“The Child's Protégés”
The call of Nathanael , and how Christ responds to our doubts
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 2, 2001
Text: John 1:43-51
They were the biggest and darkest brown eyes that I had ever seen in my life. As I held this little child in my arms, his eyes opened wide, both in awe, I think, and in fear. He had about the darkest, blackest, most mahogany skin I have ever seen and it was luminescent when contrasted with the white baptismal gown in which he was dressed.
I remember that face as if it were yesterday, for it was the first baptism I ever performed in my ministry. I remember it because, as with all such moments, I was in fear and trepidation: "What happens if I drop this child?" I thought. "What happens if I say the wrong words or baptize him with the wrong name?" (something that I have done subsequently, I might add). "What happens if I pour water over him and he starts to splutter or cry?" I had all these questions and they were exacerbated by the fact (and you will appreciate my fear) that his father was a minister.
And so I held this child in my arms and I baptized him in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and everything was fine. So profound was that moment for me that I actually even remember his name. I don't remember the names of all the children that I baptize, but this is one that I will never forget. His name was Nathanael N'kosi Mgwaza. Now that's a name for you! Mgwaza because it was his parents' name, and I know them; N'kosi because it is Xhosa for Lord; and Nathanael.
I asked his parents why they would choose a name like that. It seemed so incongruous with all the other African names, why didn't they choose an ordinary African name? The father, being a scholar of Hebrew, said to me, "because God has given." In this particular case, there wasn't a shadow of doubt in our minds that Nathanael was, in fact, a God-given gift.
The father, as a young man, had been interrogated by the police in South Africa. One of the ways in which they interrogated young men was to beat the bottoms of their feet with sticks and cricket bats. So great was the shock from the beating of the bottoms of the feet that irreparable nerve damage would often occur in the groin. The mother, like so many women in South Africa (even, unfortunately, to this very day), had been raped as a young girl and there was a question after the rape as to whether or not she would ever be able to conceive.
So you can imagine that when the Mgwazas came and presented Nathanael N'kosi Mgwaza to be baptized, there was no doubt whatsoever in their minds that Nathanael was the right name: God has given.
I have thought many times since of young Nathanael and whatever would have become of him. I particularly do so when I read the passage that was read for us a little while ago from John's Gospel, for it is the story of the call of the first Nathanael. We do not read about him anywhere else in the Bible except in this moment. It's a poignant moment, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
He begins first of all by calling Andrew, and then he calls Simon Peter, and then he calls Philip. Philip is so moved by having been called that he goes and gets his friend, Nathanael. He comes up to Nathanael and makes this great announcement: "Nathanael, the man that we have been waiting for, the one that Moses spoke of in the law, the one that the prophet spoke of in the Old Testament, he has come. His name is Jesus of Nazareth and he is the son of Joseph."
Now this was, in many ways, one of the greatest affirmations of who Jesus was in the whole of the Bible, for Philip is affirming that Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, is the long-awaited Messiah; that the Torah and the Old Testament Law of Moses had been in fact preparing Israel for this moment; that the prophecies that had spoken in the Old Testament of the coming of God were actually being fulfilled in the arrival of His son.
So much so that the Apostle Paul, in the passage I read from the Book of Romans, said that the righteousness of which the Law and the Prophets spoke has now come and his name is Jesus. And so, in the words of one of the great affirmations of the faith, Philip goes up to his friend Nathanael and he says: "The Messiah has come."
But what is fascinating about the story is the first thing that comes out of Nathanael's mouth. Rather than saying "Oh isn't this wonderful. Alleluia, Glory to God," Nathanael is cynical and skeptical. He says: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Well, you can imagine Philip's dismay. He was making this great announcement and what does he get but this cynical response from his friend.
Now, it's hard to know exactly what Nathanael was getting at. On the surface, it might just appear that he is saying: "Can anything good come from the neighbouring town of Nazareth? Are you trying to tell me, in other words, that the Messiah is someone who is from down the road, the son of Joseph? Don't be so absurd. Nothing good comes out of that town. I'm from Bethsaida. Bethsaida is where good things come from, not Nazareth."
But he might have been saying something deeper. It's very hard to know, on the surface. Very often when we hear things we don't get the full meaning, or the full importance of it.
This came home to me a couple of weeks ago when I was parking my car in one of the ministers' parking spaces here. As I got out of my car, there was a lady who had just pulled into another parking space. She came over to me with a most anxious look on her face and said: "I don't think that you should be parking there."
I stammered, not knowing what to say: "W-w-well, n-n-no I, I think it's okay."
She said: "Oh, no, no, no. I don't think you should be parking there, I really don't."
"Um, why?"
"Well, that's a reserved spot for the ministers."
