Year B

John 1:43-51

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The High Calling of Discipleship

A wealthy woman visited Mother Teresa in Calcutta and offered to write a check to support the work of the Sisters of Charity. Mother declined: “I won’t take your money” she said. The woman insisted, letting Mother know that she had great resources to donate. But Mother still said, “No money.” Exasperated, the woman stammered, “Well, what can I do?” Mother said, “Come and see.” She led the woman by the hand down into a dreadful barrio, found a desperately dirty, hungry child, and asked the woman to take care of him. Her pocketbook being of no avail, the woman took a cloth and water basin and bathed the child. Then she spooned cereal into the child’s mouth. The woman later reported that her life was changed by this act of service. She became part of something money could not buy, fix, or replace.

We may not all be called to the same task as Mother Teresa but each one of us has been called by Jesus, called to “come and see.”  We have a God who calls. All the texts today deal with God’s call and have much to say to us about the Christian life, our ministry and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The season of Epiphany is all about the manifestation or showing of God, especially in Christ, and those moments of realization where God is shown in and through the call to discipleship, as in the texts for today. The stories of the call of Samuel and of Nathanael speak to us of a personal God who knows us and calls us for important tasks. They remind us that “call” is a recurring theme throughout both the Old and New Testament.

The story of Israel begins with the call of Abraham in Genesis and continues with the call of God to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus. God speaks to the prophets and sends them to speak words of warning and hope. Jeremiah, like the psalmist today, believes that God knew him in his mother’s womb and appointed him a prophet to the nations. In the New Testament, God calls Philip and Nathaniel and the other disciples through Jesus. Jesus’ invitation to John’s disciples to “come and see” is an invitation that draws them deeper into relationship with God. And Jesus invites us all into this relationship with God. “To come and see” draws us into God’s life and it challenges us to be fully open to God’s calling and God’s future.

Obviously Nathaniel was open to God’s calling. Jesus knows that Nathaniel is willing to be a disciple possibly before Nathaniel does who is mentioned only twice in the scriptures, and then, only in the Gospel of John. Matthew, Mark and Luke never talk about him but they do talk about Bartholomew and tradition has them as the same person. According to John, Nathaniel was the fourth disciple called. Jesus called Peter and Andrew then he called Philip, and Philip went and brought Nathaniel to Jesus. His only other mention is with the disciples at one of the resurrection appearances. We know a bit about Nathaniel as one who possibly was searching because of the fig tree. People at that time often lived in a one-room house and they would plant fig trees in the front of their homes as a place to sit outside in the shade.

A fig tree because of its size and width could create a space that is almost like a private room. Sitting under the fig tree was often a sign of seeking and praying for God’s presence. And even though the church doesn’t look anything like a fig tree, the church is here to be a place to seek the touch of the living God; a place to grow deeper into a relationship with God. We come to church to get away from the world around us so we can read scripture, reflect, and pray much like Nathaniel must have been doing that day when Philip went to get him and take him to Jesus. 

What we know from Jesus is that Nathaniel is a man “in whom there was no deceit.” A person “in whom there is no deceit” is a person who is honest, and sincere. Paul tells us today in his first letter to the Corinthian church that God honors the qualities of honesty, genuineness, integrity, and open-mindedness. Each of us as a dwelling place of God is called to live with dignity, self-respect and genuine mutual love, in all our relationships with others. Even though Nathaniel at first did not believe that Jesus could be the Messiah, he is honest enough to express amazement that God’s Messiah could come from Nazareth, an insignificant village.

What is significant about this story is that God can accomplish great things in unlikely places and God is perfectly capable of honoring ordinary people like Nathaniel and Philip and the rest of the disciples that Jesus calls. They become the very people whose lives helped build and pass on the faith and eventually the church. And as we look back on our lives, we often can see the same pattern of divine care and call. Possibly not in the same way that Nathaniel did or Samuel did. Samuel was just a young boy who did not yet know the Lord when he was called, and yet he came to be regarded along with Moses and Aaron as a great priest.

The invitation of the texts today is to trust these signs of divine care and call and to make sure that the purposes of God are realized and being advanced through us, God’s people.  As Christians we are called by our baptism to be Disciples of Christ and to act in love. Such love allows others to hear God’s will for their lives and to be strengthened by God’s Spirit. Everyday there are opportunities to serve and to be strengthened by God’s Spirit. In the life of the church there are important ministries and opportunities to serve, in teaching, praying, giving, leadership, and so on.

We are all called “with a holy calling” and Paul today in his letter to the Corinthians offers us a very high vision of the life of every Christian, since all of us are “joined to the Lord” and “one spirit with him.” Each of us, in our bodily life, is a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” – that is, a dwelling place of God, and so we are called to live with dignity, honesty, self-respect, and genuine mutual love, in our relationships with others. We strive each day to show this kind of love of self, God and neighbor. We fail at times, we are all a work in progress yet thankfully, God, continues to forgive us through Jesus and continues to call us, ordinary disciples to make a difference.

May we be ready, as the boy Samuel, to jump up ready to serve. May we be ready, as Philip to find others to bring to Christ. May we be ready as Nathaniel to proclaim “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” May we be ready as Paul to proclaim the holy place of God’s call, the whole community of faith and as the community of faith, may we rise to follow the Spirit of Christ. Together with Mother Teresa and so many others let us go find God: together we shall tend the light of our baptism, hear the word of the Lord and honor the call of God to see greater things. Because, if we take the disciple Nathaniel, seriously-we will know that that it is through us that God’s will is ultimately accomplished.