Greater Things Than These

 

Sunday, January 18^th, 2009

Epiphany 2B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

John 1:43-51

Theme: Wonders of God – both in creation and in our hearts

 

⁴³ The 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.”

 

First Baptist Church of Orange, Texas is by all standards, a landmark.  Organized in 1879, First Baptist merged with the Eighth Street Baptist church and began working towards building a new building big enough for both of them.  The sanctuary was built, not unlike Jerusalem’s, through the efforts of its members – through cooking lunches, selling bricks for 15 cents a piece, and eventually through public subscription.  That Sanctuary was completed and dedicated in September of 1915.

 

Through the years, First Baptist grew, birthed 5 daughter churches in the area, sponsored mission work and missionaries around the world.  Its members and ministers nurtured children in their first steps towards faith, and sustained and strengthened the adults in the congregation through their hard times as well as their easy times. 

 

Then along came Hurricane Rita, in September of 2005, and caused considerable wind damage to the exterior of the building and destroyed some storage buildings owned by the congregation.  Thankfully, their insurance allowed them to rebuild and restore the building.  Over the next couple of years, the church continued to grow and the folks they were reaching were people who lived further away from their downtown location.  The church voted to begin to make the necessary motions to sell the property and move out to where the majority of its membership – and the people they were reaching out to live.  That was in the summer of last year. 

 

Then in September, Hurricane Ike hit.  Most of downtown Orange received 8 to 10 feet of floodwater.  First Baptist Church had insurance to cover wind damage, but none to cover damage due to flooding.  The basement was devastated, as was most of the above ground educational space in the adjacent building.  The building, unsold, became unusable.  While some reclamation projects have taken place, the church body is meeting in a local High School for worship and children’s Sunday School.  Youth and Adult Bible studies take place at various times and places during the week, depending on what each one has found to best suit their needs. 

 

The church is still in transition, obviously, probably still to some degree in shock from the traumatic experience of last September, but they have reiterated their decision to move from the downtown location.  The challenge has been that that move will probably take place without the income from the sale of the historic landmark property, or at least not the amount that the property was originally worth.  The congregation and the city of Orange are working out an agreement for the city to purchase the old property. 

 

In the words of one former member, our sister in law Janet Maccubbin, who visited with us right after Christmas, she writes, “If I were a member of First Baptist Orange today, the biggest question in my mind would be, “what does God really have in store for our future?  Everything seemed so crystal clear before the Hurricane and here we are today, still a church, but with no building and most likely no resources to build one.  It seems so different than where we thought God was taking us.” 

 

ه  ه  ه

 

 

As we read about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, we are presented with events that to us seem a little disjointed, a little awkward.  We have no point of reference for the statements made other than their face value. 

 

We read where Jesus finds Philip and tells him “follow me.”  Period, end of sentence, end of scene, move to the next.  We continue reading, and find out that Philip was from Bethsaida, the same town from which Andrew and Peter hailed.  Enough background, on to the next scene.  Philip finds Nathanael, and tells him “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  To us, coming out of the Christmas season, it sounds perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable, to have this statement introduce someone to Jesus of Nazareth.  But we are coming to the scriptures with two thousand years of historical conditioning built into our readings as good, churchgoing Christians.  We have no sense of what it would have been like to hear someone tell us the same thing if we were there and were of that time. 

 

To give you an idea, if Jesus had not come yet, and, with apologies to the residents there, I were to come up to you and tell you that “we have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Joe-bob the son of Elmer from Possum Trot Kentucky.”  Would you begin to get a sense of the exchange that took place between Philip and Nathanael?

 

We move on. 

 

Obviously, Nathanael is going to need a little convincing.   But Philip wisely chooses to not do that himself.  He tells his brother simply “come and see.”  So he does. 

 

This next scene needs to be unpacked a little, explored a little.  We need to peel this onion to get down below the skin of it and see what was happening.

 

Based on the external evidence alone, you’d have to say that Nathanael dove in based on little more than a kind of spiritual parlor trick:  Jesus claims to have seen Nathanael sitting under a fig tree even before Philip went to go get him.  The fact that Jesus seemed to know that was a neat trick, but not exactly the most startling thing in the world!  Still, it was enough for Nathanael to sign on even as it motivated him to declare openly that near as he could tell, Jesus was the Son of God and the king of all Israel.  It must be the Spirit of God that moved in him and prompted that confession.   But there is, as they say, more here than meets the eye. 

When Jesus says of Nathanael “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” to us it sounds like Jesus is simply being a good judge of character.  On the face of it, he is identifying Nathanael as someone who is, at the very least, honest. 

 

While that may be, to someone reading or hearing this passage in the first century, especially someone of the house of Israel, reading this would send up recognition flares, because there is an allusion to one of the biggest names in the history of Israel.  The word that is translated here as ‘deceit’ in the original Greek means ‘guile’ – which is close enough to deceit as to be interchangeable.  But it is a subtle reference to the one character in the history of Israel who is best KNOWN for the guile by which he lived:  Jacob.  If you remember his story, he lived by his wits.  He tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright, he also spent nearly twenty years maneuvering his Uncle Laban out of most everything he owned, and he wound up spending a good deal of time on the run because of it as well. 