So, realizing that this was going to be an embarrassing moment for her, I said: "Well, I would like to introduce myself to you. My name is the Reverend Andrew Stirling and I am one of the ministers."
She just stood there, stunned. She said: "You are young then, after all."
I was ecstatic, I think, but I'm still not quite sure what she meant. It's like when someone (and I don't know where I get these messages, you know, whether they just come from nowhere) but someone sent me a cartoon of two people talking about the minister. One lady asks the other one: "Is your minister ugly?"
Her friend replies: "I wouldn't say that, but he's perfectly suited for the radio."
Okay, who sent that to me? Who knows how to take such things?
Well, I'm sure Philip felt the same way. You know, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? He is making the gravest announcement of all time and his friend is cynical.
Well, Dr. Doug Hall, who in my opinion is one of, if not the greatest United Church theologians, suggests that there are three forms of cynicism:
The first form of cynicism is when people consciously abandon any sense of hope. They are those who come to the point where they believe that there is no underlying moral or spiritual foundation to life or to the world and so they just live in complete and absolute despair, believing that there is no hope whatsoever.
I read a very disturbing statistic this week: One of the causes, if not the leading cause, of death among middle-aged men in Canada is suicide. Now, I know that there are many reasons for people committing suicide. Some do it because of a chemical imbalance and a depression in the mind; some have an illness and cannot help themselves, and have to struggle with the torment of mental anguish. But there are others who, I do believe, have reached such a point of total cynicism and skepticism that, when faced with the challenges and the troubles of life, they feel there is no other way out, "no exit," to use the term from Jean-Paul Sartre. They reach the point of absolute despair because they have made a decision that there is no hope. That is the first group of cynics.
The second group are those who are repressive, namely, those who try to repress any sense of meaning in an attempt to deal with the problems of life. What they do is: they suppress their anxiety; they suppress their sense of hopelessness. As Freud has brought out many times, this is a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with life's problems. Rather than making a conscious decision that there is no hope, act as if there is no hope by repressing any thought or any search for the truth.
I think many people turn to alcohol initially because of that. I think many people turn to drugs. There was a very disturbing report just recently about the use of the drug Ecstasy: that the usage among young people has gone from two to nine per cent in the last seven years in our society; that there is sort of an abandonment of hope. But there is not an actual, overt abandonment. There is just this sense in which there is no meaning so we will repress any feelings that we have of meaninglessness.
I think that's why many people turn to vandalism; I think it's why many people, out of a sense of social despair, turn to crime; I think it's why people turn to consumerism, in the hope that they can blur any problems in their lives by making themselves feel better by doing something to accumulate. I think all of these are signs of a time when we are repressing the need to come to terms with the real and the difficult issues of life.
The third form of cynicism, Doug Hall says, is a positive one. It is when men and women are searching for realism in their lives; when they want real answers to real problems. So they are seeking answers to the questions that the human spirit needs the freedom to be able to ask; the difficult and the challenging questions. They want answers, and they want answers because they want their lives to be real. They don't just want to go along with the crowd or just go along with whatever the vox populi, or the voice of the people, may be. What they want is an answer to the existential questions with which they are struggling each and every day.
Doug Hall says this is the kind of skepticism that is positive.
Well there is no doubt that in this particular story of Nathanael, Nathanael is in the last category. When he is saying to Philip, "Is there any good that can come out of Nazareth?" he is not just taking a prima facie argument by Philip and accepting it. He wants to go deeper and Philip responds in the right way. Philip says to him: "What I want you to do, Nathanael, is to come and see, come and see for yourself."
The word in Greek that describes the word "to see" is ido. Ido means to behold, to know and to see for yourself. Philip is saying to him: "Look, there is nothing to fear here. I have nothing to fear. I want to introduce you to Jesus Christ and if you really have questions, if you are really cynical about this, I want you to come and see with your own eyes."
I think that the invitation of Philip is an invitation not only to Nathanael then, but to each and every one of us, now.
Many people within the Church in our current time have been brought up in what I call a "cultural Christian" setting. They have been brought up by virtue of their upbringing, or their family, or the accepted religious tradition of the time, to worship in a Christian setting and at times like this, to think that they should renew their faith or at least participate in something of a spiritual and a Christian nature.
The problem is that within our society, many of us have not come to terms with Jesus Christ himself. We have been carried along on a tide of cultural Christianity and we don't know our Bibles; we don't understand our faith; we don't practice it daily and passionately. Rather, we do it from a distance. When difficult questions come along, when people come along with other ideas with which we are not familiar, we don't know what to do with them.
Part of the Church's problem with the way that we respond to cynicism today is unbelief, or lack of belief. We simply don't know how to say: "This is what we believe."
