Revelation 5.1-10, John 1.43-end
Bratton Clovelly, Sourton, 15/1/2012
You remember the story of the vision of Jacob: who went out on a journey and that night put a stone under his head and lay down to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, 'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, 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 28.12-14]
This story was written on the hearts of the people of Israel, people like Nathaniel in Jesus' day, and is still written on the hearts of the people of Israel today, because of the promise it gives them of a land they would see as their own.
Nathaniel would have been impressed by the story of God’s great promise to Jacob because he would have known another story about Jacob - Jacob, a deceitful man, who tricked his brother into selling him his birthright for a bowl of soup. Nathaniel would have been impressed that despite Jacob’s duplicity God chose him to become the leader of a new and great nation: he would carry their name, Israel, into that land of promise.
The story would have impressed on Nathaniel that God sees people differently, and releases them into their great potential.
In today's gospel story Jesus teaches us about our ways of seeing.
We have just heard the story of Jesus and Nathaniel. Nathaniel whose friend Philip said to him, 'We have found the one who Moses and the prophets wrote about, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.' Nathanael couldn't see the connection that Philip was making, it seemed ridiculous to him, and so he replied to his friend, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' But when he met Jesus, Nathaniel stopped being sceptical and started to see things differently.
Nathaniel said to Philip, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' and noticing this, Jesus responded to Nathaniel, playfully, provocatively, saying, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’.
What was going on here? A bit of banter, a bit of wordplay, with a deeply serious intention. The word 'Israelite' means One Who Can See God. Jesus's sideways comment suggests to us that he knew that Nathaniel couldn't see God at all, at that moment. He couldn’t believe that anything good could come out of Nazareth, let alone ‘the one who Moses and the prophets wrote about’. And: ‘an Israelite in whom there is no deceit’ - a high compliment indeed, for in saying that, Jesus was placing Nathaniel higher than Jacob the founder of Israel, who had been a deceitful man.
Jesus worked Nathaniel out as soon as he saw him talking with Philip. Jesus noticed that Nathaniel was a man with a questioning attitude; a good sceptic, rather like the many, many people in our society today who want to believe in God but have honest and difficult questions to answer first: people who we of firmer faith should enjoy helping along their journey.
Jesus took Nathaniel’s positive scepticism seriously. And by opening a conversation by making a little joke of it, by being playful and suggestive, Jesus gave Nathaniel the opportunity for a conversation which would open his eyes and heart to the truth of who Jesus was.
Seeing how Jesus had worked him out immediately, and responding warmly to Jesus’ engaged interest in him, Nathaniel realised how special and insightful Jesus was, and said, 'Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!' Jesus responded by promising that he would help Nathaniel to see 'heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
Jesus - very graciously - taught Nathaniel a very big lesson that day. As well as teaching him to see Nazareth in a different way - yes, something good can come out of Nazareth, yes, even the Son of God can come out of Nazareth - Jesus taught Nathaniel something profound about the way Nathaniel should see Jesus.
'Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!' Nathaniel had said to him.
'You will see greater things than these', Jesus had replied. 'Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
Nathaniel, the Israelite, saw the Son of God as the King of Israel.
Jesus, the Son of God, spoke of himself as The Son of Man.
Where Jacob saw a ladder connecting earth and heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending on it, as a sign that God would give the land to Jacob's people, Jesus invited Nathaniel to see something quite different. In this new vision there is no ladder, but 'heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
In this new vision it is not a ladder which connects earth and heaven, it is Jesus himself, the Son of Man, who connects earth and heaven. He's not the King of Israel alone. He is the link between The Father and of all humankind.
If Jesus was the King of Israel then he would belong to one place in particular and would bring blessing to just that one community.
But if Jesus is The Son of Man then he belongs to all places in the world and yearns to bring blessing to everybody.
No-one had known God like this before. A God not tied down to territory, but universal. A God not attached especially to one particular race or people but completely open to all. This is the great truth to which Nathaniel had his eyes opened that day. Nathaniel the sceptic was the first to whom Jesus revealed this great eternal and global truth.
And this is the final and important point to draw from this story. That Jesus also taught Nathaniel a very big lesson that day - about himself. Jesus taught Nathaniel something profound about the way Nathaniel should see himself. It’s a lesson we can draw on as we consider how the sceptical and questioning people of today’s society can have their eyes opened to the great truths about God.
Isaiah, the great prophet of Israel, once had a very negative, despairing vision from God in which God told him about a people who 'keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand’, whose minds are made dull, whose ears are stopped, and whose eyes are shut, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed’. [Isaiah 6:8-10 paraphrased]
How like today’s people that sounds. The sceptical and questioning people of today’s society who for all our networked activities, all the sound and motion which fills our lives, for all our Facebook friends and village social activities, nevertheless feel increasingly rootless, isolated and ill-equipped to cope with the difficulties and complexities of life, to find meaning in a world where meaning has been replaced by endless choices.
The sociologist Peter Berger writes that
Modernity has accomplished many far-reaching transformations, but it has not fundamentally changed the finitude, fragility and mortality of the human condition. What it has accomplished is to seriously weaken those definitions of reality that previously made that human condition easier to bear. [2]
Modern people are constantly on the move, says Berger, migrating through a succession of widely divergent social worlds. The modern mind is ‘the homeless mind’, he says, homeless because ‘A world in which everything is in constant motion is a world in which certainties of any kind are hard to come by.’ [3]
This is our story, which we bring to the scriptures today. And in the scriptures we meet Jacob, a deceitful man who nevertheless God chose to start a new, great nation, to become rooted in a land of promise. Notice where Jacob was when the promise came from God: he was homeless, uprooted, on the road. The place where Jacob dreamed of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven that night was in a town called Luz. But this made Jacob see Luz in a new way, and so he immediately decided to rename it Bethel, which means the "house of God". "This is the house of God," he said, "This is the gate of heaven." On the road Jacob the exile, the homeless one, received certainty, direction, the promise of a new home.
And we bring our story, the story of our modern society and our homeless mind, to a clearing under a fig tree in an unnamed part of Galilee, to an encounter between people on the move where Nathaniel, the questioner, the sceptic, finds it hard to accept Philip’s words that anything good could come out of Nazareth, but who after receiving affirmation and revelation from Jesus, proclaimed him the Son of God, the King of Israel, and then learned even more.
The prophet John, in Revelation, foresaw that 'saints from every tribe and language and people and nation' could, and will, come together in God. This is what Nathaniel saw, in the end, once he'd met Jesus, and had his eyes opened - not a God who belongs to one place or one tribe or one denomination or even one creed in particular and can bring blessings to just that one community; rather a God who belongs to all places in the world and yearns to bring blessing to everybody. In an anonymous place of encounter Nathaniel the sceptical one, received certainty, direction, promise, for his journey.
And this is what the people of our age can receive too, when they have their eyes, their ears, their minds, opened to the realisation that even in a world in which everything is in constant motion, life-changing encounters with the living God are possible, that in Christ there is a land of promise for the exile, that in Christ there is a place of answers for the sceptic, that in Christ there is meaning: that in Christ there is a home for the homeless mind.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of an earlier sermon, Nathaniel and the new vision of God, preached in Liverpool in 1999 in which the emphasis was on Israel-Palestine.
[2] Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, p.166
[3] The Homeless Mind, p.165. This sermon's conclusion also owes a good deal to Walter Brueggemann, Subversive Obedience: Truth-Telling and the Art of Preaching, London: SCM, 2011, in particular Brueggemann's interaction with Berger's work in connection to themes of exile and homecoming (p.46)
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