First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: John 1:43-51

In response to a challenge from my colleague, Pastor Tod Bolsinger, given to clergy participants at GodBlogCon in October, I've been trying to more deeply engage the parish I serve as pastor in the Bible passages around which our weekly worship is built.

Because I usually use Scripture lessons appointed in what's called a lectionary, widely used in churches of many denominations, I hope that it might be helpful to lots of other laypeople and pastors. (For an explanation of the lectionary and the Church Year, you might want to click here.)

Periodically each week, I try to post two or three "passes" at the lessons, each pass sharing some of what I've been learning or reflecting on as I've been studying.

This weekend's Bible lesson will be John 1:43-51:

43The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” 48Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” 51And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

And now some thoughts...

v. 43: (1) I don't know that I can recall another sentence in the Gospels that begins, "Jesus decided..." I'll have to check on that. But I have two thoughts about this curious occurrence:

a. Even within the context of a "Thy will be done" lifestyle, the very kind of life Jesus commends and lives, there is room for making our own decisions. The "will of God," I'm increasingly convinced, isn't a micro-blueprint for our moment-to-moment existences. God's will for us, I agree with Rick Warren, writing in The Purpose Driven Life, is fairly simple: to love God; to love neighbor; to serve in Christ's Name; to grow to become more like Christ; and to share Christ with others. (Reducing these five purposes to one word each, they are: worship, fellowship, ministry, discipleship, and evangelism.) Jesus lived for God's purposes, but experienced the same freedom that every follower of Christ has about how to live them in the micro-moments of life. So, Jesus decided to go.

b. I wonder what motivated Jesus' decision?

(2) Jesus calls Philip. Philip's name is Greek, meaning that while Philip was undoubtedly a Judean, he and his family were steeped in Greek culture.

Greek culture, of course, had been spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, not only by the Greeks, who had earlier conquered much of the known world, but also later by the Romans. After Rome conquered the Greeks, it adopted much of Greek culture, including the religious life of Greece.

Greek became the language of international commerce, government, and philosophy. It was the second language of much of the Mediterranean basin, in much the same way that English is the world's second language today.

Often, the New Testament refers to Judeans as "Greeks," precisely because the people so described had adopted the culture and the ways of the international Greek life.

Even the name Philip is significant. It means lover of horses. For Judeans, horses actually would have had several hateful connections. One would be to the horses and the chariots they drew when Egypt sought to recapture the ancient Hebrew slaves who were escaping them during Moses' day. When that happened, you may remember, the Hebrews exulted when God opened up the sea for them and then closed it back up, drowning the Egyptian "horses and their riders."

But there probably would have been a second negative connection. Israel's third king, Solomon, became fabulously wealthy and powerful. But he was also notably faithless, turning from God and allowing the worship of foreign gods among God's people. One symbol of Solomon's faithlessness is that he became a major breeder of horses and owned many of them.

Horses, for the Judeans then, represented enmity to God.

Yet, here is a man named Philip, his family hip-deep in Greek culture, who embraces Jesus as Lord. It's an early foreshadowing of the universal Lordship of Jesus.

(3) Brian Stoffregen points out that the Gospel of John is a book of signs. Signs, of course, point to things. Jesus, as the "Word made flesh" (John 1), is a sign of God's action in our lives. Jesus' baptism was a sign to John the Baptizer of Who Jesus is. Philip becomes a sign to Nathanael in our lesson. Even the book of John, Stoffregen says, is meant to be a sign when one considers John's words near the end of the Gospel:

30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

(4) "He found Philip and said to him, 'Follow me.'": A literal translation would be the awkward and grammatically questionable, "He finds Philip..." The verb to find is in what Stoffregen calls "the historical present." It's used in several places in this passage: here, v. 43, and v. 45. It may be a device, as Stoffregen suggests, to convey the immediacy of the action and the call that all believers in Christ to share Him in the everyday moments of their lives, right now, in the present.

v.45: Apparently, Philip's first act of discipleship is to go tell others about Christ! He tells Nathanael that "we" have found the One Who fulfills Old Testament prophecy regarding the coming of a Messiah and that His Name is Jesus of Nazareth. This echoes John's prologue (John 1:1-18) in which we're told that God has enfleshed Himself in a particular person, at a particular time, and in a particular place.

