I Samuel 3: 1 - 20; Psalm
63: 1 – 8; I Corinthians 6: 11b – 20; John 1: 43 - 51
A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at The
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Springfield, Illinois on Sunday, January 18, 2015.
“SOMEONE WORTH FOLLOWING”
(Homily text: John 1: 43 - 51)
Let’s talk
about leaders and followers this morning.
During my
Army career, I had the pleasure of attending quite a few promotion
ceremonies. I was also privileged to be
the subject of some of those ceremonies, as my career unfolded and I was
promoted. Anyway, during the ceremony,
the individual being promoted had his/her promotion order read aloud. As near as I can remember, the wording went
something like this:
“The Secretary of
the Army has reposed special trust and confidence in the fidelity, excellence
and professionalism of (name of person being promoted). In view of these qualities and their
demonstrated leadership potential, they are, therefore, promoted to the rank of
______, effective (date).”
OK, that’s
not exactly 100% correct, but it’s close.
(It’s been a few years since I’ve heard those words read aloud.)
I want to
draw your attention to the phrase “demonstrated leadership potential”….
As the
person being promoted went through the screening process in order to be
promoted, there had to be an assessment of many facets of their character and
their performance of duty. Two of these
characteristics were:
- Their proven ability to lead and to assume greater levels of responsibility,
- Their concern for the welfare of those they would be leading.
We have
before us this morning the wonderful account of Jesus’ call of two of His
disciples, Philip and Nathanael as we hear it in the first chapter of John’s
gospel account, verses 43 through 51.
Let’s look
at this encounter from the angle we’ve identified a moment ago, looking at
Jesus’ ability to lead, to be trusted, to be followed, and His concern for
those he would be leading.
Some
aspects of this text and worthy of closer scrutiny:
1. Philip’s
confirmation of Jesus’ identity: If
we put ourselves into the situation, trying to understand what it was like for
Philip to say to Nathanael, “We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets
wrote, Jesus of Nazareth,” we might be astonished to witness hearing such a
statement. Why? I think the reason is that many Jews of
Jesus’ day were eagerly looking for the Promised One who would come. Of course, not all of God’s people in those
days were looking, but Philip’s statement confirms that he was among those who
were looking and who were expecting God to fulfill His promise to send the
Messiah, the Christ. Imagine then,
hearing this statement. It would be like
hearing that one of our fondest desires had been granted. As I try to find a good example from our own
life experience today, the best I image I can come up with is this one: It would be like hearing that a
great-grandfather’s estate had finally been given to us, that we had finally
taken possession of something we’d been hoping to receive for a very long time. For Philip to confirm the reality that Jesus
of Nazareth is the fulfillment of these ancient promises meant that the age-old
desires of God’s people had finally come to pass. “Wow!
He’s really come, at last?” might be a way to frame a response to this
statement.
2. Demonstrated
leadership potential?: A whole host
of questions arise out of Philip’s characterization of this Promised One. For one thing, he says that the person God
had sent was Jesus, the son of Joseph.
(Note that this is the way, in ancient times, that a person was
identified….the son’s father was named as part of the identifying process. It’d be like saying that I am “Gene, son of
Jess.”) But wait a minute, wasn’t the
Messiah supposed to be of the house of David?
What’s this about Joseph? And what’s this business about Nazareth? Nathanael’s response indicates that Nazareth
must not have been a very highly regarded place to be from, for he says, “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Nazareth must have been the “other side of the tracks” in those
days.
But Jesus
overcomes the doubts about his identity with this statement: As Nathanael asks Jesus how He had gotten to
know him, Jesus says, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” What Jesus says is that He has the power to know
things that no human being can have. He
has powers that only God has, the power to know all things. This divine omniscience is a consistent
marker throughout John’s gospel account.
Over and over, John records incidents in which Jesus knows things that
only God can know, for, as John tells us, Jesus is “one with the Father.” (John
10:31)
In
response, Nathanael explodes by uttering a series of titles that point to
Jesus’ true identity: “Rabbi (which
means “teacher” in Hebrew), you are the Son of God, you are the king of
Israel.”
3. Concern
for the situations of those being led, and for their welfare: In order to be an effective leader, the
leader must know about the people who are being led. Among the things the leader would need to
know would be: Their character, their abilities
and their potential for future growth and development. Jesus shows such concern as He assesses
Nathanael’s character: “Here is truly an
Israelite[1] in
whom there is no deceit.” By affirming
Nathanael’s basic character, Jesus affirms that Nathanael is worthy of being a
disciple. Nathanael is also capable of
experiencing greater and greater things as time goes along, as Jesus says, “You
will see greater things than these.”
What are we
to make of all this? As I reflect on
that question, the following observations might be worthy of consideration:
Jesus
is worthy of being followed: In
order to follow someone, we have to know something about that person’s
character, their identity, and their trustworthiness. Jesus affirms His deep and abiding connection
with God the Father by telling Nathanael that He has all the powers of the
Father at His command. Furthermore, as
time goes along, Jesus will affirm by His works, by His teaching, by His
suffering, death and resurrection, that He and the Father are one. Jesus confirms that God is present in all
that He will do…that is the basic point of Jesus’ statement that “You will see
the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” In this statement, we have an allusion to
Jacob’s dream, as we find it in Genesis 28: 12.
There, we read that Jacob had had a dream in which there was a ladder
set up which stretched from earth to heaven.
In the dream, Jacob dreams that the angels ascended and descended the
ladder. When he awoke, Jacob said,
“Truly, God is in this place, and I did not know it.” Jesus’ point seems to be that, with Him and
His work, God is truly present in all that will come to pass.
Our task is
to come to understand something about Jesus’ identity. Perhaps discovering all there is to know
about Jesus’ identity is a lifelong pursuit, for it’s possible that we can
never fully know all there is to know about who Jesus is until we enter into
eternity and see Him face-to-face. In
this life, however, we continue to learn more and more about Jesus, never
exhausting the possibilities.
Jesus says
that Nathanael will see “greater works than these.” Those “greater works” begin with the first
miracle, at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, as Jesus turns the water into wine
(see John 2: 1 – 12).
Jesus
has our condition and its betterment foremost in mind: Just as Jesus knew about Nathanael’s
character, Jesus also knows everything about our character, the state of our
spiritual development and our needs.
Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus showed a deep and abiding concern
for those He came to lead and save. He reached
out to rescue the outcasts of His day.
He came to heal the brokenhearted and the downcast. His leadership is not of the self-serving
kind, and so it stood in sharp contrast to the leadership styles of the priests
and the Pharisees.
As we come
to know more about the Lord, and come to know more of the depth of love He has
for us, we can be confident that He is worthy of our trust and our love. We can be confident that the Lord’s primary
concern is the salvation of our souls, offered in a deep and abiding,
self-emptying love.
And so, we
come to learn more about the Lord and His character. We come to hear God’s holy Word, by which we
experience the Lord’s presence in our lives.
We come together to worship so that the Lord can come among us whenever
two or three are gathered together in His name (Matthew 18: 20). We come to experience His real presence in
the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, as His body and blood are received under
the forms of bread and wine.
The
invitation that stands before us, then, is the same one that Philip uttered to
Nathanael: “Come and see.”
AMEN.
[1] It is interesting that Jesus calls Nathanael
an “Israelite”. Throughout John’s gospel
account, the word “Jew(s)” is used to denote those who opposed Jesus’ work and
ministry.
