January 18, 2026
William G. Carter
The next day John again was standing with two of his
disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is
the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed
Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What
are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means
Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They
came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was
about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak
and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his
brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated
Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said,
“You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is
translated Peter).
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 have been tracing the beginning of the Gospel, according to John. It begins with an enormous announcement, poetically given. “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God.” And then, “the Word became flesh.” It is an announcement of cosmic significance. Earth gets a visit from the One who made it. Some people saw this. They believed what they saw. They experienced the grace and truth of God. And some didn’t see it, didn’t believe it – but the grace and truth of God was here.
The religious experts heard about a preacher, a wet preacher named John. They went out to see him. “Are you the One?” No. “Are you the second coming of the prophet Elijah?” No. “Are you an identified prophet?” No. “So, who are you?” John said, “I am a Bible verse: the voice crying in the wilderness.” It was clear. Somebody had come, somebody was hidden among them, and nobody could see him yet.
Then, today, as we heard, John said, “There he is. Look at him. That’s the Lamb of God.” Jesus was walking by. That’s it. Just walking by. No astounding miracle, no astonishing words. Just a man, on two feet, walking by. We don’t know any of the backstory. We have little of the context. The account doesn’t tell us if they knew one another or if they were related in any way. We have no clue why Jesus had come to stand among the sinners and be baptized. All John says is, “I saw a dove.” That’s it. He saw a dove. Now he says, “I see a Lamb.”
Can I dare say it wasn’t much? But it was enough. John the Baptist says what he sees. It starts a small chain reaction. There is no trumpet, no choir, no barking preacher. One person speaks to another, and another, and another. In his magisterial commentary on the Gospel of John, Dale Bruner says, “This is the birth of the church.”[1]
Yet it seems so small. This is the Word of God, the Logic of the Universe. He is the One through whom God created the heavens and earth. He is the Light of the world, the Grace and Truth, the Lamb of God. Look – and two people look and see a rather ordinary man, blending in with everybody else. He’s walking by. That’s it. Did you see him? Maybe. Maybe not. But if you do, you’ve got to tell somebody. And this is how the kingdom of God is revealed: from friend to friend. The Gospel grows sideways. It is not flashy. In every sense, it is down-to-earth. And it is real.
The story moves on. Jesus finds Philip. Who’s Philip? We don’t know. Just a guy. He comes from the same little fishing village where Andrew and Peter hail from. Bethsaida was a small town. He must have known them. And then Philip finds Nathanael. Who’s Nathanael? We don’t know. Just a friend of Philip. He is mentioned five times in this story, and not again until chapter 21.
Nathanael never makes the official list of the twelve disciples. There are people who think he should. Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention somebody named Bartholomew, but John never mentions anybody named Bartholomew. John mentions Nathanael. So, the pious interpreters say, “Maybe Nathanael is the same man as Bartholomew.” We don’t know.
All we know comes from the end of John’s book. In chapter 21, he is called “Nathanael of Cana in Galilee.” There was, as you recall, a “wedding in Cana of Galilee” (2:1). Maybe it was Nathanael’s wedding. Remember? It was the wedding where they ran out of wine, and Jesus had to make more wine? That story happens immediately after this one. It would be reasonable to surmise that Jesus says, “Nathanael, you will see greater things than our little banter, greater things than me telling you that I spotted you under a fig tree.” And the very next day (or as John says, “on the third day”), Jesus transforms the water into wine.
But here’s the thing: hardly anybody sees that, too. Even though it is the first miracle, or sign, of Christ, it happens at a wedding party when a lot of people were drinking heavily. Most of the miraculous moments in the Gospel of John happen out of sight. A lot of people miss them. Or they can be explained another way.
This is John’s way of reminding us that holiness does not happen in the sky; it happens on the ground. We don’t usually can’t see holiness in the huge, Technicolor miracle with 5.1 sound. That’s because the holiness of God is often in those moments when somebody’s life is touched and changed. God is in it somehow, somewhere, not for everybody to see unless they are looking in the right place.
That’s how it is with Nathanael, whoever he was. He hears about remarkable things about Jesus, but his hopes hit the ground with a thud when he discovers where Jesus is from. “Nazareth? Is he from Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You know where Nazareth is? It’s around the bend from Forest City. Have you ever been to Forest City? Can anything good come out of Forest City? It’s just so normal. So ordinary.
