John 1:43-51

10/5/08
John 1:43-51
Hudson UMC


Does it seem like you’ve heard this story before? Jesus is walking along and calls someone who follows, but before they do, they go and call someone else? It seems like this story was just in the last passage with Andrew and Simon, but now it is with Philip and Nathanael. The Scripture will often give us stories that have something to do with each other right in a row so that we are more likely to understand what is going on. So, because the story is so similar, I could, if I wanted, preach basically the same sermon I preached last week, but I won’t. I want to explore this next passage and the new things it presents rather than dwell on the past and I hope that you are also interested in learning something new.

I want to focus this morning on the story of Nathanael. This is a person who has always fascinated me, ever since I first started reading the Bible for myself. He strikes me as an incredibly honest person in the Bible. Not only that, I think that, in a certain way, Nathanael shows us a glimpse into our own culture. I’ll explain what I mean. Nathanael shows us in this passage that he has a whole bunch of preconceived notions about God, about humanity and the relationship between the two. We are going to talk about Nathanael’s particular preconceived notions, but I want to spend a moment and talk about preconceived notions in general.

I hope that this will not be a surprise to anyone in this room, but absolutely every single human being has certain things that they believe about God and ourselves and other people that are accepted uncritically, or without proof, that fundamentally shape the way we live our lives. All of us, when we think about God, have our own ways of thinking about Him, each of which may or not be anything close the God revealed in Scripture. To make matters worse, it is not always an easy thing to redefine God as the Bible talks about Him, because these very same preconceived notions that we have fundamentally shape the way we read Scripture as well. In some cases, it takes nothing short of an act of God enlightening us with His Holy Spirit for us to shed ourselves of our non-Scriptural views of God and humanity. To give just a single example of how damaging our false presuppositions can be to our faith, let us consider the Scribes and Pharisees. No one else in the whole world knew the Scriptures that pointed forward to Christ as well as the Scribes and Pharisees, and yet they were the ones who never got it. They had been taught to see the Bible in a certain way and it eventually became impossible for them to see it in any other way, missing the message that God most wanted to give them. If we are not proactive, I had almost said ruthless, in discovering our preconceived notions and ripping them up by their roots, we will always be bound by the way we think God is rather than the way He really is.

Nathanael’s big preconceived notion mentioned in our text is that nothing good can come out of Nazareth. We read that Philip says to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth”. Now, Nathanael could have just said that Philip was mistaken, but he gives a reason, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” We need to understand that Nazareth did not have a good reputation. Galilee was in the very far north of Israel and was surrounded by pagan nations. We have all heard about how traditional Jews from the South did not get along with Samaritans. Galilee was on the other side of Samaria from Judea, so Galileans would be seen as even worse than the Samaritans that they already didn’t like. Out of all the cities in Galilee, Nazareth was known as being a particularly worthless town. This is particularly relevant because Nathanael, who lived in Galilee, has nothing nice to say about the city at all. If Philip was telling the truth, it would mean that the God of the universe had brought a prophet out of Galilee, which had never happened before. He just couldn’t get his mind wrapped around it.

To paint a better picture of Nathanael, it is actually very possible that he was not merely responding this way out of prejudice and ignorance. It is very likely that he had heard the prophecies that the wise men of Jerusalem knew, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, which was a long way from Nazareth. To disbelieve Philip and believe the prophets would be a very wise move, because one was the Scripture of God and the other was just a fallible person. However, what Nathanael did not know is that Jesus was indeed originally from Bethlehem, but his family moved to Nazareth after fleeing to Egypt. Nathanael could have used Scripture to back up his claim that the Messiah is to be from Bethlehem and he would be right, but only partly right. If he insisted on holding steadfastly, not to the Scripture, but his interpretation of the Scriptures, he would have missed God standing right before his very eyes. We must be willing to consider that God, while He will never contradict what is recorded in Scripture, might intend to teach us something that we cannot yet see because of how we have always seen it.

Though none of the disciples were particularly well educated, it is possible that Nathanael might have known more than some of the others, judging by his inquisitive spirit, which we can clearly see in our text. The thing is, the more educated a person is, it seems to be less likely they will put their trust in God. This is not, as some think, because learning and piety are somehow mutually exclusive, but because education teaches people to ask questions and not take things at face value. As I become more and more educated, I find myself more inquisitive and, at the same time, less likely to act quickly without thinking things through very carefully. We call Thomas “the doubter”, but it could very much apply to Nathanael, because he has some serious doubts that need to be overcome before he can truly believe. As a brief side note on education, one of the things that modern Western education does is teach people to have an extremely high view of humanity, that we can do anything we want if we will just work hard enough. While there are certainly good things about this, it also teaches us to rely only on ourselves, a nasty sort of pride, and we usually convince ourselves because of it that we need to be “good enough” or work “hard enough” to be accepted by God. Educated people often do not like to be humbled and confess that they have nothing to contribute to their relationship with God, something that God insists that we do if we want to be His children.

So, Nathanael has all these issues that hinder him from listening to Philip and meeting Jesus for himself. However, though he has basically just been called a liar, Philip is convinced in his message and is patient with his friend. It is very interesting to me how Philip responds to this situation. If, for example, he had taken his cue from many modern Christians, he would have probably have pronounced loudly that Nathanael was wrong and that he just needed to stop thinking so much and believe. We can all think of a variety of ways that Philip could have responded to Nathanael’s somewhat glib and arrogant response and we can probably think more specifically about ways that would not be particularly loving or Christlike, but what does he do? He does not try to argue with Nathanael, he does not try to engage in a bunch of apologetic exercises designed to appeal to his friend’s intellectualism, he does not try to prove the existence of God or anything like that, he just gives a really simple response. He says to Nathanael, “come and see”.

