Jesus Calls Philip and Nathanael

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.⁴⁵Philip 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.’⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’⁴⁹Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’⁵⁰Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’⁵¹And 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

Sometimes I think John plays games with his readers by placing tiny clues about his deeper meaning without any explanation of what he’s doing. At first glance there seems to be nothing remarkable about this passage. A decent man is impressed by Jesus knowledge of him and becomes his disciple. Jesus promises that he will see real miracles.

The first clue is the phrase “An Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”  Why should an Israelite be deceitful? Well, they are children of Israel, that is, Jacob who was a brilliant deceiver of his father, brother and uncle. A certain amount of trickery might be expected of his descendents, but Jesus knows that Nathaniel is honest-honest enough to joke about people from Nazareth. So Nathaniel is a prototype of a new Israel, according to Jesus. But then Jesus goes a step further. He tells his new disciple that he, Jesus, will be like a new Bethel upon which Jacob saw the angels descending and ascending. Bethel means “house of God”. Jesus will be a dwelling place of God on earth.

Years of reading John’s gospel lead me to interpret him in this way.

Long before Bible readers had all the scholarly help that is available today, people read and re-read the text, often finding deeper levels of meaning as they did so. Things that are obscure at first glance often become meaningful in the light of other bible passages. If Jesus saw his disciples as a new Israel, he didn’t mean that God had rejected his ancient people but that the new revelation was founded on Moses and the prophets. But when he spoke of himself as God’s dwelling place he was moving away from the old religion towards a faith with no sacred buildings and shrines, in which God was seen to dwell in his Son and those who dwelt in Him. If Jesus is Bethel, the “gate of heaven” as the Jacob story says, then I’d best not try crawling in under the wire, or loupin’ (Scots for leaping) the fence, but be content to find my way in through him, that is, through his life, death and resurrection.

sheep gate in dyke

Blogging each day is part of that process, a constant rediscovery of the truth; the other, harder part is doing the truth I’ve found.

Is talking about a man as the “gate of heaven” obscure and out of date? Think of the kind of advertisements you’ve seen for Valentine’s day; they’re all about the gate of heaven: love is the gate of heaven, sex is the gate of heaven; a piece of jewellery is the gate of heaven, a box of chocolates, a bottle of bubbly, a night in London or Paris or New York, all these are the gate of heaven. Well, this week, this year.

Jesus smiles at our little idolatries as long as we remember how to find our way into true heaven.