‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
It is tempting to sketch one or both of two portraits of Jesus on the strength of his exchange with Nathanael. It is a temptation to which both armchair theologians and commentators who ought to know better often succumb. One of these portraits is Jesus as headhunter. It is the beginning of his ministry. He is assembling his team. The former disciples of his cousin John have already proved fertile ground for recruitment. He has taken on Peter and Andrew; he has called their fellow native of Bethsaida, Philip. Now Nathanael comes along. ‘Here’ says Jesus ‘is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ Nathanael has passed the test. Jesus has spotted his upstanding character and that makes him worthy of inclusion in the new company.
The other portrait is Jesus as Gypsy Rose-Lee, a mystic armed with a crystal ball. Nathanael is perhaps underwhelmed by the rabbi’s assessment and the prospects he offers. He needs to be persuaded to throw in his lot with the emerging group. There could be no better way to convince him than a little magic. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus. It works. Nathanael is convinced. A man with such amazing second sight must be a man worth following.
Of course, both portraits are crude and erroneous caricatures. The briefest consideration of the motley crew that surrounds Jesus should be enough to convince us that character plays no part in his considerations. When Jesus makes the remark he makes about Nathanael he is not weighing him up and deciding to take a punt. He is articulating what he sees in him, both actually and potentially; he is calling the man who stands before him; he is choosing Nathanael for a task, just as he has chosen Simon who he calls Cephas. The latter is the rock; the former is an Israelite without deceit. Jesus calls Nathanael.
So the line about the fig-tree is no gimmick. It illustrates Nathanel’s calling to be an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. The leisure to tend one’s own vineyard and the freedom to sit under one’s own fig-tree are the scriptural hallmarks of ancient Israelite bliss. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus: I call you to be an Israelite, says Jesus, I call you to be the representative among my followers of your nation, of God’s historic people.
And the particular task to which Nathanael is called is very clear. ‘You are the Son of God’ he cries, ‘you are the King of Israel’. For an Israelite to make the first declaration is surprising. ‘Son of God’, Yios tou Theou, is not an expression unheard of in Jewish literature, but it is more intimately connected to Greek thought and Greek theology. Nathanael is the first Jew to use of Jesus the title that John the Evangelist will use throughout his Gospel. Jesus, says Nathanael, is son of God, and this only seconds after his friend Philip has introduced Jesus to him as son of Joseph.
Yet if his hearers are taken aback at his turn of phrase they are surely taken even further aback by what follows. ‘King of Israel’ is the title reserved for the Messiah, the great liberator who will restore the nation’s fortunes. In a few seconds Nathanael the Israelite has confessed the carpenter’s son to be the son of the transcendent God, and confessed this same carpenter’s son to be the one on whom his country’s hopes are pinned. Jesus calls; Nathanael answers; truth is revealed.
This is God’s pattern, repeated to countless men and countless women across the years. Look at the narrative of Samuel. God calls. Samuel answers. Truth is revealed. For those so called, those who answer, discover in the call and their response to it what or who it is that they are called to be. So Samuel is the sovereign-anointing prophet of the new kingdom of Israel. Nathanael is a son of the son of God and a subject of the new king of Israel.
Nathanael’s journey is a journey of breathtaking speed and distance. Yet it has barely begun. ‘You will see greater things than these’ promises Jesus. Professions of newfound faith, however remarkable, are not all that disciples of Jesus are called to. There are greater things: greater than the cerebral definitions of Greek philosophy (Son of God), greater than the utopian hopes of Israel’s dream (King of Israel). The coming of Jesus means more than an exercise in intellectual re-positioning, and more than a political settlement for an enslaved people. The coming of Jesus means the breaking open of the sealed scroll that no one in heaven or earth or under the earth has been deemed worthy to break open. The coming of Jesus means the joining of heaven and earth by the one who is Son of God and who is King of Israel; by the one who is both but who is also, crucially, Son of Man. Upon him will the angels ascend and descend as upon a ladder.
It is with this that Nathanael is brought face to face by the friend who invites him to come and see, with this reality that in the coming of Jesus the world has changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus his perceptions have changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus he has changed for ever. No longer will this Israelite sit under his fig tree and tend his vineyard; instead he will bear witness to the one who called him and knew him, to the one whose coming has wrought change for all creation.
‘You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
We too are invited, called even, to come, and see. Amen.