Generally speaking today, it seems that new Christians are discouraged from sharing Christ with others. This is foolish and faithless advice. As Philip's encounter with Nathanael will show, to be a witness for Christ doesn't mean that we have all the answers. It means simply that we invite others to "Come and see" (v.36) the Savior for themselves.

Sharing the Good News of God being for us doesn't involve being omniscient or making a sale. It's a matter of asking others to check out the One Who has changed our lives forever.

v. 46: I love this! Philip doesn't argue with Nathanael or try to steer him away from a skeptical reaction to Jesus.

This faithful act of evangelism is a rebuke to every Christian who has ever tried strongarming others into acquiescence to Christ's Lordship. Nobody has ever been coerced into the Kingdom of God! Philip shows how it's done. Near his death, Martin Luther observed, "We are all beggars." Someone else expanded on this metaphor for our dependence on God's goodness and grace by saying that evangelism is "nothing more than one beggar showing another beggar where they can find food."

Humility is the fundamental and indispensable element of all evangelism. Philip exemplifies this.

v. 47: Why does Jesus laud Nathanael for his guilelessness? I can only guess, but here goes. Jesus seems to be referring to Nathanael's skeptical reaction to Philip's claims about Jesus.

Jesus is saying, it seems to me, that the Nathanaels of the world are more respectable than the religious folk who wear pious faces, yet make no attempt to really live their faith. They're hypocrites. But Nathanael is forthcoming about his doubts. God can deal with people who are honest with God and with themselves.

v. 48: "Under the fig tree" is a mysterious phrase. Stoffregen says that in Old Testament times, spots under fig trees were considered places of contemplation. He cites Micah 4:3-4 and Zechariah 3:10.

It should also be pointed out that historically, many of the rabbis thought that the tree from which Adam and Eve plucked the forbidden fruit was not an apple tree, but a fig tree. That may have significance in this book that loves "signs."

vv. 49-50: Ultimately, the interchange between Jesus and the skeptical Nathanael reminds me of a conversation that Jesus has toward the end of John's Gospel with the perennial skeptic, Thomas, known through the centuries as Doubting Thomas. In Jesus' encounter with Thomas, the disciple encounters the risen Jesus and repudiates his former skepticism in order to worship Jesus as his God. (See John 20:24-29.)

As is true in this conversation with Nathanael, Jesus' discussion with Thomas ends with a kind of "You ain't seen nothin' yet" statement from Jesus.

I wonder if this wasn't intentional on John's part, bookending his account of Jesus' earthly ministry with two skeptics being convinced of Jesus' Lordship.

v. 51: Jesus tells Nathanael in vv. 50-51 that, "'You will see greater things than these. And He said to Him, "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 so intriguing for several reasons:

First, because Jesus speaks of the heavens being opened. This is similar to what already happened for Jesus when He was baptized, as we saw in last week's Bible lesson, Mark 1:4-11. (See here, here, here, and here.) (However, it should be pointed out that the New Testament Greek's words for torn apart in last week's lesson and for opened in this one are two different words.)

Second, the you Jesus uses here in addressing Nathanael is in the plural form. It's as though Nathanael, the honest skeptic turned believer, is a prototype and stand-in for every Christian believer, a kind of patriarch of the new covenant God makes with humanity through Christ.

Nathanael isn't to be the last follower of Jesus to see the heavens opened. What we saw last week in the account of Jesus' baptism (and its twin account of His crucifixion) is that God wills that every believer in Jesus Christ will experience heaven opened to them. This is what Christ came to give to all who turn from their sin and follow Him as God and Savior.

Third, this notion of Nathanael as "a kind of patriarch of the new covenant" is buttressed by the similarity between what Jesus tells him His followers will experience and what was actually experienced by one of the Old Testament patriarchs. In Genesis 28:10-17, one of the Old Testament patriarchs of faith, Jacob, sees a vision of angels ascending and descending a ramp to heaven. He concludes that this is a place where heaven and earth meet. (For more on this Old Testament incident, see here.]

Unlike Nathanael, Jacob was a man of extraordinary guile, an inveterate schemer. So, in a sense, Nathanael is a New Testament antitype to Jacob.

Hopefully, there will be more to come here on this passage.