Come and See
Sermon on John 1.43-51
In John 1.36, the disciples of John the Baptist hear John witness about Jesus, “Look there is the lamb of God”. These disciples then ask Jesus “where are you staying?” and Jesus answers “come and see”. Andrew and then Peter stay or “abide” with Jesus.
“Abide” is dense with meaning; as the Word of God abides with humanity (John 1.14), as Jesus abides in the Father and the Father abides in him (John 14.11), so too do we “abide” in Jesus as “branches” in a vine (John 15.5). The next day, in Galilee, Phillip follows Jesus and then encourages his friend Nathanael to “come and see.”
There is some banter here between Nathanael and Jesus which we may miss if we disregard context. Nathanael asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Score 1 to Nathanael.
Phillip responds using Jesus language: “Come and See.”
When Jesus meets Nathanael, he says “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Possibly it is a genuine compliment, but equally possible is that it is a “return serve” on the part of Jesus. Before Israel was Israel, Israel was Jacob. Jacob was one in whom there was much deceit. Score 1 to Jesus. Deuce.
Here is the background.
In Genesis 25.19-20 we read: “This is the account of Abraham's son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean."
Genesis 25.24-26: “When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them."
Jacob means heel grabber which is a metaphor meaning deceives.
Later the twins are adults, Isaac is about to die and wants to pass on his inheritance and blessing to the eldest son, Esau. However, Jacob the deceiver, deceives his father into thinking that he, Jacob, is Esau, and the inheritance passes to Jacob. Esau is furious. Genesis 27.35-36 “But Isaac said, 'Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.' Esau said, 'Isn't he rightly named Jacob (yaʿaqōb)? He has deceived(ʿāqab) me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!'"
As you can imagine, Esau and Jacob are now sworn enemies. Esau swears to kill Jacob. Jacob runs for his life. While sleeping in the wilderness he has a dream or vision which is described as a ladder or stairway connecting Heaven and Earth upon which angels are descending and ascending.
Genesis 28.11: “Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
Genesis 28.17: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."
Much later God changes Jacob’s name to Israel.
With a basic literacy in the stories of the Hebrew Bible, one can see that Jesus’ comment about Nathanael being an Israelite in whom there is no deceit relates to Jacob being one in whom there is much deceit.
Nathanael is suitably impressed by Jesus’ comment and recognises Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel.
Jesus responds that he is the Son of Man, in other words the supremely human one, an example of the human life lived well.
What is significant here is that for the writers of John’s Gospel, Jesus is the New Israel. There is a direct parallel between Jacob, who became Israel, and Jesus who becomes the New Israel.
The significance of this is that all the hopes and dreams and promises of God for Israel are being fulfilled in the New Israel, Jesus. Jesus says: ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ This is literature written so exquisitely because the comment acts as a bridge into the first part of John’s Gospel, the Book of Signs.
John’s Gospel is divided into two halves. The first half is called the book of signs and is structured around the seven signs or miracles that Jesus performs: water is turned into wine at Cana, the centurion’s son is healed, a paralysed man is healed, the hungry are fed in the wilderness, Jesus walks on water, a blind man’s sight is restored, Lazarus is raised from the dead. It is these seven signs that are being referred to in Jesus comment “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Each of the seven signs offers a unique way in which heaven and earth touch. Clearly the comment “you will see heaven opened and angles of God descending and ascending” connects Jesus with Jacob’s dream. The point is that each of these seven signs are sacraments that awake our consciousness to stairways, moments when earth and heaven embrace and the divine and human touch.
The stairway is a symbol of heaven coming close to earth in Jesus. For some commentators, the comment “you will see heaven opened and angles of God descending and ascending”, is the equivalent of the Spirit like a Dove descending on Jesus in his baptism as recorded in the other Gospels. The point being made is that Jesus as the New Israel is a person in whom heaven and earth meet, the marriage between the divine and human, humanity and divinity abiding in each other, the embrace of Grace and truth, peace and justice, according to Psalm 85. Each of the seven sign or sacraments open us to the variety of ways in which the marriage between heaven and earth happens.
Jesus sees Nathanael under the fig tree. Here is the clue to the puzzling reference of the fig tree – it is a symbol of heaven on earth, of a salvation and liberation birthed by God, a symbol of the promises of God for the redemption of Israel coming true. For example: 1 Kings 4.25: “During Solomon's lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees.
Micah 4.4: “but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.”
It seems that the promise to sit under fig trees and vines is a promise of Shalom, peace built on justice and mercy and experiencing the closeness of God.
It is at this point that we may connect the Old Testament reading from 1 Samuel. It begins with a chilling indictment…”The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”
Perhaps that is how we feel about the 21st century – the word of the Lord is rare indeed and visions are less than widespread, they are not at all.
The emptiness and longing for more that characterises the human condition is precisely this question “where are the places and people where heaven and earth meet? Where are the people, places, and moments where we can taste God, and hear the word of the Lord? Why is God so silent and where might we hear God’s whisper? Where is the stairway to heaven?”
The Christian faith and hope is that as we abide in the Word, and the Word abides in us, we like Jesus are so filled with the presence of God that we are the stairways connecting heaven and earth. As the Word of God breathes in us and through us, we become words of God, vibrating self-emptying love and our very lives are the places and moments where the word of the Lord is seen, we are the visions of God. We can be encouraged by the words of Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.
“At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
As we abide in Jesus each of us is the stairway to heaven. Each of us is the place in which heaven and earth meet. Each of us is living breathing word of the Lord and each of us a vision of God is made manifest.