Today we begin our Lenten sermon series “We Would See Jesus,” which will take us into the Gospel of John and into some stories of the different ways that people encounter Jesus. The season of Lent has traditionally been the forty days (not counting the Sundays) leading up to Easter, and is a time of preparation, penitence, and prayer—a time to focus deeply on our relationship to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel is thus a perfect text for us to study because it’s focused on the stories of people who are coming into a relationship with Jesus and, in doing so, see their lives transformed.
A word about John’s Gospel as we begin. If you’re a student of Scripture (and we all should be!), you might notice that John is quite different from the other three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). We call those the “synoptic” gospels, meaning that they’re “seen together.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us a particular perspective of the story for a particular audience and with a particular purpose in mind: the good news of the kingdom of God revealed in Jesus, the true king. The synoptic Gospels contain much of the teaching of Jesus—parables, sermons, instruction to disciples and the like—but also accounts of Jesus’ deeds, his death on the cross, and his resurrection. The synoptic writers seem to share some of the same sources in telling their story of Jesus, and their purpose is to outline the main points of Jesus’ life and message for their particular communities of faith. The missionary aspect of the synoptics is pretty clear—there’s a lot of use of the word “go.” It’s in the synoptics that we get the great commission (Matthew 28) – “Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” “Go” and “teach” are the operative words.
John, on the other hand, seems to be telling the story from the opposite direction. Instead of “go” and “teach,” John’s operative words are “come” and “see.” In the synoptics, Jesus and the disciples are always on the move. In John, Jesus never seems to be in a hurry. Whole chapters are spent invested in exploring a conversation that Jesus has with an individual. Jesus seems to invite people to come and stay awhile, to encounter Jesus on a much deeper level, and then to leave transformed by the encounter.
I think this is a reason a lot of people like the Gospel of John. It’s highly relational, it’s dramatic, it reads more like a novel than the others. For me, John demonstrates why we need four Gospels and not just one—the story of Jesus has many layers to it—historical, theological, personal, and we need them all to get the full picture.
Dr. Ben Witherington, who teaches New Testament at Asbury Seminary, my alma mater, suggests that John was written for an evangelical purpose, but the purpose was not that it be distributed as a tract to try and convince unbelievers of the truth about Jesus. Rather, it was written to train early Christian missionaries about the various ways in which all different sorts of people could come to faith in Jesus as the Savior of the world. “It’s no accident, then,” says Witherington, “that so much stress is placed in [John’s] Gospel on witnesses, witnessing, and adequate testimony. Such is the lifeblood of missionary work.”
To put it another way, what we have in John is a number of case studies of the ways in which people might come to faith in Jesus. These case studies inform our own faith as well, inviting us to consider our own stories of encounters with Jesus. John invites us all to “come and see” Jesus for ourselves as we prepare to “go and teach” about him to others.
In this series, Joe and I are going to invite you into some of these case studies—to invite you to find yourself in them and, additionally, to think about others whom you might invite to “come and see” Jesus for themselves. Lent gives us intentional time to slow down and hear again to Jesus’ invitation to come and stay awhile and know him in a new and life-giving way.
And so we begin with this story about the first disciples. This section actually begins at verse 35, when some of John the Baptizer’s disciples begin following Jesus. Notice the difference here, though, between the traditional stories in the synoptic Gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus seeks out disciples on the shores of the Sea of Galillee. He calls Peter, James, and John, for example, to drop their fishing nets and follow him. In John, however, these first disciples seem to want to follow Jesus without having received an invitation. Look at verse 38: “When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’” They want to know where he is staying, and Jesus invites them to “come and see” (v. 39).
Andrew is one of those who spends the afternoon with Jesus, then goes and finds his brother, Simon, and brings him to meet Jesus as well. The disciples are bringing one another to Jesus. It’s an invitation.
If John is teaching his community how to be evangelists, he seems to be making it clear right up front that evangelism is really about invitation. If we’ve had our own encounter with Jesus, then we naturally want to invite others to “come and see” as well. Many Christians are afraid to talk about evangelism because they see it as an unpleasant chore that involves going door to door and offering a sales pitch about Jesus. Here we see that real evangelism is an invitation to a relationship. Jesus himself doesn’t begin with a list of propositions, spiritual laws, theological proofs, arguments… he only says, “Come and see.” Come and see what I have found. Experience it for yourself. Give it a try and see where it goes.
In verse 43, Jesus calls Philip in a way that echoes the synoptic gospels. Jesus simply says to him, “Follow me,” which is really another form of invitation. Like Andrew, Philip is eager to extend an invitation to someone else to come and see Jesus. We see Philip again, for example, in Acts 8 when he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch, a member of the Ethiopian royal court, and invites him into a dialogue about the Scriptures and about Jesus. Philip is sort of the quintessential evangelist because he is enthusiastic about sharing his faith, but in a way that invites others to come with their questions rather than dispensing definitive answers.
We know this because the first person that Philip invites to come and see Jesus after answering his own call is his friend Nathanael. Philip explains that he and some others have met Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth, the Messiah they have all been waiting for. You can almost hear his excitement in the text. He’s just bursting.
Nathanael, however, attempts to pop Philip’s enthusiastic bubble. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” If Andrew and Peter and Philip are the first disciples in John’s Gospel, then Nathanael is the first skeptic.
