Up and Down

Up and Down
John 1:43-51
Lent 1
February 25, 2023

For those who wondered if we would ever get through the winter with Isaiah, I have good news this morning. We are moving on from Isaiah. And to set the context, here’s a story from John’s first chapter.

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip 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.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “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.”

 

We are going to take a journey with the Gospel of John for the next few months. The readings for Lent will come from John, as will the readings for Easter and the weeks following. John has written a rich book, full of layers of meaning and deep spiritual insight. So it’s appropriate that we linger with this book. 

John’s primary concern is to point to Jesus. “No one has ever seen God,” he says, “But some of us have seen Jesus. And we have come to believe that he shows us what God is like. God is revealed as a God of grace and truth.” This is big stuff. I have visited Christian monasteries where the occupants devote themselves to work and prayer. A monk can hear a single line from the Gospel of John and meditate on it all day.

I mentioned that to somebody, the last time I taught my way through this book. She seemed earnest, so I said, “Let’s read some of the first chapter.” We did that, and I said, “What do you think?” She was silent. After a while, and a little bit of nudging, she replied, “It’s not what I expected.”

What were you expecting? “I didn’t think it would be so ordinary.” Ordinary? “Yes, ordinary. One of them says Jesus came from Nazareth. The other one says, ‘Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? He might as well have come from Nanticoke. Can anything good come out of Nanticoke? There’s nothing happening in Nanticoke.”

“OK,” I said, “fair enough. But Nathanael, the one who said it, ends up calling Jesus the Son of God and the King of Israel.” “Yeah,” she said, “but he sure didn’t have a lot to go on. Jesus saw him standing under a tree. Big deal. What’s the big deal about standing under a tree?” She had a point. Jesus sounds pretty ordinary.

According to the story, one day John the Baptist pointed him out and said, “Lamb of God,” and two of his own followers followed Jesus. One of them was Andrew who took his brother Simon Peter to see Jesus. The day after that, Jesus found Philip, who came from the same hometown as Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said, “Come and see the one whom Moses and the prophets wrote about.”

The circle grows. There’s no sermon, no lesson, not even much of a conversation. Just a lot of hanging out, after the recurring invitation, “Come and see.” That’s how faith is generated in the Gospel of John. No pounding the pulpit, no life and death decision, no pressure, no emotional manipulation, no choir singing all three hundred verses of “Just as I Am” while the buses wait. Nope. Just the simple open-ended invitation, “Come and see.” Those who hear it, and come, and look, are impressed how simple the invitation is. “Come and see.” Come, because the invitation found you – you weren’t looking for the Son of God, but there he was, looking for you. And life happens.

Already John is teaching us about the character of faith. Faith doesn’t need a lot of miracle juice. It can happen anywhere, any time. Faith comes, not by force, not by action, but by invitation. And the invitation passes among, brother to brother, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend. No flash, no siren, no billboards, but relationships. Friendships. Mouth to ear.

Somebody said, “How are we going to get people to come to church?” The best answer, “Have you invited the people you know?” That’s the difference between marketing and friendship. Guess which one is more effective! True faith is planted in the words, “Come and see.” Not very complicated. In fact, it’s quite simple.

But come and see … what? Come and see a man who saw me under a tree? And Jesus replies with his very first curious line in the Gospel of John. He will speak a lot of curious lines, but this is the first one: “Truly, truly, very truly, all of you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”

If you hear that cold, you might scratch your head, and wonder, “What in the world?” The first clue is that Jesus says, “Truly, truly, very truly.” Whenever he says that, he invited us to lean forward. Something Big is about to be said. In this case, three things to be said: heaven opened, angels ascending and descending, and the Son of Man.

First things first: “You will see the heaven opened.” Is heaven open or closed? In the time of Elijah the prophet, everybody thought heaven was closed, as if a big sign posted in the sky: Closed for Business, Shut Down Until Further Business, Nothing for You.

This is the experience that some people have of prayer. “I prayed and nobody was listening.” I knocked on heaven’s door and it stayed shut. I asked God to make things right and nothing happened. I begged for my child in danger and the only sound above me was silence.

In the days of Elijah, there was a terrible famine. No rain, no crops, no help. Jesus says elsewhere, at that time, heaven was shut (Luke 4:25). There was no help, until God sent the prophet Elijah to a Gentile widow. She brought to the prophet what little flour she had – and it did not wear out. She brought a few drops of oil – and there was more. And when her son, her only son ran out of breath, when he stopped breathing, Elijah called out to heaven, “You are being harsh here.” Then leaning down to hug the boy, the boy began to breath.

You though heaven was closed, but it was open. It is open. All of you will see this.

Second, “angels ascending and descending.” Have you ever heard something like that? Of course you did – about ten minutes ago. In the book of Genesis, Jacob had a dream. He was running away from his brother Esau because Esau was running after him. Jacob swindled the family blessing from his big brother, so his brother Esau was coming to get it back, with a club in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

One night, Jacob collapsed in exhaustion and put his head on a rock. As he slept, he had a dream of “angels ascending and descending the ladder to heaven.” Heaven was open – the angels were going up, climbing to take the troubles of earth up the ladder to God. That’s where the old spiritual comes from. “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.”

But give it a second look: the angels are coming back down, not merely to take the prayers up, but to bring the mercy down. Grace moves in both directions, up and down. When Jacob is startled awake by the vision, he shouts out loud, “Surely God is in this place, and I didn’t know it.” Of course you didn’t know it. Life looks so ordinary, but something invisible is going on. God may be quiet, but God is here. We have our pack of troubles, but the angels are telling God about them, and God is sending the angels back down to us.

Jesus quotes the old story of Jacob and his two-way ladder. “Nathanael, you’re going to see this.” There’s something far more significant than spotting somebody under a fig tree. He’s going to see the unseen movement of grace – up and down.

And there is a third mystery afoot, and it’s connected to that old Jacob story. When Jacob wakes from the vision, he says, “This is an awesome place, this bleak desert, this stone pillow. It’s awesome – because it’s the habitation of God. It is the Open Gate of Heaven.” And now Jesus points to himself. He appears so normal, so human – but he is the Habitation of God, the One on whom the unseen angels go up and down. He is the Open Gate, the One through whom the truth and grace of God are revealed.

It's a lot to see, too much perhaps to take it all in. But this is what we will look for in the weeks and texts to come.  In fact, soon after this, Jesus attends a wedding. It’s in the village of Cana, a village so small that the archeologists aren’t sure where it was. It was a big party in a small town. Everybody has come. With Jesus, there is a handful of his followers, and his mother, too. And of all people, Nathanael was from the village of Cana. That’s what he is named on the last page of John’s book: Nathanael of Cana (21:1). Makes you wonder if that was Nathanael’s wedding!

Don’t know but it must have been a good party: music, dancing, good food, and lot of wine. A whole lot of wine. So much wine that the banquet managers ran out of wine. What a disastrous embarrassment for the host family! There’s some whispering behind the scenes, some quiet activity. Suddenly, the music starts up again and there’s plenty of wine. Lots of wine. Tasty, too. The steward compliments the host, “You’ve saved the good stuff until now.”

How did that happen, in Nathanael’s little village that nobody can now find? Well, something must have happened. Something very curious. Something bigger than the wine. Something like the generosity of an Opened Heaven.

Will Nathanael ever see it? Will we? Don’t know, not yet. But if he does, if we do, there will be angels ascending and descending upon Jesus, and somebody will say, “He is where the fullness of God resides.”

Come and see.

(c) William G. Carter