Well, good, old Nathaniel. In a way, he's the mystery disciple of the New Testament. His name doesn't even rate a mention in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Only in John's gospel do we hear about the disciple with the parochial ideas about Galilean towns.
Picture, if you will, our man Nathaniel. Like Peter, he is a fisherman by trade. He hails from Cana, another in a long line of undistinguished little hamlets in the Galilean region. The region itself is rather undistinguished. It was like what Newark is to New York, or Puyallup is to Seattle, to those who came from the urban and urbane center of Israel's life in Jerusalem. The whole of Galilee is more or less a backwater region, noted mostly for a small lake, frequently called, in a ludicrous exaggeration, the Sea of Galilee. Within this dull little province were equally dull little towns. Jesus was from Nazareth. Nathaniel was from Cana. The two were about ten miles apart. Wide spots in the road, really.
Here is Nathaniel, a rather ordinary young man, with all the hopes of any young man of that time. One day, he is minding his own business, doing whatever fishermen do on their day off, probably stitching a torn net. His friend approaches. Philip is excited.
"We've found the Messiah, the one we always heard about and hoped for! He's here among us at last, the one we've waited for so long!"
Nathaniel, cautious at first, puts down his work, his pulse quickens. Could it possibly be? After so many centuries, will this great thing happen in his generation? With his heart in his throat, he asks, "Who is he? Where did he come from?"
Then comes the embarrassing reply, "He is Jesus of Nazareth. The son of Joseph." Before the words had finished tumbling from his mouth Philip could see Nathaniel's countenance fall. It did sound flat. Why couldn't it be David of Jerusalem, or Elijah of Miami, some place exotic? Why did it have to be Nazareth? And a tradesman's son at that.
Nathaniel scowled for a moment. Fiddled with his sneakers. Pushed his spectacles back up on his nose. Turned around and began sewing his fishing nets again.
Philip waited. His presence seemed to say to Nathaniel, "Well, what about it?"
So, finally, Nathaniel looked up.
"Jesus of Podunk. So what? Can anything good come out of Nowheresville? Let me tell you three things about Nazareth, Philip.
"First of all, it is a very small town. What this country needs is someone from some place important, someone who can make the Romans sit up and take notice, someone who will command the respect of the people. Nazareth? It's nowhere. No one is going to pay attention to anyone from there.
"The second thing is, my home town is twice as important as Nazareth. Our football team bests theirs every season, and the fat cats in Jerusalem don't even know it's on the map.
"The third thing is, and this really says it all, Nazareth isn't even mentioned in our scriptures, Philip. How do you expect a Messiah from some place that is not even mentioned in the whole of our Torah and prophecy? No, Philip, you've not found the Messiah. Just another dreamer like yourself. A son of a carpenter who ate too much pepperoni one night and had a dream and thought he had seen God. That's all. I'm sorry to break the news to you, but I'm afraid that's the way it is."
Philip felt the perspiration running down his back. He wouldn't argue. He didn't possess the gift for instant analysis that Nathaniel did, so he knew that if he tried, he'd never argue him into seeing it his way. He just said, "Come and see." And to everyone's surprise, Nathaniel went. And Jesus showed him not who Jesus was, but more surprisingly, who Nathaniel was — or who he could be. Nathaniel's preconceived ideas had to undergo a transformation.
That's all we hear about Nathaniel until chapter 21 of John, where he was among those on the boat when Jesus appeared on the shore and told them to cast their nets over one side if they wanted to make a catch and he nearly caused them to scuttle the ship. This was the resurrected Jesus, the Jesus who appeared after his crucifixion and gave hope to those who had abandoned hope. Here's what Frederick Buechner says about Nathaniel:
Nathaniel doesn't appear on any lists of apostles. But he probably considered it honor enough just to have been on hand that morning on the beach — especially considering that unfortunate remark he'd made long ago about Nazareth.1
So that's about all we know about Nathaniel.
The most remarkable thing about the story is not that Nathaniel believed, but that Jesus, in a phrase, gave Nathaniel his first glimpse of who Nathaniel was: "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" (v. 47). Nathaniel had never thought of it just that way before. But come to think of it, that was who he was. And he knew immediately he was in the presence of someone exceptional, someone whose importance was of a different kind than anything he'd known or expected. A sense of calling comes both from deep within, and also from the unexpected source that lies without. The casual "Come and see," Philip offered transforms a whole life, inside and out. It requires listening, even if we resist it at first.
In 1923, George Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan, a play about Joan of Arc. Joan, in classic irony, was burned at the stake in 1431 for presumed heresies, yet was elevated to sainthood by the very church that condemned her, albeit almost 500 years after the fact. A scene in the play depicts the archbishop and King Charles questioning Joan.
The archbishop asks, "How do you know you are right?"
Joan answers, "My voices."
The king interrupts, "Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don't the voices come to me, I'm the king, not you."
Joan responds, "They do come but you do not hear them."2
Nathaniel listened to the voice of Jesus instead of the voice of his own prejudices and small thinking.
The greatest gift any of us has to give another is just this view of who they are — not as the result of some deep inward search, but in the twinkling of an eye, the turn of a phrase, to tell someone who they are and what they are meant to be in this world. This is a gift beyond measure. It is a gift that the people of the church may give to one another.
Thanks to God and to congregations of believers, pastors are called to work in Christ's church with useful work to do for the sake of something greater than themselves. Christians can give each other gifts of this sort, because of the gift of the calling that God has given each of us to share. And in the process of being the church, I suspect that we have often discovered that there is more in us than we had ever suspected was there.
Nathaniel said of Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (v. 46). It was a small town, very undistinguished, and nothing prestigious had ever been associated with it. What's more, Nazareth doesn't even rate a mention in the Hebrew scriptures.
But Nathaniel put aside prejudice when Jesus caused him to see more of who he was than he had ever seen before. Nathaniel became a new man. His old life was forever gone.
You and I may find ourselves saying of the people of our own church, "Can anything good come out of this place?" Other churches certainly carry more prestige. Our town may be a relatively small town, a suburb, an exurb even, undistinguished as towns go, and our schools may not be the best in the world, our athletic teams seldom make state playoffs. And besides, our town doesn't even rate a mention in the Hebrew scriptures!
But the people of this church open themselves in ways that are beyond what any of us can do individually, our gifts of ministry are often unexpected, even to ourselves. I hope we continue to grow to see more in the life of our church than we thought could be there. I hope we will grow to see more and more as we open ourselves to new opportunities for ministry in the name of the one who calls us, no matter who we are, no matter how inconspicuous our talents.
The church remains alive and thriving when we open our eyes and our hearts to the Messiah of Nazareth.
May it always be so.
Until he comes again. Amen.
1. Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 117.
2. George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (New York: Penguin, 1989).