1 Samuel 3:1-10
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts
be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
The oldest of the church’s
confessions is the Nicene Creed. Formulated in 325 and revised in 381, this was
the church’s first attempt to define the very nature of the three persons of
God. Among the things this creed defines is the two natures of Christ, the
fully human and the fully divine. The creed says:
WE BELIEVE in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before
all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who
for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by
the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also
for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he
rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth
on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge
both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
In this part of the creed are
statements that show us Jesus the Christ, Emmanuel, God with us. These phrases
include “only-begotten Son of God,” “Very God of Very God,” and “being of one
substance with the father.” That last one is very important. It says as simply as
human language can muster that the God who came is of the same Godly stuff as
the Father. If you will, they are cut from the same bolt of fabric.
It also tells us that Jesus was
human, just as human as you and I. Jesus was “made man,” “was crucified,”
“suffered,” and “was buried.” These are things that can never happen to God who
is not also human, corporeal. People are made human. Humans can be crucified
and buried. Dare I say the fully divine God suffers when we dishonor our call
and vocation, but I don’t think that is what the Nicene fathers were talking
about. I believe they meant the particular suffering faced on Good Friday.
The church has been telling people that
Jesus is fully human and fully divine for over 1600 years, but scripture,
scripture has said Jesus is fully human and fully divine since John’s gospel
has been shared.
This first chapter of John’s gospel
has a wonderful structure. It begins with the words we love, “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God.” In this timeless bit of time, we are told that He, the
Messiah, the Christ, was in the beginning with God.
He was in the beginning with God.
The power and the glory of God in the midst of all truth; and all three persons
of God, different in person while same in substance, they dance together in a
harmony that we will never fully know this side of glory. This is how John’s
gospel begins.
Then the first day of John’s gospel
comes, coming as a day the way we measure them. On this day John tells the
world who he is and who he is not. Not the Christ, not Elijah, and not the
prophet; he is the one who “makes straight the way of the Lord.” He tells the
crowd that he baptizes with water, the rest is for someone else.
On the next day, the second day,
John sees Jesus. Jesus is that someone else. He is the light; he is the Lamb of
God. He is God who walks the face of the earth. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He
is as the Nicene’s put it, “Very God of Very God;” and John tells his disciples
he’s walking by right now.
On the next day, the third day,
John the Baptist was with two of his disciples and seeing Jesus cries out,
“Here is the Lamb of God!” The disciples ask where Jesus is saying, Jesus says
“come and see.”
Sound familiar? Don’t worry; we’ll
get back to this soon enough.
On the fourth day, Jesus finds
Philip on the hillside and says, “Follow me” and he does.
I speak of this wonderful
structure. On the day that cannot be numbered, we hear of the Messiah, the
Christ who is as eternal as the Father and the Spirit. For the rest of the
chapter we see the man, Jesus of Nazareth who to the untrained eye is just
another wanderer on the banks of the Jordan
This is what is so wonderful! God,
the God who creates, redeems, and sustains all creation is just out walking
about. In the book of Job, Satan tells the Lord that he has been “going to and
fro on the earth.” John’s gospel shows the Lord can play that game too.
As wonderfully as we walk through
these doors, Jesus walked the earth. As ordinary as it was then and is now that
someone walks the Judean countryside, Jesus of Nazareth does the same. As common
as it is for us to chat with friends and take a meal, Jesus does this with
John’s disciples.
People occasionally ask about the
church calendar and ask about the seasons the church calls “ordinary time.”
They ask how holy time can ever be ordinary. It’s really a good question too. As
ordinary as it is for the fully human Jesus of Nazareth to walk the earth this
time is ordinary. As glorious as it is for the Christ, the Messiah to walk the
earth, it is special and glorious. In God, the ordinary meets the extraordinary.
So on this fourth day, after Philip
found Nathanael, he told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the
law, and about whom the prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” In
this one little sentence, Philip tells Nathanael that he has seen the divine
Christ, the Messiah. He says he has seen the one Moses wrote about in the law,
and about whom the prophets wrote. In the Hebrew Scriptures, these phrases are
used to describe the Messiah just like John uses “the Lamb of God” and “the One
who is to come.”