Rather than engaging the Nathanaels of this world, who genuinely want to know the substance of the faith, we find ourselves barren and voiceless and empty, because we ourselves have not come to see, come to know. This Advent is a wonderful opportunity for each and every one of us to take the time to come and see, to come and know.
But there is another moment: That is when Philip finally gets Nathanael to see Jesus. Jesus greets Nathanael and says, "You are guileless; you are a good man; you are the fulfilment of Israel." And Nathanael again is full of doubt. He says: "How do you know me?"
Here is a radical moment of doubt. I think that there are many also who are not only cynical, but who have sincere doubts.
Bertrand Russell has a wonderful line. He said: "The problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Well, I'm not as cynical, actually, as Mr. Bertrand Russell, you might be pleased to hear, but I think that there are many intelligent people who genuinely have some doubts about the faith. When certain writers come along, they can feed on those doubts, rather than answer those doubts, and fulfil them. They lead people astray. But there is nothing wrong with having some doubts.
Some years ago I visited a church in Massachusetts when I was living there. They have kept a record of all the sermons that have ever been preached in that church. It's a wonderful place to go, because you can hear some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached in Massachusetts.
So I spent some time there, you can imagine, thinking I might find a few good stories that I could use somewhere else later. I read many of these sermons and ran across one by the famous Henry Drummond.
In 1887, in Northfield, Massachusetts, he delivered a sermon on doubt. He wrote the following, which I have kept for quite a while:
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can't believe, unbelief is won't believe; doubt is honesty, unbelief is obstinacy; doubt is looking for light itself and unbelief is content with darkness, loving darkness rather than light. That is what Christ attacked and attacked unsparingly. But for the intellectual questioning of Thomas and Philip and Nicodemus and Nathanael and the many others who came to him to have their great problems solved, he was respectful and generous and tolerant. But how did he meet their doubts?
The Church, as I have said, says: "Brand him."
Christ says: "Teach him."
When Thomas came to him, denied his resurrection and stood before him waiting for the scathing words and looking for his unbelief, they never came. Christ gave him a fact. He opened his arms and he showed him the holes of the nails.
The way, my friends, in which Jesus of Nazareth deals with those who are doubting is to offer them Himself. What the Church should offer is Christ Himself.
When all was said and done and Nathanael's conversation with Jesus was over, John records a wonderful phrase. Nathanael lights up and he says: "Rabbi, you are surely the Son of God. You are the King of Israel."
After all the debates, after all the cynicism, he comes to the point of faith. He comes to the point of faith because Jesus had the willingness to take him through it. Jesus had the grace to be able to stay with Nathanael through his cynicism and his doubts and when Nathanael says, "How do you know who I am?" Jesus answered him and said: "I saw you sitting under the fig tree. I know you."
That is why, my friends, I don't think we have ever anything to fear in the Christian faith from those who are cynical or those who have doubts, because we know in our heart of hearts that Christ knows what is in the heart of each individual, just as Christ knew what was in Nathanael's heart.
Rather than turning our back on people, we should be opening our faith up to them and saying: "Here is Jesus Christ. He already knows you."
Because it is precisely that openness to men and women, that sense of grace, that confidence in the person of Jesus Christ that causes a Nathanael at the very end to be able to say: "You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel."
And then Jesus, in the end, says something greater. He said: "In that case, Nathanael, you do not only say this because you have met me now, but I am going to tell you: When angels come down with clouds, just like Jacob and his ladder, then you will know even greater things. The moment that you say Credo - I believe - the moment you are willing to come face to face with me, it's at that very moment, then, that you will come, and know, and believe, and see, even greater things than you will see right now."
For the call of the Christian faith is not a call to say "I have made up my mind and I have my act together and I know everything now." The call is a call to discipleship, which says, "if you will follow me, then you will see even greater things than you see now."
That is the power of Christian hope and that is the invitation that we give the world with all its cynicism and with all its despairs, with all its doubts and confusions: Come and see Jesus and follow him and then you will see.
I have thought, as I said at the beginning, many times of Nathanael N'kosi Mgwaza. I have thought, when I have read the statistics, that one in three people in Southern Africa has AIDS (and this is World AIDS Week). When I think of the number of young men who have died through violence and other illnesses, I must admit, at times my heart has wondered what has happened to that child, with those brown eyes and that mahogany skin, that I baptized.
But there is one thing I do know, and there is one thing of which I am sure. It was the assurance that his parents had when they brought Nathanael N'kosi Mgwaza to be baptized. It is that, in Jesus Christ, He sees us sitting under the fig tree, He knows us by name, and He will call us even to greater things. To a world that often questions, often doubts, is often cynical and frequently despairs, there is no better news than that: Nathanael, God has given, and in His son, He has shown it.
Come and see. Amen