The Nonchalant Miracle for the Disciple Nathanael and How It Leads to the Fulfillment of the Great Promise to Jacob

March 8, 2021             John 1: 45-46

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ ⁵⁰Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ ⁵¹And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

            Sorry I missed Friday, was down ill, but back again. 

            So the build up, Philip comes to find his friend Nathanael, to get him to come and see Jesus.  Nathanael made the comment “Can anything good come out of Nazareth (which is highlighted for this portion as well as the last because it is a transition).  Then, in a rather nonchalant miracle, when Nathanael arrives, Jesus seems to crack wise at his expense.

            “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”  This is Jesus’ reaction to Nathanael’s comment about Nazareth.  A man in whom there is no deceit.  He is a man who is not going to play politeness to spare the feelings of a community like Nazareth.  What is the old cliche, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all…”?  If this was Nathanael’s attitude, there could have been two different responses to Philip.  First, he said nothing about Nazareth.  Secondly, he could have fallen into the more general pattern of humanity of finding something nice to say, even if it were not absolutely truthful.  A little deceit to spare someone’s feelings maybe.  But that is not his way, and Jesus knows it.

            So Nathanael, who at this point does NOT know that Jesus heard his comment about Nazareth (by miraculous means as we shall soon see), responds directly, “Where did you come to know me?”  It might be a polite form of the challenge “You don’t know anything about me.”

            Jesus’ response, “I saw you under the fig tree when Philip came to find you.”  Saw him under the fig tree and heard the exchange between the two of them about the town of Nazareth. 

            Nathanael’s response may seem, at first reading, to be all out of proportion to this almost blasé miracle.  He identifies Jesus as both ‘Son of God’ and the ‘King of Israel’.  To which Jesus’ response feels to me like “You like that?  Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

            Which has left me with the question, how did Nathanael make that leap?  Jesus had a miraculous view of him under the fig tree when Philip came to call upon him, and now Nathanael is making the grandest pronouncements of Jesus’ presence and power.  They are true, but he’s only just ‘come and see’. 

            Consider, there are three points that Philip makes to Nathanael.  The final one is “come and see”.  The second is about Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth, which draws the ‘undeceitful’ observation from Jesus.  The first point Philip makes is that they found the ‘one about whom Moses, in the law, and also the prophets wrote about’.  To me, Nathanael knew what Philip was talking about when he mentioned what Moses and the prophets wrote about.  He knew about this Messianic expectation, and he had very specific knowledge about it, that the Messiah was the Son of God and the King of Israel.

            It seems he was ready to believe, until he heard this man of the prophecies came from Nazareth.  At that point, his ingrown biases jumped in and he made his unflattering comment about Nazareth.  He did not go out of his way to be insulting, it was the natural flow of the moment for him.  Then Jesus does meet him and relays the results of his ‘scrying’ (miraculous seeing from afar) as a continuation of their introductory conversation.  And Nathanael had an answer to his question.  “Why yes!  Something pretty awesome can come out of Nazareth!”

            To which Jesus replies, “You got all of that from this little miracle?  Just wait.”  Then he concludes the passage, “Very truly I tell you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

            I almost left that as another post, except this piece ends both the chapter and this particular gospel story.  We move to another day and a wedding from here.

            There are two things here of significance for me.  The first is the opening, “Very truly I tell you…”  I grew up with “Truly, truly I say unto you…”  It is a trigger that, when we see it, there is something of particular significance to follow.  Jesus is making a particular point of drawing this piece out.

            “You will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  Notice, Jesus self-refers as the ‘Son of Man’, whereas Nathanael called him the Son of God.  It is not a correction, but an inclusion.  It is also something to watch, where and how titles are used.  Do those talking about Jesus use Son of God, while he uses Son of Man? 

            It is the angels ascending and descending on Jesus that gets me.  It feels like this should be foreshadowing an event of great importance, because of the truly-truly intro.  But I do not remember an event that ties back to this in Jesus’ life.  A couple of weeks back, I preached on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness from Mark’s gospel, where it says that the angels came to tend to Jesus, but the temptation story is not a part of John’s story.  And, according to the time line we have of Jesus’ life, the temptation in the wilderness came before he began his active ministry.

            The closest fit I can make of this passage goes back to Genesis, to a place in the law of Moses.  I looked up the reference, Genesis 28, Jacob’s Ladder.  Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, father of the twelve sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel, had a dream of angels ascending and descending.

            In a nutshell, Isaac sends Jacob back to the ‘old country’ to find a wife.  He is NOT to marry one of the local girls.  En route, Jacob lays down, using a rock as a pillow, and dreams of the angels ascending and descending.  From there, God speaks to him, reiterating the promise that this is the land that God shall give to him and his descendants.  There is one piece in particular to quote here: “and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.” (Genesis 28: 14).

            I think Jesus is telling Nathanael, and us, that it is not about the angels, but about the promise they represent, the promise God made to Jacob, returning to the promise made to Abraham, the promise that is fulfilled in Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the King of Israel, according to what is written in the Law of Moses (Because Genesis is a part of the Torah, the Law of Moses-although it does not really feel like a book of laws).

            This is quite a jump from Jesus miraculously seeing Nathanael under a fig tree, to the full extent of what Jesus has come to accomplish.