It is tempting to sketch one or both of two portraits of Jesus on the strength of his exchange with Nathanael. It is a temptation to which both armchair theologians and commentators who ought to know better often succumb. One of these portraits is Jesus as headhunter. It is the beginning of his ministry. He is assembling his team. The former disciples of his cousin John have already proved fertile ground for recruitment. He has taken on Peter and Andrew; he has called their fellow native of Bethsaida, Philip. Now Nathanael comes along. ‘Here’ says Jesus ‘is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ Nathanael has passed the test. Jesus has spotted his upstanding character and that makes him worthy of inclusion in the new company.
The other portrait is Jesus as Gypsy Rose-Lee, a mystic armed with a crystal ball. Nathanael is perhaps underwhelmed by the rabbi’s assessment and the prospects he offers. He needs to be persuaded to throw in his lot with the emerging group. There could be no better way to convince him than a little magic. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus. It works. Nathanael is convinced. A man with such amazing second sight must be a man worth following.
Of course, both portraits are crude and erroneous caricatures. The briefest consideration of the motley crew that surrounds Jesus should be enough to convince us that character plays no part in his considerations. When Jesus makes the remark he makes about Nathanael he is not weighing him up and deciding to take a punt. He is articulating what he sees in him, both actually and potentially; he is calling the man who stands before him; he is choosing Nathanael for a task, just as he has chosen Simon who he calls Cephas. The latter is the rock; the former is an Israelite without deceit. Jesus calls Nathanael.
So the line about the fig-tree is no gimmick. It illustrates Nathanel’s calling to be an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. The leisure to tend one’s own vineyard and the freedom to sit under one’s own fig-tree are the scriptural hallmarks of ancient Israelite bliss. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus: I call you to be an Israelite, says Jesus, I call you to be the representative among my followers of your nation, of God’s historic people.
And the particular task to which Nathanael is called is very clear. ‘You are the Son of God’ he cries, ‘you are the King of Israel’. For an Israelite to make the first declaration is surprising. ‘Son of God’, Yios tou Theou, is not an expression unheard of in Jewish literature, but it is more intimately connected to Greek thought and Greek theology. Nathanael is the first Jew to use of Jesus the title that John the Evangelist will use throughout his Gospel. Jesus, says Nathanael, is son of God, and this only seconds after his friend Philip has introduced Jesus to him as son of Joseph.
Yet if his hearers are taken aback at his turn of phrase they are surely taken even further aback by what follows. ‘King of Israel’ is the title reserved for the Messiah, the great liberator who will restore the nation’s fortunes. In a few seconds Nathanael the Israelite has confessed the carpenter’s son to be the son of the transcendent God, and confessed this same carpenter’s son to be the one on whom his country’s hopes are pinned. Jesus calls; Nathanael answers; truth is revealed.
This is God’s pattern, repeated to countless men and countless women across the years. Look at the narrative of Samuel. God calls. Samuel answers. Truth is revealed. For those so called, those who answer, discover in the call and their response to it what or who it is that they are called to be. So Samuel is the sovereign-anointing prophet of the new kingdom of Israel. Nathanael is a son of the son of God and a subject of the new king of Israel.
Nathanael’s journey is a journey of breathtaking speed and distance. Yet it has barely begun. ‘You will see greater things than these’ promises Jesus. Professions of newfound faith, however remarkable, are not all that disciples of Jesus are called to. There are greater things: greater than the cerebral definitions of Greek philosophy (Son of God), greater than the utopian hopes of Israel’s dream (King of Israel). The coming of Jesus means more than an exercise in intellectual re-positioning, and more than a political settlement for an enslaved people. The coming of Jesus means the breaking open of the sealed scroll that no one in heaven or earth or under the earth has been deemed worthy to break open. The coming of Jesus means the joining of heaven and earth by the one who is Son of God and who is King of Israel; by the one who is both but who is also, crucially, Son of Man. Upon him will the angels ascend and descend as upon a ladder.
It is with this that Nathanael is brought face to face by the friend who invites him to come and see, with this reality that in the coming of Jesus the world has changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus his perceptions have changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus he has changed for ever. No longer will this Israelite sit under his fig tree and tend his vineyard; instead he will bear witness to the one who called him and knew him, to the one whose coming has wrought change for all creation.
‘You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
We too are invited, called even, to come, and see. Amen.
1 Samuel 3: 1-10;
Revelation 5: 1-10;
John 1: 43-end.
Revelation 5: 1-10;
John 1: 43-end.
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