"We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law,
and also the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth."
But Nathanael said to him,
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
Jesus and Joseph were common names and Nazareth was by no means a town of great importance or status. Nathanael seemed to assume that one about whom Moses wrote would not appear from such ordinary origins. And indeed the apparent ordinariness of Jesus was often used to contradict the idea that he might be anyone important. His name, his origin, his social status, his education, and then that of his disciples- all of these led the elite and educated to scoff.
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
There is a deeper question here. Can God really manifest himself in the ordinary and the mundane? We might imagine that if God were going to become incarnate he would appear among us as a superman, or a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We would assume that only being obviously greater and more exulted than normal individuals could God rightly convey to the world that he was present in the person of Jesus Christ. If it were up to us we probably would have designed Jesus as a superhero, flying here and there, crushing every evil and saving the day every time. The intuition of the pagans for their own deities was much like this. They were supercharged versions of humanity, great in power, great in both their virtues and their vices. But Jesus, by contrast was not impressive in the way of Thor or Thanos. And the reason for this is that no magnification or amplification of human power, to any extreme, could ever manifest the completely transcendent God. By leaning into our desire to see God in that form he would in fact have been obscuring himself, making it appear as though he were just one more thing, however powerful, among the created order. By refusing to play to our preconceptions God revealed himself as so completely transcendent as to be able to work amidst the mundane, the ordinary, and the common. But if we can't recognize Jesus by gratuitous displays of inhuman power, how are we to know him?
Philip said to him, "Come and see."
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him,
"Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him."
Recognizing Jesus is the result of a personal experience of his presence. It is the matter of the heart. Like Nathanael we can experience ourselves as known and understood, down to our deepest unspoken aspirations and desires. All of those things that we've never dared to speak or never known how to put to words, Jesus knows them all already. Thus Jesus, and Jesus alone is able to reveal us to ourselves. In him we find the focal point, the convergence, of what was true and good in anything we ever wanted or for which we had ever hoped.
"Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree."
Nathanael answered him,
"Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel."
Once we recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of all desire we can experience him as the place where God is present and revealed, where heaven comes down to us and where we ourselves are lifted up to heaven.
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (see Genesis 28:16-17).
Because Jesus is revealed and manifests himself in the ordinary aspects of our lives we must not eschew these in favor of elevated and specially religious experiences. We must not, as John warns, spend our time in Church merely speaking about love. We must set about the business of loving our brothers and sisters "in deed and truth". We don't always do this to our own satisfaction. But God knows us better than we know ourselves, just as he did in the case of Nathanael.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
May the Lord guide us in the ordinary ways in which he desires to use us to show his love to the world, and to reassure us of his own love for us, which is unceasing, even when we fall short.
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