Philip found Nathanael and told him,
"We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law,
and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth."
We have found the one we've been waiting for, the one who can fulfill all of our hopes. But how ready are we to share this good news with others? It's true he hailed from Nazareth. There was much about him that made others assume he was merely human. He seemed to hail from an insignificant town that had no particular connection to the promises of the Scriptures. But Philip didn't hold back because of this messiness. He was convinced in spite of it and it couldn't make him stay silent. There are plenty of reasons why Jesus may still seem to the world to be an unlikely candidate to be its messiah. Yet we too are convinced that he is and we too are called to share that fact with others.
But Nathanael said to him,
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
Philip said to him, "Come and see."
What can overcome all of the messiness inherent in telling others that someone who lived in a distant land in the distant past is the one who can answer the deepest questions of their lives? The answer that Philip proposed still holds: "Come and see". Jesus came from Nazareth but he was not confined there. He lived two-thousand years ago but is not stuck in the past. He is still present to us today. And it is therefore possible for anyone to have an experience of Jesus like Nathanael did.
Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?"
Jesus answered and said to him,
"Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree."
It wasn't so much the case that Nathanael saw Jesus and immediately recognized him as the messiah. It was rather the case that in being known and seen and comprehended by Jesus he came to believe. Jesus shined a light on a point in the life of Nathanael when he believed he had been alone, perhaps feeling abandoned, perhaps dreaming a private dream about the dawning of the messianic age too private to put into words. But he came to understand that he had not been alone, that Jesus had been present to him even before he was present to Jesus.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”- C.S. Lewis.
Jesus somehow cast light on the whole life of Nathanael to that point, giving it meaning, bringing him to faith. And with that faith born from being seen under the fig tree Jesus would raise up a great disciple, the one whom we celebrate today as Bartholomew.
What Nathanael had experienced that resulted in such a profound conviction was only a preview of coming attractions. Jesus himself was going to bridge not only the distance between his heart and that of another, but also going to himself become the bridge uniting heaven and earth.
And he said to him, "Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
Since Jesus did forever unite heaven and earth by his incarnation, death, and resurrection Bartholomew is celebrated not only here on earth, but also by the angels and saints in heaven. May we join in the chorus of so great a cloud of witnesses in thanking Jesus for the gifts of his witnesses, praying that we too may become witnesses like them and one day join in their company.
The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation,
on which were inscribed the twelve names
of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.
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