Immediately within the same breath,
Philip describes a man named Jesus. He tells Nathanael that Jesus was from the
city of Nazareth
In one breath Nathanael and the
rest of the world learn the truth of Jesus the Christ—that he is both a man
named Jesus and the long awaited Messiah. Philip tells the world about Jesus
the man and Jesus the Christ; Jesus the fully human and Jesus the fully divine.
And what’s the Messiah doing? He’s taking a stroll.
We don’t know what Jesus was doing.
Scripture doesn’t tell us. But what we do know is that Jesus is not being
compelled into the desert by the Holy Spirit to be tested and tempted for forty
days like the other gospels say. Jesus does not duel with Satan. Jesus is not
tended to by the angels. In John’s gospel, the most spiritual of the four,
Jesus is first presented as an ordinary average guy.
So how does Nathanael respond to
this ordinary average Messiah? He responds as people responded to folks from
the Judean backwaters of Nazareth East Texas .
Well, Philip tells him that he must
come and see. When the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus where he was staying,
Jesus told them to come and see. Now when Nathanael asks Philip what could ever
come out of Nazareth
Approaching the Lord, it seems that
Jesus saw Nathanael first. Jesus proclaims, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom
there is nothing false.” When asked how Jesus knew him, the Lord answered, “I
saw you before Philip called you.” This is when Nathanael declares “Rabbi, you
are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
When Nathanael hears the words of
Jesus, he sees the Lord. He cries affirming Jesus is the Christ. This time
Nathanael uses ancient Messianic formula language calling Jesus “Rabbi,” “Son
of God” and “King of Israel.” In a simple moment, Nathanael goes from calling
Jesus a “nowhere man” to proclaiming him the Messiah. All because he came and
saw.
Jesus points out that Nathanael
believes, he believes because he has seen the Lord and heard the word of the
Lord in the person of Jesus, but for him this is just the beginning.
He then tells all with ears to hear
that we will all see greater things than these, we will the glory Jacob saw
when he had his dream at Bethel
By the way, it’s no coincidence
that Jesus calls Nathanael a true Israelite without guile (in the words of the
King James and Revised Standard Versions) and invokes Jacob’s Ladder. The name
Jacob means “ankle-grabber” or “usurper.” The name foreshadowed Jacob’s less
than honorable actions, stealing Esau’s birthright and blessing among others.
Because you see, Bethel , the Hebrew word for
House of God, is not only where Jacob had received the image of the ladder, but
it is also where the Lord changed Jacob’s name to Israel .
At Bethel
I have mentioned before that in
John’s gospel, Jesus calls the deceitful temple elite “the Jews.” But in this
passage he calls Nathanael a true Israelite. In John’s gospel we see those who
are filled with deceit are the heirs of Jacob’s less than honorable ways, but
those without guile are the heirs of the name of Israel .
The image of the ladder is filled
with mystery. It was mysterious when the Lord first showed it to Jacob, it was
mysterious when Jesus invoked it, and it is still mysterious today. One of the
joys of the Nicene Creed has this same element. Trying to describe the
mysterious nature of God, when the ancient Church Fathers could not create a
simple definition they chose to describe mystery with mystery.
This is a lesson for our
denomination today as we try to define the “basic tenants of the reformed
faith.” The more we move toward the law and a legal interpretation the further
we stray from the vision of angels ascending and descending. We move toward the
life of Jacob and away from the life of Israel .
We move toward the guile and cunning of the temple elite and from the blessing
Nathanael, the true Israelite, received.
These are the words of the Lord. Be
without guile. Be someone of honesty and integrity. We get to embrace the two
natures of the Lord, the fully human and the fully divine. How these natures
connect is a mystery to us, and that should be fine.
These things are not for us to know
while we are here. Our call is not to understand them, to know them in our
heads. Our call is the same call given by Jesus to John’s disciples, the same
call given from Philip to Nathanael; to come and see.
Joan Osborne had a one-hit-wonder
with the song “If God Was One of Us?” The song poses the musical questions: “If
God had a name, what would it be?” “Would you call it to his face?” and “If God
had a face what would it look like?” But the big question was “What if God was
one of us, just a slob like one of us?”
Thanks be to God that the fully
human Lord has a name, Jesus, and except for being without sin he was one of
us. This is Jesus the Man.
Joy to the world, the fully human
fully divine Lord has come. This is who Nathanael meets today. Let us meet him
too. Let us introduce him to our friends. Let us all come and see that man and
Christ, the Lord is good.
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