Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 3rd October 2024
A Life-Giving Conversation with Jesus
In yesterday’s reflections, I wrote about the moment when Nathanael realised that God was for real – the moment when he realised that God cared for him and was interested in the joys and struggles of his life. In this moment of revelation, Nathanael bursts out with a magnificent statement of belief: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” So what happened next?
We might have expected that Jesus then told Nathanael to “follow him” - to become his disciple, and to commit his lift to following his teaching. After all, a few verses before, we read about Jesus’ encounter with Philip, and this encounter had led to Jesus giving him the simple command: “Follow me”. But Jesus treats Nathanael in a different way. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Jesus engaged with people as unique individuals, with their own particular characters and context. What was right for one person would not necessarily be right for someone else. I believe this is still true today : the Risen Jesus respects our individuality and engages with us in a way appropriate to who we are and the unique circumstances of our lives.
So Jesus doesn’t tell Nathanael to follow him. Perhaps he had read Nathanael’s character and worked out this this was someone who did n’t like to be told to do something. He was someone who liked to think things out for himself. So Jesus gives Nathanael a vision of a future full of hope and mystery. “Jesus answered [Philip, and said] “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And 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”. (John Chapter 1, verses 50 and 51)
And having uttered these hopeful but mysterious words, the conversation as recorded in John’s gospel comes to an end. Jesus goes on to a wedding in Cana of Galilee. And as for Nathanel, we are not told what happened next in his life. Perhaps he went back to his fig tree, to mull further over what Jesus had said, and the implications of these words for the rest of his life.
Why had Jesus chosen these words? I think Jesus wanted to communicate three key points. We will look at the first point today, and consider the second and the third point in tomorrow’s reflections.
I think the first point that Jesus wanted to make was that the grounds for our belief will grow and develop over the years. At this point in Nathanael’s life, he believed in Jesus because Jesus had seen him “under the fig tree” . But the time would come when his belief would have much deeper foundations than this. So Jesus says to Nathanael:” Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these”. Note that Jesus is not criticising Nathanael for basing his belief on the fig tree incident, which some one else might have considered a trivial and insignificant ground for belief. It was sufficient for Nathanael, and that was good enough for Jesus. Here again, Jesus is treating Nathanael as a unique individual. But Jesus is saying to Nathanael that in the future, as the months and years go past, there will be further and greater reasons for his faith that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and the King of Israel.
In other words, our faith grows and deepens over the years. And so too do the grounds on which we believe. This is something we can expect, and can look forward to. The longer we are a Christian, the greater our insight into God’s ways, and the richer our experience of His love and mercy in our own lives and in the lives of our families and communities. The passing years will certainly bring their questions and perhaps their doubts. But with each passing year, the foundations of our spiritual life grow deeper. Sometimes we are aware of this, and sometimes we are not. But the spiritual growth is a reality. As we live our lives, we put roots down into the soil of God’s love, and these roots help to secure us as we face the challenges of life.
But Jesus is saying much more than this, and we shall look at this in tomorrow’s reflections.