Now, we’ve heard that line before, haven’t we? Jesus had just said it to Andrew and the other disciple in the last passage. What did it mean then? If you think back two weeks to when we talked about it, you will remember that Jesus used it to try and get the two men to have a particular experience, to encounter the Lord for themselves. It means the very same thing now. Philip knew that he could not somehow magically implant a religious experience into Nathanael, he could not rationally argue him into faith, and why should he? Is that how he came to faith? No, he came to faith by meeting Jesus and, through encountering Him, encountered the Father. Philip didn’t sit down with the prophecies and reach a purely rational conclusion, but had a life-transforming experience with the very Son of God. This is what he wanted Nathanael to experience, not a good argument, or a good sermon, but a life-changing encounter that would leave him forever changed. This is what we are called to in the church, even today. Every single person who truly believes in God through our Lord Jesus Christ has had their lives changed. Our job is not to be the most intelligent apologist in modern times or for all Christians to be pastors, but to share with others the life changing reality that we have encountered and help them to encounter it for themselves, and this is something that anyone can do, you don’t need a seminary education, you don’t need to be an expert in the Bible, you just need to be willing to be faithful to God’s call.

Notice that Philip does not say, “Go and see”, but, “Come and see”. Philip did not ask Nathanael to do anything that he was not already willing to do. He did not presume that, since he had already met Jesus that he didn’t need to go back to Him. He did not say, “Hey, I’ve already been around the block a few times, and I’m tired of serving God, but you should totally go and do it”. If he had done that, if he had not been willing to lead the way and take his hand and show him what discipleship looked like and just told him about it, Nathanael probably wouldn’t have followed. Think about it, though Philip’s words said, “Jesus matters”, his actions would have shouted, “He doesn’t really”. Philip did not expect Nathanael to make the journey, physical or spiritual, alone. Philip was willing to take the steps with him and he does so.

This brings us up the point where Nathanael first encounters Christ. When this happens, Nathanael, much like Simon, has a somewhat interesting experience. When Simon met Jesus, his name was changed. When Nathanael met Him, Jesus declares, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit”. This is a very interesting statement. How often do people say this kind of thing to you, or indeed, to anyone? So, we need to ask, what does it mean for Nathanael to be without deceit? It means that, though he did not know the truth, he was not a willful liar. Though he had not yet encountered the Truth (with a capital T), he was not actively engaged in convincing himself of untruths. It was not that he was unwilling to know the truth, he just had not yet encountered it. This is very high praise, because we don’t find very many people like this in our world today. I am sure that each of us could point to a time in our lives when we were suffering from what Wesley would call, “Invincible Ignorance”, an unwillingness to be convinced, no matter how strong the evidence might be.

To be “without deceit” in this case is to be curable, to be the sort of person who is ready to be healed by the power of the Gospel. However, we must always be sure to remember that, though being without deceit is to be curable, it is not to be already cured. A clear conscience, a desire to encounter the truth and not being actively involved in destructive lifestyles are not the same thing as Christianity, though they are certainly connected with it. All too often, church leaders have made our relationship with Christ to help us be really moral and satisfied human beings, but this is pale and insufficient when we compare it to God’s plan, which is to make us Christlike, like the very Son of God in every aspect of our lives and be joined into his Sonship to the Father. Nathanael’s honesty was not proof that he was already a Christian, but that it would not be difficult for him to become one.

When this statement is made about him, Nathanael responds with slight disbelief, not because he does not think that Jesus is telling the truth, but because he cannot comprehend how Jesus would know this. Think about it, Nathanael had never met Christ before and Christ had never met him before. How would Jesus know what he was like to make such a statement? Jesus tells him, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” A simple statement, to be sure, but there is one very interesting part about it. Jesus wasn’t there and Nathanael knew it. When confronted with this statement, which could not have been known by any natural means, Nathanael cries out, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” This is a far cry from, “Can anything good come from Nazareth” is it not? And yet, though this is precisely the kind of reaction he should have had, it almost seems as if it takes Jesus by surprise. He says, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” He knew that Nathanael would see miracles, signs and wonders, and resurrections, the fact that Jesus had seen him under a distant fig tree is nothing compared to what he would see. Again, he was not convinced intellectually, but experientially.

Jesus declaration to Nathanael, though simple, absolutely shattered his preconceived notions. The questions that we need to ask ourselves are: What preconceived notions do I have? Will I let God through Christ challenge and even shatter them? Am I a person in whom there is no deceit? How we come out on these questions is something of a dividing line. If we glibly declare, “I have no preconceived notions”, we prove nothing other than we are of all people most blind to them. Even recognizing them is not enough if we still cling to them in opposition to God’s revelation to us. Are we people in whom there is no deceit? Are we the kind of people who are dedicating our lives to find the truth? Or are we engaged in convincing ourselves of untruths either actively, by taking our cue about what God is like from our culture and secular values, or passively by not investigating the word of God on its own terms and letting it overthrow our lives to establish the very life of God in us?

Nathanael, in the span of nine verses has all of his preconceived notions overthrown, his opinions completely reversed and is transformed from a bigot into a dedicated follower of Christ and worshipper of God. He does not wait until he has seen the miracles (for none have been done yet), he does not wait for the first Christian systematic theology to be published, he does not wait for Jesus to be the popular guy to follow, but surrenders his life now. In response to this, Jesus says to him, “You will see greater things than these, you will see heaven opened up and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. If we will surrender things “the way we’ve always done them” to God, we will see greater things than these, we will encounter the living God, not once, but throughout our entire lives. We will see our hearts transformed and the eternal life of God set up in our souls. Let us pray.

AMEN