January
18, 2015
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of
our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathaniel’s response to Philip is
understandable. Philip has just
announced that he has found the messiah, the one about whom Moses and the
prophets wrote, Jesus from Nazareth. But there’s a problem. Nazareth
was an insignificant agricultural village.
And not only do the prophets and Moses never mention Nazareth – the village is nowhere mentioned
in the entire old testament. The
messiah from Nazareth!? Such a thought runs counter to Nathaniel’s
and Israel’s
expectations.
Charles Campbell writes of a
conversation he had with his lesbian friend, Renata. She told him about a recurring dream in
which Jesus comes to her home, and he comes to her in a very surprising
way. She said “Jesus identifies so
profoundly with me and my experience, as an outsider in certain areas of my
life, that he actually comes to me in my dream as a lesbian.” Jesus the lesbian. How many of you have ever thought of Jesus
that way?
You may have heard of the sculpture
of the homeless Jesus sleeping on the park bench, or the rendering of Jesus as
the crucified woman.
These may be surprising images for us.
But probably no more surprising than Philip’s announcement concerning
“the Messiah from Nazareth” if the Messiah is from Nazareth, then he comes from outside the
tradition, outside orthodox theology, outside all official expectations. Coming from Nazareth, Jesus comes in unexpected freedom,
rather than under human or institutional constraints. He comes to judge and redeem our traditions,
our theology, our expectations, rather than fit neatly into them.
Philip’s pronouncement is surprising indeed.
And Nathaniel’s response is : “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip’s reply to this question
is, “come and see.”
“See for yourself,” Phillip says.
And what else could he say? After
all, he couldn't cite any of the scriptures to prove his point, for none can be
found to support his assertion. He
couldn't refer to the teachings of the elders, for none of them foresaw the
possibility.
He couldn't call on the religious
authorities for support; they would think he’s crazy. So all he’s left with is, “come and
see.” “Don’t take my word for it,
accept the invitation and see for yourself.”
He implies, “I cannot give you my
belief, but I can encourage you to inspect, explore, and experience for
yourself.”
It’s certainly not my place or my
intention to impose my understanding
about Jesus upon you; although I am glad
to share that from time to time with you. and it is not the way of the united
church to demand that you believe one way and one way only regarding Jesus;
rather you are invited to come and see for yourselves. You are invited to come and risk the
adventure of discipleship, to risk an encounter with an outsider, and on that
journey to learn who Jesus really is, really is for you.
One of the striking features of our
gospel reading is the sheer multiplicity of words about Jesus. Listen once again, “...the one about whom Moses
and the prophets wrote....Jesus, son of Joseph,...rabbi....son of God,, King of
Israel, the human one or in other translations, son of man.” The multiplicity itself is a gift to the
church and to the world today, when the narrowness of talk about Jesus is so
often paired with an insistence that the narrowness is all there is to
say. Such narrowing happens in many
ways. Jesus is made into no more and no
less than best friend, or great teacher, or radical revolutionary, or word of
god, or prophet, or God incarnate and on
and on.
The many words about Jesus in
scripture resist any such reduction. They
pile up past the testimony of any one person , beyond any one, simple
identification.
So, we are invited, as was skeptical Nathaniel, to “come and see for
ourselves.” And the remarkable thing
is that Nathaniel goes. Despite his
scornful comment about Nazareth,
despite his skepticism, Nathaniel takes the first step of discipleship; he goes
with Philip to meet this Jesus of Nazareth.
And Nathaniel is not
disappointed. During a single, short conversation with Jesus he
becomes convinced, rather too naively
and quickly perhaps, that this one from Nazareth
is indeed the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote.
For Nathaniel, the person of Jesus,
the unexpected one, begins to define the nature of the messiah, rather than the
traditional expectations defining and limiting Jesus.
Jesus meets Nathaniel, and Jesus
often meets us, outside our expectations and traditions and
presuppositions. Jesus, the word made
flesh, comes to us in freedom and will not be bound by our institutions and our
orthodoxies. “Come and see,” Philip says
to us. “See for yourselves.” and if we go, like Nathaniel, we just might
be surprised.
