1 Samuel 3: 1-20
1 Cor. 6:12-20
* John 1:43-51
* Ps. 139:1-6, 13-18

"Come and See" Nathanael: A Narrative Sermon

Good morning!

I am Nathanael... some of you may call me Bartholomew... that's what Matthew, Mark and Luke call me.

Barthlomew is what you might call my last name... it means son of Tholmai; just like you might say your pastor's son is Jon, son of Randy. Some of you would call him Jon and others of you might just call him "Randy's son"... but you would all mean the same person, That's the way it was with "Nathanael" and "Barthlomew"... People were talking about me and it can get confusing a couple thousand years later, I understand.

Anyway, you can call me Nathanael, by my first name. I'm from Cana, which is about 10 miles north of Nazareth. Cana was to Nazareth, say, what Sweet Springs is to Concordia. And being so close, as they were, they were rivals in many ways. And I suspect that might be true here in town as well.
We had always been raised, I have to admit, to believe that the people from Nazareth were just not quite as good as the people from Cana, and it was a bit hard for me to accept, because of that, what my friend Philip had told me that day.

Philip and I went back a long way... we had been friends for years... and one thing we had in common was our hunger to know more about God. We searched the Scriptures together... especially looking for signs in the Old Testament, in the Law of Moses and in the prophets, about what the Messiah would be like who would come and deliver us, and rule over us.

That very day I was in my secret place... that special place where I always go when I want to be alone to pray and meditate upon the Word of God. You probably have a secret place too, I bet... Someplace that you go when you want to be alone. Maybe it's that special room in the house or that place in the park in that certain time of day when nobody's around. Your Pastor says it's the front porch swing for him, you might have your special place, where for me that special place is under my fig tree. Okay, so it's my special place all right, and that's where I like to be. It was like 25-foot long branches, they hung close to the ground, it provided shade form the heat of the day, it was a cool place, but yet it was camouflaged from the world around me. I could go there and nobody would know where I was and I could sit for hours and pray and read the book and learn more about God. It was, to me, the most peaceful place on earth.

That day as I prayed I meditated upon the Psalms of David, like I often did, and the promises of God. And as Philip and I always do, I prayed that God's chosen one would come. I had prayed it so often that I don't guess I really know what I was asking... You know what I mean, like I didn't really think it was gonna happen... I just prayed, "may your chosen one come..." . But it's like, maybe you do when you pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" you do it so many times that sometimes you just go through the motions and you're not really expecting His kingdom to come, and maybe you truly don't mean "Thy will be done" either. But I was praying that prayer, like I always do, "Show me your chosen one, may I be able to see your chosen one - deliver us Father."

And then later that day there came an urgent pounding on my door. It was Philip... he's excited and talking a mile a minute. "I found Him!" he says, "the one that we've been looking for, the one about whom Moses wrote in the law and about whom the Prophets spoke... Jesus, the son of Joseph, the Man from Nazareth."

"Nazareth?" I said, that's right next door... that's right under our nose... how could the Messiah be living next door and we not even know it? Besides... Nazareth?... is it possible that ANY good thing can come from Nazareth? Now we had all those Nazarene jokes, like, "How many Nazarene's does it take to screw in a light bulb?" and stuff you know. And now you're telling me that that's where the Messiah is coming from?

Philip just said, "Come and see for yourself. Don't take my word for it, just come and see."

He didn't argue with me... he didn't debate theology. You know, I doubt that many people have ever really been argued into God's family. I betcha about 85% of all people who come to Christ come through the work of friends... who come to know Him. Not from people like your Pastor, who preach sermons at them. But from people who know Him and have a relationship with Him and lovingly invite their neighbors to know Him too, who just say, "come and see." It's kind of like passing the flame from one torch to another torch. When His flame burns in one heart... everybody who comes near to that heart, catch flame too.

I suspect that happened here, in this congregation. I suspect some of you are here, because God has lit the heart of someone next to you, and you saw the difference.

"Well, how did you find Him?" I asked, as we were walking.

"To be quite honest," Philip said, "I didn't find him, He found me."

That's the most extraordinary thing of all, He said, "He came up to me, it was like he knew I was looking for God's chosen one... and he came up to me and said, "Follow me! I know where you're going, I know what you want to find. I'm going there. Follow me."

I look back on it now and it amazes me that God loves us so much that sometimes he actually seeks us out... the Word says, "He found Philip."

We should learn a lesson from this: sometimes we worry about our loved ones, whether they'll ever find God... we mustn't lose hope... it may well be that God... who leaves the ninety nine behind to go after that one little lost sheep, it may very well be that God will find them.