Three things are interesting about Nathanael right up front. The first is that his name does not appear in any of the lists of the disciples of Jesus in any of the other Gospels. He is unique to John. Second, his name means “given by God.” Third, the text suggests that Nathanael isn’t just your average run of the mill skeptic. He’s a smart guy and has some good reasons to be leery of his friend’s enthusiasm.
We get a couple of clues about Nathanael’s background from the text, namely the reference to the fig tree in v. 48. In Jewish tradition, those who studied the Torah, the law of Moses, traditionally (symbolically) did so under a fig tree. The Old Testament prophets sometimes used figs as an analogy for Israel (Hosea 9:10, Amos 8:1-2, Nahum 3:12). That Jesus sees Nathanael “under the fig tree” is another way of saying that he is a faithful student of the Scriptures, and thus, as Jesus also calls him, “an Israelite in whom there is no guile—no deceit.” He is, in other words, a truthful witness and his skepticism comes from an authentic, biblical, and theological Jewish worldview.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is thus not so much a slam on the little Galilean town as it is a theological question. Philip proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, but Nathanael, being a student of the Scriptures, knows that the Messiah isn’t supposed to come from Galilee. Not only that, he is Jesus son of Joseph—too common, too ordinary. John has already told us in the first part of chapter one that Joseph of Nazareth wasn’t Jesus’ father, but the disciples don’t yet seem to get this. None of the traditional messianic markers line up for Nathanael here, so he’s a skeptic.
I give you all that background as a way of making the point that I think John wants us to get here: that when it comes to Jesus, it’s often religious people who are most skeptical because they are the ones who are certain that they have everything figured out. Religious people, especially religious Christians, are often the ones who are the most skeptical about things that don’t fit their paradigms. John and the other Gospel writers make it clear that Jesus doesn’t fit our expectations and, therefore, it’s the religious who need to be converted first!
Is this why Nathanael is “given by God?” I think so. He’s a gift because he reminds us that our own skepticism needs to be overcome before we can lead others to Christ. We may have been “Christians” our whole lives, until we’re willing to open ourselves to the possibility that Jesus will say and do things that shatter our paradigms, until we are willing to open our theological and doctrinal categories to allow him to work in surprising ways, then we’re always going to be skeptics: skeptics that are always griping and wrangling and criticizing the very people and ideas that are important to Jesus.
Contrast Nathanael to Philip. Philip didn’t need to have it figured out. Philip doesn’t have to have everything fit into neat theological categories. He’s not following Jesus because of a list of bullet points and propositions. Jesus simply invites him, and he comes along for the ride. Who knows where it will lead? Who knows what we might learn? “Come and see” he says to his skeptical friend. “Come and see what I found!”
To his credit, Nathanael comes along. He encounters a Jesus that blows up his categories—a Jesus who knew him already even before Philip showed up with an invitation. What changes Nathanael’s skepticism isn’t the fact that he has compiled a list of propositions proving what he knows about Jesus—it’s the fact that Jesus knows him! It’s not about the information, it’s about the relationship. It’s because Jesus knows him through and through that Nathanael gives his confession of faith. This is not just the son of Joseph, he is the Son of God, the King of Israel!
And Jesus tells him—if you only believe that, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
For me, Nathanael represents so many of us in the church. We know a lot about Jesus, but we’re not always willing to really know him or, more precisely, to allow him to know us that intimately. We may have made a decision to follow Christ a long time ago, but somewhere along the line the relationship we had with Jesus turned into a religious dogma. We come to church week after week, but we don’t want to be surprised anymore. We want a Jesus that fits neatly into our preconceived notions of what faith and discipleship is all about.
This story invites us to push that religious skepticism aside and, once again, “come and see.” Jesus invites us to come with fresh eyes and ears, to come with no preconceived notions, to come with open hearts, to come and follow him on a journey that will take us to places we would never have dreamed of. To come, and to invite others to join us.
One of the things I love about being a Methodist is that our church was born out of a sense of skepticism. John and Charles Wesley grew up in a strict church environment, went to church as kids, and became priests themselves. John was a strict student of the Scriptures and as disciplined religiously as a person can be. And yet, there was always something missing. Experiencing a crisis of faith, he volunteered for a mission trip that would take him from England to the colony of Georgia, where his strict religious practice alienated the convicts and Indians he was trying to convert. He returned home a broken man. “I went to America to convert the Indians,” he wrote in his journal on the trip back, “but, oh, who shall convert me? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?” The religious man recognized his own need for conversion. He wrote those words on January 24, 1738.
On May 24, just four months later, Wesley was invited by someone to a meeting. Like Nathanael, he responded somewhat “unwillingly” to the invitation. Here’s how he describes what happened.
“In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The one who had a method for everything, the one who was the epitome of religious devotion for most of his life, was surprised—surprised by the grace of God, surprised by an encounter with Christ. All because he responded to an invitation.
Lent is an invitation—an invitation to you and me to “come and see” what Christ might be up to, and to open ourselves to the surprising, transforming power of his grace, his love, his mission. It’s during Lent that we take the time to prepare, to listen, to put aside our professional and theological skepticism and simply “come.”
Like Philip, I want to invite you during these next six weeks to “come and see.” Let us join in a time of prayer together each day. Let us come together around the table on Wednesday evenings and learn how to open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ, let us join together in worship and encounter Christ through the lenses of these marvelous stories. And then, having encountered Jesus, let us invite others to come and see for themselves what he has done in us, and what he wants to do in them.
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