When Jesus sees him, he says, “Look, here’s an Israelite without any nonsense. Not an ounce of baloney, hogwash, claptrap, or codswallop in that guy.” Nathanael replies, “Where did you get to know me?” To which Jesus says, “I saw you under the fig tree, before Philip called you.” Well, what fig tree? Do you know how many fig trees there are in Israel? They are everywhere.
And yet, the small moment opens to something far greater. Nathanael falls to his knees and says, “You’re a Rabbi! You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Without any theological training, he gets all those titles right: Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel. He saw the One who had seen him.
John’s point is simple: Jesus comes among regular people who aren’t even looking for him. He signals to them that they are noticed and known. That’s all it takes to reveal there is a God who sees us in truth and grace. Then he invites them to tag along, to stay with him, to come and see what happens. Just maybe that dusty little village of Cana will be the place where heaven opens, and somebody will see the angels ascending and descending upon Jesus.
Every once in a while, something unusual happens somewhere in the world, and the God Squad goes there to mark it as a miracle site. A statue of the Virgin weeps. A disabled person drops the crutches and stands up healed. A Woodstock survivor who drove a purple VW bus once told me that Sedona, Arizona is the stairway to heaven; I don’t know what he had been smoking.
But here’s the thing: the Gospel of John announces any place can be that stairway. The Eternal Word of the Father becomes ordinary perspiring flesh. Christ comes down from God and stays incognito so much of the time. Holiness happens among the ordinary. Jesus awakens faith by spotting a guy under a fig tree. No big deal -- except for Nathanael.
This is the point of it all. The kingdom of God grows when ordinary people see something, then invite their friends to come and see. Nathanael comes to Jesus because Philip first invited him. There is something Philip had discovered about Jesus that prompted him to invite Nathanael to discover it for himself. We don’t know exactly what awakened Philip’s faith. We don’t know which fig tree Nathanael stood under.
What we do know is there was a chain reaction among friends. One friend saw it, spoke to another. The second friend saw it in a different way, and he spoke to somebody else. The Kingdom of God grows friend by friend in an invitation to authentic holiness. I’m talking about the only holiness there is, the kind of holiness in the middle of the everyday.
And the Gospel of John is exactly right. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we do not. As Eugene Peterson writes,
The hardest thing is to believe that God’s work – this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings – is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories… Everything Jesus does and says takes place within the limits and conditions of our humanity. No fireworks. No special effects. Yes, there are miracles, plenty of them. But because they are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life, very few notice. The miraculousness of the miracle is obscured by the ordinariness of the people involved.[2]
It happens. We know it happens. I’m working on my annual report for next month’s annual meeting. It takes a while. Those reports always come slowly. I mean, how do you sum up a church year? It’s far more than statistics and bragging about achievements.
Then I thought, “We eat a lot around here. And we serve a lot of food.” We collect food and distribute it. We receive food and create a monthly mobile food pantry. We go to the warehouse and package food for seniors who can’t afford groceries. When a loved one dies, we put on a meal for all the family and friends, free of charge. Next weekend, we will have about twenty crockpots of chili downstairs; we will risk blowing out the fuse box to raise funds for a shelter of teenagers who have been thrown out of their homes. All of this gives you a perspective on coffee hour, doesn’t it” There’s something more than food going on. Something like grace and truth – if you’re there to see it. And if we do, we can invite our friends to see what we see. Maybe they will.
Our friend Jim isn’t in the room today. He’s visiting relatives in another state, so that frees me up to tell a Jim story. For many years, he was a pastor serving a church downstream on the Susquehanna River. A flood wiped out his town. People were shocked. Homes were destroyed. That big old church building took on a lot of water. The people lost so much. Some of us went down to help. We threw his pastoral library into a dumpster. We dragged the waterlogged pew cushions out to the curb.
Even before all the water receded, an elderly man also showed up with work gloves and a bucket. Jim mumbled, “Oh no, not him.” The man belonged to another church, a contentious bunch of rascals. He was known around the area to be nothing but trouble. And then this volunteer says, “The people of your church helped me when I was flooded in 1972. I need to be here to help all of you.”
Jim said it was as if heaven opened and the angels of God ascended and descended right there. Right there. In the mud, for God’s sake. Right there. My friend praised God. Then the circle grew as friends invited friends to come and see what God was doing right there.
The writer and artist Madeline L’Engle said it best: “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”[3]
For the Kingdom has come among us – because the
King has come among us. He is the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Son of Man,
the King of Israel, the Messiah, and our very own Rabbi. He sees you and he
invites you to see him. Come and see.
[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The
Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012) 99.
[2]
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten
Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 34.
[3] Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Macmillan,
1995) 122.
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