 

For some reason that we can’t quite fathom, God liked Jacob.  At one point while he was running, God gave Jacob a dream in which he saw a ladder climbing all the way to heaven, and angels were going up and down the length of it.  Jesus, by the way, is alluding to Jacob again when he mentions the dream in verse 51.  Through the dream God assures Jacob that in spite of all the stunts he’s pulled, God has been with him.  God even promises to bring Jacob back to the Promised Land one day, even though he is on his way AWAY from it at a dead run at the moment. 

 

Then comes the pivotal event in Jacob’s life.  The night by the River Jabbock.  Jacob is finally out of places to hide, and is on his way to meet his brother Esau, when he is attacked by a stranger in the darkness on the banks of the river.  You’ve heard the story… they fight.  They wrestle all night, and they are seemingly too evenly matched for one to overwhelm the other.  But close to dawn there comes a moment when it seems like Jacob has finally gotten his opponent pinned down… until the stranger, with supernatural ease, wrenches Jacob’s hip out of its socket.  He lets Jacob know that the whole night’s fight had been rigged, it had been a carefully crafted plan – not unlike many of the plans that Jacob himself had arranged.  But out of that experience, what happens?  Jacob comes away with both a new name – Israel – and a new attitude, a new outlook on life.  Jacob came away from the shores of the Jabbock with an understanding that the best things in life come not by wit, or cunning, or force and strength, but through grace. 

So that is who Jacob was, and that is who Jesus is comparing Nathanael to when he sees him and says something more like “Here comes an Israel who is not Jacob”, meaning that Nathanael was an example of the straight-shooting honest Israel, of the new man who emerged after God knocked Jacob flat with grace, not the pre-wrestling match trickster.

 

It seems all the more kind, since Nathanael had just finished pretty much dissing Jesus’ hometown.  So if we follow the reasoning, Jesus says that Nathanael is an honest man, Nathanael just said that Nazareth was a town of questionable repute, and Jesus confirmed it. 

 

Jesus was telling Nathanael “You’re right!  I’m not much to look at, but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  I’m the one!” 

 

And this is the moment of Grace in this setting.  Nathanael, in his straightforward, no-frills, hold no punches way, speaks the confession that will ring through the centuries just as Peter’s will later - “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

 

And in response Jesus first questions his faith – asks, basically, “Is that all it took?  Me telling you I saw you under the fig tree?  Get ready; you’re going to see greater things than these!” 

 

And what greater things was he talking about?  Healings? Yes. Raising people from the dead?  That too.  Walking on water, yes; the feeding of thousands of people from five loaves and two fish, check.  But what was the greatest thing Nathanael would see?  

 

It was the same thing we see and experience when we come together around this table, when we share this bread and this cup.  It was that moment when God gave God’s self in the person of Jesus up in our place – where God covered our debt for us.  And welcomed us into the body of Christ – both to live and to serve.   

 

I don’t think Nathanael nor Philip had any idea what was in store for them, just like the members of First Baptist Church, Orange Texas don’t have any idea where God is taking THEM – but the call is not to SEE what lies ahead, that is not ours to claim.  The call is to faithfulness and to obedience.

 

We may not have the ability to say “this and this and this is going to happen, but it doesn’t matter, because that is not in our hands.  What we do have is the ability and the responsibility to serve, to confess, to live out that self-giving love that Christ calls us to — that God modeled in the person of Jesus. 

 

In the Hebrew tradition, when Passover was shared, it was not simply a repeating of what happened when the Israelites fled Egypt.  It was actually a re-living, a re-experiencing of the event.  On the surface, yes, of course, it is much more cleaned up, I guess you could say, but in the exchanges, in the remembrances, there is a depth of meaning that calls even people today, to understand what the festival was for them on that first night. 

 

And we draw on that tradition when we share this bread and this cup. 

 

We share unleavened bread because there was no time to let it rise.  Jesus took the bread and broke it and said take and eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.  And after dinner he took the cup and poured it and said this is my blood of the new covenant shed for you.  As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, Paul writes later, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 

 

We share one cup, we share one loaf to remind us that we are one body.  Participating, joining together in this sharing is making a statement both about what it means to be a part of this body of Christ, Jerusalem Baptist Church, as well as a part of the body of Christ on earth.  The breaking reminds us that we are not exempt from suffering, the poured juice reminds us that we may be called to shed our blood, as seemingly unlikely that would be for us sitting her in Emmerton Virginia on January 18^th, 2009. 

 

We are called to sacrifice, and that can happen in very many ways. 

 

I would invite you to come forward, tear a piece of bread off and dip it in the juice, and proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.                      

 

(Communion)

 

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

 

Just as we have on some level re-lived, re-experienced Christ’s sacrifice, we take that into our own lives, we follow that example, we follow that guidance, that leading, that spirit.  We pray for the courage to live our convictions, we pray for the wisdom to discern those moments when we can share, when God is asking us to share.  And if necessary, use words. 

 

Let’s pray.