In-between

John 1:43-51 Philip and Nathanael follow Jesus
To be Called
Sunday, 15 January 2012
UCSA Glengowrie

1.

Today we have a strange bible text. It is a collection of sentences that seem almost out of context.

And they remind me of Murphy’s Haystacks on the West Coast of Eyre Peninsula[1]. There, ancient, wind-worn pillars and boulders of pink granite grow right up out of the ground on a windy paddock. I saw them during my first visit to Eyre PI some ten years ago. On this late afternoon, almost alone on the Eyre West Coast Highway, my now wife Liz and I passed a sign board indicating this tourist site. Coming from Germany, I was visualising an old farmstead, a barn, and possibly a nice coffee house.

Liz looked at me as if I was coming from the moon, and indeed — I was completely wrong. We found ourselves on a windswept hill in front of these huge rock formations growing out of the ground, some of them looking like gigantic ears. With just the two of us around, it was an eerie experience. These granite boulders are all different in size, formation, and height. It looked as if they were left behind by an ancient civilisation that may have used them for communication. Yet we know that these granites are parts of rocky inselberg formations typical of that area, created some ten Kilometres below the earth’s surface, over 1,500 million years ago.

A variety of wave forms and flared rock structures are indicative of ancient physical and chemical weathering processes which occurred when soil levels were several metres higher than they are now. About 30,000 years ago they were thus completely covered by sand dunes. Subsequent erosion caused by rains and winds gradually uncovered these boulders and pillars, presenting what we see today.

As you can probably tell, I have never forgotten this place ever since we left it. It’s as if ancient volcanoes deep down beneath the earth’s surface have reached out to have some crude witnesses tell us of their existence.

 

2.

Our bible reading this morning reminded me of these granites. The text, as such, is rough — just a collection of sentences. Their meaning is weird — it hardly makes sense to an unsuspecting reader. Yet these are the words and dialogues that cut deep into raw life. They can even hurt, getting close to being insulting. These sentences are an unrefined description of events.

But then the author of our Gospel text today was a well-read man of many words, as the beautiful beginning of this book testifies (John 1:1-5 CEV):

(1) In the beginning was the one who is called the Word.
The Word was with God and was truly God.
(2) From the very beginning the Word was with God.
(3) And with this Word, God created all things.
Nothing was made without the Word. Everything that was created
(4) received its life from him, and his life gave light to everyone.
(5) The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out.

Contrast this with the crude narration of our passage. Jesus had just been baptised. On the next day John the Baptist introduced Jesus to two of his followers, Andrew and his brother Simon Peter. The first thing Andrew did, so the author of the Gospel of John tells us, was to talk to his brother Simon Peter: “We have found the Messiah!”, the “Christ”. Curious as they are, they follow Jesus to find out where he lives. Jesus does invite them to “come and see” — and both become his first two followers.

This is where our passage sets in. But now the narrator changes course. One short sequence follows another. After being baptised by John on the other side of the Jordan River, Jesus is on his way to Galilee. Along the road, it seems, he “finds” Philip, a man from the hometown of Andrew and Simon Peter. And he calls Philip, “Follow me!” But as with Andrew and Simon Peter, Philip turns around first of all to talk with his close mate, Nathanael: In almost the same words as before, he tells him who he had “found” — Jesus, the son of Joseph in Nazareth, about whom the prophets had written.

A truly believing Jew — as we will learn — Nathanael grumbles, uttering the rather racist question, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Fully convinced of his findings, Philip now invites him to “come and see”.

And again our story takes a rather surprising twist: Jesus sees Nathanael and identifies him as a true follower of his Jewish faith, “who is not deceitful!”. I can clearly see Nathanael’s face, puzzled as he must have been. How could Jesus know about him, whom he had just met for the first time!?

Consequently, the following dialogue seems to make little sense in the narration of our story.

“Under the fig tree, talking with Philip”, is Jesus’ response.

Nathanael: “Rabbi, you are the son of God, the King of Israel!”

Jesus: “You will see things greater … the heavens open and the angels going up and down on the Son of Man!”

This quote ends the story of the second day of the journey of Jesus.

 

3.

These sentences in our bible text stand out, for me, like the granite boulders at “Murphy’s Haystacks”. They are as different in their size, their volume, their character, or their looks and feel, as these rock formations. At the same time they are equally deep rooted in their ground of time.

Many theologians discuss the messianic statements in this passage, or question the role of Nathanael as a Jew. Other people consider the question of Jesus “calling” his disciples.

We will have a closer look at Nathanael in a little while, but for now I would like to direct your attention to two other aspects of this little story.

Three words stand out in this short text: “find”, “come” and “follow”.

Our few sentences feature the words “to find” no less then three times:

• Jesus finds Philip
• Philip finds Nathanael
• and he tells his friends, that “we have found” Jesus, the one of whom the prophets wrote. This echoes the previous section in which Andrew says the same thing to his brother Simon.

The Greek word for “to find” in this passage is — heureka.

Australians know this word well, but from a quite different context: Here it is associated with the gold rush around Ballarat. The “Eureka Stockade” was a revolt in 1854 by gold miners who demonstrated against the unjust mining licence fees and brutal administration supervising the miners, and the refusal of the workers to be dominated by unfair government and laws. The Eureka Stockade has therefore often been referred to as the ‘birth of democracy’ in Australia.