During my my first year here at Augustine, just a short time before Christmas,
i found myself very bus one day and
didn't allow time to go out to get lunch and I hadn't brought a lunch
with me. So I wandered into the guild
hall where the oak table lunch program was nearing its end. I went over to the volunteer who had been
serving lunch and asked if there were any sandwiches left over, explaining my
situation. She said something to the
effect, “well, there’s no need to go hungry.
There are plenty of sandwiches left over.” And she kindly gave me one. A few days later, on the last day that
Oak Table would be open before its Christmas break, I was informed that a guest
of Oak Table had left something for me.
It was a box - a Christmas cheer
board box of food. I knew well the
person who had left me the box for he had been a regular member of West Broadway
community ministry in my years of service there.
I decided I’d keep the box in my office, and the frozen chicken that
came with it in the Oak Table freezer, with the intention of speaking to him
after the holiday break. Eventually, in
early January, I got a chance to speak
to him. I said, “Someone brought to me
your Christmas cheer box saying you left it for me. I think there must be some mistake.” He responded, “no mistake, pastor. I heard someone say you were hungry, so I
wanted to help out.”
for me that day Jesus was present in
a most unexpected way -
In the love and care of this person for me, and in his truly sacrificial
giving to one whom he perceived was in need. Such holy moments, such glimpses into the
divine, happen regularly in community ministry. That is not always apparent to people. It is not a place where they expect to
meet Jesus; many think community ministries are just social services without
any real connection to the faith. I
remember one time being interviewed by a reporter when I was working in
community ministry. He was clearly
thinking along these lines. He kept
pressing me to articulate how such social ministry was anything but
peripherally religious. Clearly his
attitude was that the church
of Jesus Christ is
defined only by preaching the old-time gospel , Sunday worship, and encouraging
‘family values.’ At one point he rather arrogantly said, “well this place is doing some good things
for the people who come here; but quite frankly I ask you, where is Jesus
in all this?”
I admit I tried to articulate an answer that would satisfy him, but
after blubbering inanely for a while I finally said, “You know, you just have
to be here for a time.
You just have to see for
yourself.” “Come and see” said Philip
to Nathaniel, and some people do not see because they will not come to those
places where one can get an angle of vision, where one can see the grace of Christ
at work in the world.
Notice that in the gospel text the
invitation of Philip to ‘come and see’
and of Jesus to ‘follow me’ have
no preconditions attached. The
invitations don’t say, “Come follow me once you have sufficient understanding,
once you have settled all of the great questions, once you can prove you are
worthy enough or good enough, or once you had achieved a state of spiritual
perfection or discernment. The
invitation didn't propose any moral hoops to
be jumped through. We receive
our invitation and we accept that invitation not because we must, but because
we may.
“Come and see,” Philip says. And Nathaniel
immediately responds and believes. But
that is not the end of the story. For Jesus,
amused at the quickness of Nathaniel’s belief, promises much more to come: “you will see greater things than
these....you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the human one.” This is
a mysterious promise.
At the very least Jesus suggests that Nathaniel will come to know him as
the one in whom heaven and earth meet, the one through whom god is made
known.
But Jesus’ words remain a mysterious promise, and we shouldn't try to
interpret them too fully. Rather we are
to follow Jesus and see for ourselves. Follow
me, says Jesus, and you will come to know even more fully who I am and even
more fully the abundant life I bring.
he invites us to join him in all the fullness, the goodness, and the
grand purposes of all that God has in
store for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Major
Resources:
“The
Sermon: An Approach” by Charles Campbell in Word & Witness, Vol.
97:1, (Year B), pp.43-44.
Editor: Paul Scott Wilson. Liturgical Publications Inc. New Berlin, WI> 1996.
“Invitations”
by Peter J. Gomes in Pulpit Digest, January/February 1999, pp. 35-38.
Editor:
David Albert Farmer. Logos Productions
Inc. Inver Grove Heights, MN.
“Sermon
Nugget” by Thomas G. Long in Emphasis, Volume 29, Number 5, p. 38.
Editor: Teresa Rhoads. CSS Publishing Company, Inc. Lima, Ohio. 2000.
“Homiletical
Perspective” by Ted A. Smith in Feasting
on the Word, Year B,Volume 1, pp. 261-265
Editors:
David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Westminster
John Knox Press.
Louisville, Kentucky. 2008.
