John 1:43-51 (2)

Can Anything Good Come out of Nazareth?

When I was in my 20s, my wife and I, for a time, lived in an African American community in Atlanta, engaged in urban mission. We were part of a group that was organized something like a Christian version of AmeriCorps. Each of us who participated in the program, volunteered for non-profits around the city, we lived in intentional Christian community, and we were proactive about ‘loving our neighbors’ in the neighborhood we lived in. It was Atlanta, a storied city in the Civil Rights era and when I had a day off, I would often go and hang out at the King Centre, the National Park and Museum erected in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. I toured King’s childhood home, read, and listened to King’s speeches, went to hear speakers at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church (once pastored by King’s father, and King himself). I immersed myself in King’s story.

Martin Luther King is seen today as a prophetic voice of the Civil Rights movement, and as a country, we celebrate his legacy each year on this weekend in January. But during King’s lifetime, he was seen as a troublemaker. When he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 50s, or marched in Selma, or wrote a letter to moderate white Clergy from a Birmingham Jail, he was denounced as a seditious radical who was bent on defying law and order. Folks in that day might have said, “Can anything good come from Montgomery?” Or “Could anything good from Selma”? “Can anything good come from the Birmingham Jail,” “Could anything good come from Black Atlanta?”

Our gospel story this morning tells us of the call of Philip and Nathanael. Jesus had left the region he had been in, near the Jordon river, where he picked up 3 disciples—an unnamed disciple and Andrew, who had been disciples of John, and Andrew’s brother Simon Peter.” Now Jesus found himself in Galilee. There he found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip is the only disciple in John gospel that Jesus seeks out and calls. All the others either came or were brought along by others. Philip is named as one of the 12 in the Synoptic gospels, but we don’t ever get to hear much of his story. In the synoptics his name only appears in the lists. In John’s gospel we get to hear from Philip a few more times, but he isn’t one of the major players like Peter, James, or John. He was from Bethsaida, a Greek city and may have spoken Greek but overall, he was just an ordinary disciple of Jesus.

When Jesus says to Philip, “Follow me,” Philip doesn’t immediately follow Jesus. Instead, he goes to get a friend of his, Nathanael. Instead of taking Jesus’s words as a summons to go where Jesus was going and fall in behind him, Philip understands that following Jesus means doing the things he sees Jesus doing. Jesus had called him, and he in turn, went to call his friend. He finds Nathanael and says to him, “We have found him whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote: Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”

Nathanael was skeptical and responds to Philip, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” It reminds me of when I was a kid and played little league Hockey and my team went to play an exhibition game in a little town called Boyle. Can anything good come from Boyle?! Well, evidently, better hockey players come from Boyle than anyone on our team. We got creamed.

Nazareth was the small village Jesus grew up. It was not an important city, nor an economic center, nor a stop along a trade route. It was just a small farming village. Nathanael’s skepticism wasn’t purely about that though. Nazareth was not a town like Jerusalem or Bethlehem which had been explicitly mentioned in the Hebrew prophets as a center of Messianic hope. It wasn’t what anyone was expecting, so Nathanael had his doubts.

But Philip invites him to “Come and See.”

When they were still a way off, Jesus sees Nathanael and declares, “Behold, here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

Nathanael is surprised and asks Jesus how he came to know him. Jesus answers, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip calls you.” Nathanael feels seen. This was unexpected but delightful. He declares, “Rabbi you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel.”

And Jesus answers, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?!!? You will see greater things than these!”

This story is about the calling and the commission of some of Jesus first disciples. When we read stories like this in the gospels, we are often challenged to hear Christ’s summons to us. When Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus calling his first disciples (Matthew 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20), they tell of Jesus calling them asking them to follow him, and the disciples leave their boats and nets behind and follow Jesus. In John’s gospel, these first disciples don’t do what we think they should. They don’t drop everything and go and follow Jesus. Philip walks off to go find a friend first. Nathanael expresses doubt and disbelief, and retorts, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” But each of them senses that there is something about this Jesus who calls, that is worth trusting and worth following.

But the call of Nathanael especially invites us to think deeper about who Jesus is and why he came. The first chapter of John began with a theological prologue telling us about how Jesus was the Word who was like God and with God from the Beginning (vs 1) and how Jesus is the Word who took on flesh and dwelt among us (vs. 14). As were in the rest of the first chapter the witness of John the Baptist and about the first disciples Jesus called, we are invited to think about why came and what sort of group he was gathering.

When Jesus sees Nathanael and declares, “Look an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” we are invited to see Nathanael as one of the New Israel that Jesus was establishing. If you remember the Jacob story, you know that Jacob, whose name means deceiver, twice tricked his brother out of his birthright and inheritance, before skipping town to find a wife and establish himself. When he returns to the land of his father Isaac, he wrestles a man at the Ford of Jabbok who blesses him. He tells him, “You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, because you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28). Nathanael likewise was one who had wrestled with God. He had his doubts about Jesus. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? But then Jesus had seen him under the fig tree and he believed . This New Israelite was one in whom there was no treachery, cunning, guile or deceit. Nathanael believes Jesus and declares Jesus to be teacher, to be the Son of God and the King of Israel.

But Jesus is not done. In another parallel to Jacob, Jesus promises Nathanael he will see greater things. He will see the heavens torn open and angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This was a direct reference to what we call Jacobs Ladder. When Jacob ran away to escape the wrath of his brother Esau, he had a vision of a ladder set up on the earth, reaching to the heavens with angels of God ascending and descending on it (Genesis 28:13) and God’s promise to keep Jacob and to bless him and his descendants and all the families of the earth. When Jacob called the place Bethel—the house of God – he declared, “Surely God has been in this place.”

In the Ancient Near East, many of the altars erected were Ziggurats- stairways to heaven, which were set up in high places and mountaintops to allow the gods to come down and walk among us. Jacob’s ladder was a dream of such a place where heaven touched earth.

Jesus tells Nathanael that he, himself, is the Ziggurat, the place where heaven touches earth. He is Jacob’s ladder. In him the heavens are open, and all the glory of heaven is brought to earth. The way the Synoptics say it is, “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand” “The reign of God is here.”

Like Nathanael and Philip, we are invited now to follow Jesus and do the sorts of things we observe him doing, calling others to come and join in this new thing called the Kingdom of God. But we are also invited to enlarge our vision of Jesus who is more than just our teacher, the son of God and King of Israel, though he is all those things. He is also the place where heaven touches earth, where we draw near to God and God draws near to us.