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Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
Today, we’re out of the holidays and fully into the Epiphany Season. You may have noticed that our colors have changed back to green which they’ll stay until the last Sunday in Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday … which this year will be on February 19.
As we’ve said before, this season is about Jesus’ Epiphany, or showing forth, that He is both God and man … or showing Himself to the eyes in our heads to be a man … but to the eyes of our hearts … that He truly is God.
It’s easy to see both of those features of Jesus when He goes and marches across the Sea of Galilee on top of the water and then quiets a storm. It’s easy to see Him under those circumstances as both a human being … and also … the Creator of the winds and waves.
Human beings can’t naturally walk on water … nor can they naturally command the wind and waves to obey them.
But now. Jesus’ showing forth His divinity in today’s reading is a little more subtle than walking on water or commanding the storms… so we’ll take our reading slow and savor it.
What we first see there is Jesus being the seeker … seeking and finding Philip. And then calling Philip to follow him.
And then… later on in our reading… we see Jesus meeting Nathaniel. Now here Jesus demonstrates His divinity by telling Nathaniel that He knew where he was just moments earlier and also what was going on in his Heart and mind. Definitely God-things, which by faith, Nathaniel acknowledges by saying to Jesus, “You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel.”
But notice… Jesus didn’t say anything particularly “Son-of-God-ish” or “King-of-Israel-ish” to Nathaniel. He just told Nathaniel that He had seen him … seen him in the spiritual sense … as Nathaniel had been meditating under a fig tree.
So, why does Nathaniel, then, call Jesus both the Son of God and King of Israel? We might conclude He made those connections because Jesus did something only God could do … Jesus had seen the thoughts of His heart and mind, and described him as a true Israelite in whom there was nothing false …
And so in this case we might not be surprised when Nathaniel calls Jesus both God and Lord. The Messiah and His King …but there is one more thing that we need to consider here….
At first, Nathaniel was Just going to write this Jesus off... because in referring to Jesus, Philip uses Jesus’ title, “Jesus, the one from Nazareth.” And to that Nathaniel replies: … Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Now, obviously, Philip and Nathaniel knew their scriptures. Philip is making the claim that this Jesus is the one Whom Moses wrote about and about whom the prophets also wrote.
To make that connection about Jesus takes reading the scriptures with the insight of the Holy Spirit … and apparently, by this conversation, both men had that Spirit-given understanding of God’s word.
But anyone with that knowledge and insight into the word of Moses and the Prophets would have also known the prophecy that the Messiah, the Christ, was to be born in Bethlehem in Judea.
You may recall that when the Wise Men came to Jerusalem, and asked where the King of the Jews was born … for they had seen his Star. The scribes sent them south, the four miles to Bethlehem.
And so when Nathaniel says: Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?” He’s saying more that what we might hear on the surface.
In Nathaniel’s day Nazareth was hardly in the theological map … at least compared to a town like Bethlehem. Nazareth was north of Judea, beyond Samaria … and the population there was of mixed races … unlike the Jewish purity of the population of Judea and the city of David, Bethlehem. Some even called the town of Nazareth half-heathen.
So Nathaniel’s comment is much more than a disparaging remark about anyone who came from that town …it is in fact questioning the possibility that this Jesus Philip has met could be the Messiah, the Son of God, as spoken about by Moses and the Prophets…
given that a Nazareth pedigree of Jesus conflicted with the clear prophecy of Scripture. Because the Son of God, the King of Israel would be from Judea, particularly from Bethlehem.
What Nathaniel could be in effect saying is: “Don’t you know your scriptures any better than that, Philip? How could the Messiah possibly come from a place like Nazareth?”
Now, we give Philip credit because he doesn’t try to argue his point about Who this Jesus is. He just tells Nathaniel to hold his judgment … just: “Come and See.”
We might read between the lines there that Philip was saying, “Yes, Nathaniel I know the prophecy as well as you do, but there is no mistaking who this Jesus is. Come and see for yourself.”
