous.
Philip, excited that he has again had the good fortune of being part of something up and coming, finds Nathanael and exclaims “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets; Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.” Nazareth was an isolated agricultural village sixteen miles west and south of the Sea of Galilee and twenty miles from prosperous Bethsaida. Its population is believed to have been around two hundred at the time of Jesus.
“Nathanael responded, ‘Can anything from Nazareth be good?’” Nazareth, unlike Bethsaida, has a bad reputation. It’s a dusty little town far away from the lake where people scratch out a living on the hills amid the rocks. Why would you switch allegiances from something glorious to something shameful?
Philip doesn’t argue with Nathanael. Instead he says “Come and see.” John’s gospel is full of double meanings and word plays. Come and see is an invitation to check Jesus out for yourself and make your own decision. It also suggests that if you really want to really see the world the way it is, if you want to have vision that penetrates, if you want to understand the human condition and find your way toward peace in all its dimensions, come and you will see what you have never seen before. You will see our blindness to our own violence; how that works and how Jesus the Christ provides a way out. That peculiar blindness that characterizes our species will find remediation in Jesus the Christ.
But there is a kicker. The transition looks less than glorious. It involves embracing the lowly One, the One who voluntarily becomes a child and dwells among us, the One who comes from Nazareth. And it requires that we leave what our peers value and tell us is important and risk finding something new that sets us apart, makes us different from others and establishes us as potential victims of group-think exclusion.
This is why the next scene in the story is so important. “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Nathanael does not let the reputation of Nazareth stand in his way. He comes toward Jesus anyway. Public opinion does not run him. He is not a puppet of group-think. He won’t lie to himself or others to make sure he fits in with the people around him. The fact that he has the internal freedom to come toward Jesus even though Nazareth has a bad reputation gives Jesus crucial information about his character. He is a genuine person in whom there is no deceit. I wonder if deceit, lying to ourselves and others, grows from being afraid of how we will be viewed by our neighbors.
Nathanael is surprised at Jesus’ comment andasks, “How do you know me?”
“Jesus answered, ‘Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.’” Now, remember how deep the Gospel of John is in its simple language. Jesus; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, has prior claim on Nathanael because he sees him as God does. Jesus sees him; the real Nathanael, the deep, inner Nathanael in whom there is no deceit,because he sees us before we sell our souls to fit in with some group. Jesus understands Nathanael like we adults understand our little ones in the Christmas Pageant. Jesus, knowing how humans are, has a perspective on us beyond our capacity to see. Living in him gives us the capacity to see at a deeper level than we would ever be able to on our own.
“Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.’” Nathanael undergoes a tectonic shift and his vision clears.
“Jesus answered. Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these! 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.’” Amen.
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