Text for the Week: Jesus Calling

Scripture: John 1:43-51

⁴³ The next day Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴ Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter.

⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶ Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”

Philip said, “Come and see.”

⁴⁷ Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

⁴⁸ Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?”

Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

⁴⁹ Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.”

⁵⁰ Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these! ⁵¹ I assure you that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One.”

Questions

1. Why does Jesus, a traveling preacher, search out his disciples, presumably many would come to hear him and ask him to let them follow him as a disciple?
2. What is the significance of Jesus seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, why would this impress Nathanael so much that he would change his mind so radically and make such a confession about Jesus?
3. What does Jesus mean that Nathanael will see “heaven open…” in verse 51?

Background

Related Scriptures: Genesis 28:10-22, Psalm 32:2, Daniel 7:13-14, Zephaniah 3:13

The normal practice was for disciples to find a rabbi to follow and study under, Jesus completely breaks that pattern by inviting people to follow him.

Philip and Nathanael are important disciples in John’s Gospel but in the other Gospels Nathanael is not mentioned and Philip is only mentioned as one of the twelve.

It is unclear why Nathanael says “Can anything from Nazareth be good?” It may be that he simply is aware that Nazareth like his hometown of Bethsaida is a backwater and not likely to produce important people.

Nathanael’s claim that Jesus is God’s Son and King of Israel reflects the fact that Philip had made this claim and that Jesus’ prophetic display meant that Philip’s claim had to be accurate because no prophet would allow such a false claim to be made on his behalf.

Jesus’ comment in verse 51 is a quote from Genesis 28:12 and is used to portray him the House of God and the stairway that Jacob saw.

For more background see my video here

Reflection

In one sense the passage in John is straightforward, Jesus is gathering a group of disciples around him and he is ready to include Philip and Nathanael in the group. Jesus has already spoken with Andrew and Simon and they are onboard now he looks for two more. Nathanael, while obviously willing to have his mind changed, is initially skeptical of Philip’s comment and needs to encounter Jesus personally before he believes. And this is certainly a great example for us that while we can and should lead friends to Jesus, it is ultimately their own encounter with Jesus that will make them disciples. It is always worth remembering that our responsibility as disciples seeking Jesus is to help others have their own personal summit with the one who can and will change lives.

I think the story of Nathanael, though, has more to offer us. Nathanael’s opening comment to Philip, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”, may reflect hostility toward Philip’s claim but more likely is meant to be dismissive because of the region’s lack of importance. He is not making a claim that Nazareth and its residents are evil, he is saying that the region has no influence and so, is it likely that God will use its people to do great things. I think it can be easy to get into Nathanael’s mindset, it was not that he did not believe God’s promises, nor that he did not believe his friend, Nathanael simply seemed to have a difficult time understanding how God could change the world through a backwater like Nazareth. It is easy to fall into this temptation, asking how God will bring about great change in seemingly powerless communities. Nathanael was so accustomed to the way things were that he did not expect that God would act differently, he expected religious power to be exercised in Jerusalem naturally questioned how a traveling teacher from Nazareth could be the cause of change.

Obviously, it is easy to recognize a divine dimension to Jesus’ comment about seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, this after all sways Nathanael’s opinion of him. It is this comment that allows Nathanael to see that Jesus is a prophet and that there is something to Philip’s claim. But there is something else in Jesus’ comment that seems even more impression and that is his comment about Nathanael being an Israelite without deceit seems to echo Zephaniah 3:13 which talks about God being with the weak and powerless and maintaining some in Israel with no deceit. Jesus has identified Nathanael as a person who is committed to following God and looking for the truth and Jesus wants to work with him. It is this commitment to truth in Nathanael that will allow him to see Jesus as the true intermediary between God and creation (v 51).

I think Jesus wants us to recognize that if we come to him openly and honestly we will open ourselves up to the great things of God. Nathanael was not simply acting in blind faith, he did not simply trust Jesus as the latest Messiah to make a claim. He trusted that Jesus had given him a show of divine power along with the testimony of others committed to following God. We are not called to a religion of blind faith that has no grounding in reality, but we are called to know God well enough that when our trusted friends give us a message from God and we see signs of God’s activity in the world around us, we believe and trust God. When we see this activity we begin to move with God into the future and see the heavens opened and know the true moving of God’s workers.