And to Nathaniel’s credit, he does come to see who this Jesus is…
and in just a few words, Jesus reveals that HE can read both Nathaniel’s heart and mind … and hearing that … Nathaniel replies in faith … You are the Son of God … You are the King of Israel … you are the fulfillment of the Words spoken by Moses and the Prophets.
Great story … but what does that have to do with you or me?
Cancer. Bankruptcy, Unemployment, Heart Attack … Death.
Can anything good come out of those? The message for today is “yes!” Yes … even though we can’t see the good with our eyes… faith can see something entirely different.
It goes back to something we’ve talked about before… a theology of glory… verses a theology of the cross.
See? What if the situation in our reading had been such that Philip had said to Nathaniel … “Hey, we’ve found the Christ … he was born in Judea … raised in the temple … attended the seminary … He’s from Bethlehem!”
Nathaniel would have accepted Jesus right then and there … “Let’s go see Him,” He would have said.
But no, that’s not the way that Jesus came into the world nor how He revealed Himself to Philip or Nathaniel … or to the rest of us who would become His disciples …
He comes as an un-seminary-trained carpenter’s son from the sticks. No apparent pedigree … a fulfillment of Isaiah’s words: nothing that would make him attractive to us.
Jesus never took the glory road. He took the road that led to the cross … and death. He practiced a theology that spoke in word and deed: “I am here to serve you … not so that you should serve me.”
And so … when our Nazareth’s come … when those things come in our lives that make us say those words “What possible good can come from this?” We have to check ourselves and see which road we’re on.
Are we on the glory road … one that expects God to answer our prayers in accordance with what we think is best for us and others?? The road that sees God only in the good stuff … and not in the bad?
Or are we on the road that Jesus took? A road that is very hard to take when all we see is what we see with our eyes, as it were … when we evaluate all the happens to us according to the world’s standards of good and bad??
The world hates death … because without Christ … there is nothing beyond it besides extinction. The world hates disease. The world hates infirmities of every sort. The world hates everything and anything that prevents us from following the road which takes us in the way of our pursuit of happiness.
Guess what? Worldly happiness is not God’s highest good for us. That’s the counterfeit promise of the theology of Glory: Be good, praise God, and the road to happiness is your inheritance.
That’s not the road that Jesus traveled … nor the road of discipleship.
The promise God gives us in Scripture is that He uses all things that come into our lives to our ultimate good. And by faith … He gives us the ability to see that His ultimate good for us is not to land us someday in a mansion on the beach here on earth … but in a mansion for eternity with Him in heaven.
And so … what’s the Nazareth… what’s that “something that nothing good can possibly come from” that’s in your life, or the life of one you love, right now? Where is the Son of God … where is the King of Israel in it?
Is it Jesus’ Job to make it all go away? Is it then your job to somehow figure out how to manipulate Jesus into doing that??
Pray just the right words. Gather whatever might be the critical mass of believers necessary to all pray at once to make sure God knows that your request is sincere enough that He owes it to you to answer the way you want?
No. The prayer is to help me see Jesus and His love coming even from my Nazareth. Coming maybe, if it be His will, with complete and total healing as He comes and takes me or a loved one to be with Him forever.
That’s the a true blessing behind the mask of death for a disciple … a mask that is truly frightening to all without faith … but not to those who have died with Christ and now live in Him.
The Cross is the bottom line. Jesus has already given all He could give for you. That’s how great His love is. “I will never leave you … I will never forsake you…” That is His promise made sure, as He gives us his own body and blood as the proof.
And so today … what IS your Nazareth? Pray for the eyes of faith to see Jesus in it … and to see yourself in His loving arms this day … He who came from His Nazareth … to yours … to take you to His Jerusalem forever.
And as we’re headed there as His Disciples, we do live each day… All for Jesus.
In Him. Amen.
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