All the way to where Jesus was, Philip shared with me the stories of what Jesus had said and done... about the things that John the Baptist had said about him. Stories of Andrew and Peter, his brother, fishing, and how they had not caught anything all day long and then this Jesus came up and said, "Throw your net over there." and they catch this huge boat full of fish. How Peter and Andrew had dropped their nets and had followed Jesus. They're good stories, I thought, but that's a little bit too good. There's gotta be something wrong with this. Too good to be true.

But Philip wouldn't be denied... he just smiled and said, "Come and see!" He was determined to bring me to Jesus. My skepticism wouldn't deter him.

As we approached Jesus, He called out to me like I was an old friend, like He'd known me all my life. He said, "Well, look, there's a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile." It reminded me of what I'd been reading in the Psalms. The Psalmist says; "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."

I said, "We've never met, how could you possibly know me well enough to make such a judgment about me on first sight?"

And Jesus said, "I saw you when you under the fig tree."

My secret place! How could he know about my secret place???

The Psalmist's words come flooding over me: "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether."

Jesus knew me in the most secret places of my heart. He saw right through me. It was like he had overheard the deepest prayers from my soul.

He sees through you, too. He knows your darkest secrets, your deepest pain... He knows the things that you struggle with that the world cannot see... and even though he sees them, He loves you anyway.

I was overwhelmed. Later on, I saw the same response in that woman at the well, who ran to town to say, "Come and see the guy who told me everything there is to know about me". That's how I felt.

I said, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God, and the King of Israel! I'm a true Israelite, You're MY king... I serve you."

Jesus said, "You believe in me because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? Well, let me tell you what, you will see greater things than these! You will see heaven opened, just like your ancestor Jacob did, and you will see the angels of heaven ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Being able to read your heart is nothing, Nathanael, I will make a way for you to come to God's very presence. I'll be the Gateway to Heaven."

How marvelous the months were that followed: the hungry were fed, the sick were healed... even the dead were raised. And more and more I was convinced that He was indeed the one... the chosen one of God...

And then it happened... he had said it would, but we weren't ready to believe him, or understand him at the time...

We had that somber last meal together... his words were spoken with a sad sense of urgency, like he would never see us again. Like the final instructions someone would deliver on their deathbed. We sang a song together like we always did. Had a prayer. He took a few of the guys with him and He went to His secret place, in the garden.

That night is still a blur... the torches in the night, the angry voices, the kiss of betrayal...

Within hours... he was dead... and in the most horrible, shameful way... on a cross of all things. I thought, "How could this be? He was supposed to be the One. He was the Gateway to Heaven. How could He die?"

On the third day... Cleopas and I were talking about these things when we were walking on the road to Emmaus, and a stranger came up and joined us. He listed as we talked and he asked us what we were talking about, and we described to him that terrible day... when the chief priests and the rulers had delivered Jesus to be crucified and how, now, we'd even heard that His body had disappeared... And we didn't know what to make of that.

The stranger then began to remind us of the Scriptures of the Law of Moses and of the Prophets and to tell us all the things that happened... including the death of Jesus... were all necessary parts of God's plan to fulfill His glory. His insights were so clear... His knowledge so deep that we didn't want this guy to leave us and so when we got to town we said, "won't you stay here tonight with us in the village?" and he came in to eat with us, as we sat down at supper he picked up the bread and broke it and he blessed it... just the same way Our Lord had done just a couple nights before... and we realized it was Him. Our risen Lord! Risen from the dead... just as he said He would. We met together several times before he went to heaven. And one of his last words to us was

Follow me...

Follow me, He said.

That's what He said to Philip and I, and I followed him.

Now, after his resurrection he invited us again... keep following me, I am the gateway.

He IS the Chosen One... the Gateway to Heaven... the way, the Truth and the Life: And no one comes to the father but by Him. I'm willing to bet my very life on it. But don't take my word for it... Come and See! Come and see.

(Nathanael... aka Bartholomew... was, according to many historical sources and legends, one of the most well traveled and successful missionaries. It is believed that eventually he was beaten with clubs, skinned alive and crucified for his faith.)

Father, God, maybe we hear your voice calling us. Maybe we didn't recognize it, like Samuel did so many times when you called to him. There's been that little tug in our heart, that little twinge in our conscience and we didn't know what it was. Something telling us we need to change... we need to make right something.

Someone asking us to follow. Follow me. As we hear your voice speaking to us today Lord, as we hear your challenge to us to keep following to follow you every day, to live every day in such a way that will bring credit to your name, help us to hear your voice and to respond. Help us to invite our loved ones around us as we walk in that journey. Not in condensention, not in superiority, but in love. Help us to invite them to come and see as well. To share the flame that's burning in our hearts. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.