The word “Eureka” comes from the ancient Greek expression εuρηκα heúrēka — meaning “I have found (it)!”. This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed “Eureka!” when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose — he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. He then realized that the volume of objects could be measured with precision — a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse![2]

The three Jewish men in Galilee, Jesus, Philip and Nathanael, however, may have associated this with something quite different. Well trained in the study of the Tora, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, they may have heard a reference, for instance, to the assurance by God to Moses that he would be alongside him, leading his people out of captivity (Exodus 33:11-17 ISV)[3]:

(11) The LORD spoke to Moses face to face just as a man speaks with his friend. […]
(12) Moses told the LORD, “Look, you have told me, ‘Bring up this people,’
but you haven’t let me know whom you will send with me.
Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name,’ and also, ‘You have found favor in my sight.’

(13) Now, if I’ve found favor in your sight, please show me your ways
so I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.
And remember, this nation is your people.”

(14) The LORD said, “My presence will go with you, and I’ll give you rest.

[…]

(17) […] because you have found favor in my sight
and I know you by name.”

Or, even when facing the challenges of exile, punishment and conversion, Tora readers would have been familiar with God’s promises (Deuteronomy 4:29-31 ISV):

(29) “If […] you will seek the LORD your God, then you will find him
— if you seek him with all your heart and soul.

(30) “In your distress, when all these things happen to you in days to come
and you return to the LORD your God, then you will hear his voice.

(31) For God is compassionate. The LORD your God won’t fail you.
He won’t destroy you or forget the covenant that he confirmed with your ancestors.”

 

Reading the stories of Jesus calling his first few disciples, leaves me rather awe-struck: There is no selection process as in the Uniting Church in Australia, or indeed all modern churches; it’s ordinary everyday people who simply turn around and follow Jesus. They trust, deep in their heart, in Jesus as the Son of God, a God who would never forsake us. This is the message they tell others, as Andrew did to Simon, or Philip to Nathanael: “We have found the one that Moses and the Prophets wrote about!”, referring to the 5^th Book of Moses, 18,18. “Finding” the Lord, therefore, is much more than just finding a coin on the road — it is entrusting your life to Him.

 

The other two words, “come” and “follow”, are even odder. You remember, we have already heard how Jesus invited Andrew and Simon to “come and have a look” — well, we assume it was to look at his abode, or wherever a young carpenter of that time might have lived. But again, it is the simplicity of the call that puzzles me: No vocational speech, no vows, and no promises — just, come and follow me. Two young men turn around and leave all their previous life behind.

The Greek expression for to follow, “akoloo-theh’o”, is literally translated as “being in the same way with” or “to accompany” somebody. And now Philip invites his doubting friend Nathanael simply to “come and see” Jesus with his own eyes, thus making him one of his followers as well.

 

4.

This brings us almost to the end of this sermon. But before we finish, I would like to have a closer look at Nathanael.

Jesus describes him as a faithful Jew without any fault, as I would prefer to interpret it in order to avoid the rather biased sounding word “deceitfulness”. Jesus trusts Nathanael implicitly, without reservation. After having just seen Nathanael talking with his friend Philip under a fig tree, Jesus knows he can trust this man, which expresses a reversal of trust. This is not surprising. After all, a small community can only survive on mutual trust; everything else will split it and eventually destroy it.

Would Nathanael have thought about what he got himself into? Would he have declined his Calling by Jesus if he had known what he was going to face? Jesus promised him the heavens [would??] open and angels going up and down, but the reality for him was quite different.

Nathanael’s name already is program — “Gift of God”, but apart from that we know very little about him. Since the 9^th century, he is believed to have been the Apostle Bartholomew, the son of Tolmai, as his name translates from the Palestinian Aramaic.

In his Ecclesiastical History (v §10), Eusebius of Caesarea[4] states that after the Ascension of Jesus, Bartholomew went on a missionary tour to India, where he left behind a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. Other traditions record him as serving as a missionary in Ethiopia, Mesopotamia, and in Parthia and Lycaonia, what we now call the Middle East. He must have certainly been a widely-travelled man.

He is also said to have brought Christianity to Caucasian Armenia in the 1st century and to have converted Polymius, the Armenian king, to Christianity. Subsequently, Polymius’ brother, Astyages, ordered Bartholemew’s execution, and the apostle found his martyrdom by being beheaded, or, as is believed in a more popular tradition, was flayed alive and crucified, head downward.

 

No, to hear the Call and to follow Jesus is not an easy task; it’s something you don’t take lightly. It changes your life, and in our times many, many, many saints like Nathanael-Bartholomew have paid for their commitment, indeed, with their very lives: Martin Luther King, the famous US American preacher and fighter for the Human Rights of his people — today we celebrate the anniversary of his birth in 1929. Or to name other people, like the Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Germany, the El Salvadorian Roman Catholic bishop Oscar Romero, or the lawyer and President Nelson Mandela in South Africa. And there are countless others whose names we do not remember but who have given their lives in following their Calling by Jesus — they may not have faced martyrdom like those mentioned, but they have still invested their lives in serving the people of God.

I would like to close with the last few lines of the Psalm we heard earlier this morning (Ps 139 CEV):

(16) Even before I was born, you, Lord, had written in your book everything I would do.
(17) Your thoughts are far beyond my understanding, much more than I could ever imagine.
(18) I try to count your thoughts, but they outnumber the grains of sand on the beach.
And when I awake —— I will find you nearby.

Amen.

 

Footnotes

[1] http://www.nullarbornet.com.au/themes/murphysHayStacks.html; image from http://www.yktravelphoto.com/places/murphys-haystacks-eyre-peninsula/513/en/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_%28word%29

[3] “found favour” = reference to Hebrew מָצָא matsa

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_the_Apostle