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“You don’t get vocations round here.”
Underneath was a second caption: That’s what they said in Nazareth.
Whenever I read today’s Gospel where Philip seeks out his friend Nathanael and, excitedly, tells him about meeting Jesus, I watch Nathanael pouring cold water over his enthusiasm. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Those familiar with the Winnie-the-Pooh stories might cast Nathaniel in the role of Eeyore, the donkey whose role in life seems to be forever gloomy. Eeyore’s attitude is summed up in quite an early encounter with Pooh who wishes him good morning.
Good morning, Pooh Bear, said Eeyore gloomily if it is a good morning, which I doubt. Eeyore greets life in the negative. With front feet well apart, head on one side, he thought about things, sometimes saying sadly to himself,
Why? And sometimes he thought, Wherefore?
And sometimes he thought Inasmuch as which, and sometimes he didn’t
quite know what he was thinking about.
Life was one long gloom as it often is for those
who persist in having a negative approach to it.
So Nathaniel, in his little comment about Nazareth being a rather
unpromising place could well be an Eeyore character.
There is a bit more to it than that. Nazareth wasn’t expected to produce very much. By comparison with neighbouring Cana it was a bit of a mediocre kind of place. Bethlehem is different being the city of David but a tiny village producing anything like the Messiah was just beyond the realms of comprehension. It’s a bit like standing in the middle of West Ham football stadium and being told that the champions will be coming from Enfield Town this year. Ridiculous.
So Nathanael is the champion of negative thinking and the dismissive sceptic.
Philip, on the other hand, is the opposite and he refuses to let Nathanael get him down. This may be because his friendship has taught him that Nathanael always reacts that way and he wouldn’t be true to his Eeyore-like nature if he behaved differently. So Philip simply says: Come and See. He does so because he also has confidence that when Nathanael meets Jesus, his attitude will change.
One of the characteristics of Evangelism – certainly in the history of missionary work – has been the power of the Word to convert. Charismatic speakers in a long line from John Wesley through to Billy Graham and the power evangelists of today, have, it must be said, a way with Words. The power of these words are two-fold. They are rooted in the Bible (if not always in the Gospel) and they are spoken with personal conviction. You can only proclaim Jesus Christ if you have a living and knowledgeable relationship with Jesus Christ. This is what made John Wesley and others like him such effective convertors of souls.
But not all Evangelism is like that and indeed, much of it isn’t like that at all. Teaching about Jesus Christ often comes after a significant experience of him – and that significant experience can often, though not always, be through someone sharing their own experience of him. An old saying is that religion is caught, not taught – though my experience would change that to religion is caught then taught. Of course I base this on my own personal experience which produced a conversion of heart that required no human intervention. God seemed to decide that I would be most convinced if he dealt with me directly but that encounter then led to a thirst for more knowledge. I didn’t need more experiences of a religious kind (though they have happened). After all if God has sat down beside you, you can’t get closer to him than that this side of heaven. What I needed – and still need – is to make sense of the experience by getting to know God better through prayer; through a deeper study of the Gospel and other biblical writings; through reflection which is, I suppose, what Theology means; and through learning from the experience of others.
Some Evangelism – and I would argue, a high proportion of it – is when we share the Good News we have experienced with others who are also experiencing something of God’s presence in their lives. People who have felt the hand of his love on their hearts and, as in the conversion experience of the great orator, John Wesley, found that heart strangely warmed. You see, even Wesley wasn’t converted by Words as such but by an experience of that thing we call grace and which might also be called the energy of God’s love.
Bishop Stephen, in the discussion paper beginning to be studied at all levels of our Diocesan life – the one called Transforming Presence – argues that effective evangelism is rooted in the absolute belief that God is the true Evangelist and we share in His work. Or as it has been put by Rowan Williams and others – it’s about seeing what God is doing and joining in. Effective Evangelism must also include a commitment to the ministry of Nurture which Bishop Stephen describes as that ministry which enables people who are enquiring about Christian faith to find out more. That’s something that Piers and Ros are doing well. Effective evangelism must also include Challenge because Christianity is not a comfortable religion – what Russian Communism derided as being the Opiate of the people. Christianity does not drug us out of reality nor does it provide an anaesthetic from the daily struggle of life. It helps us to engage life with more reality. Part of that challenge is to change perceptions of Jesus, even of the Church, and not forgetting the challenge to change the perceptions people may have of themselves.
Eeyore suffered from one big perception of himself – that he was worthless and unloveable (though, in the strange way of things, this made readers love him all the more.) He would stand by the bank of the stream and look at himself in the water and say Pathetic about himself. Then he would cross the stream to the other side and look again into the water. As I thought, he said, No better from this side. But nobody minds, nobody cares. Pathetic, that’s what it is.
Can anything good come out of Nazareth? can sometimes mean – can anything good come out of me. And Philip responds to all this with his simple Evangelism. Come and See. Those familiar with the passage which precedes this one in St. John’s Gospel, will remember that Andrew and another disciple (possibly Philip) had encountered Jesus and asked him where he was staying. Come and See he replied. Come and See says Philip. Those three words changed Nathanael’s life.
Or rather what happened because of them, because coming to Jesus it is Jesus who takes the initiative. Here comes a man of integrity, a truth living man. Nathanael is taken aback. Where does this insight come from?
Those who are watching the current series of Sherlock Holmes stories will be amazed by the power of simple deduction. Seemingly insignificant things are filled with new meaning. Sitting under a fig tree – a prayer position and under a plant that stands for peace. Here is a seeker not only after truth but after God – and, quite possibly, one who wants to look beyond the scepticism, the negativity to a bigger vision – a more positive way of living. And Jesus, instinctively or divinely, knows this.
What is strange is the rapid conversion of the heart and mind. One minute Jesus is a waster from Nazareth – suddenly the Son of God, the King of Israel. No half-measures then. So, says Jesus, your heart is enlarged, your vision widened because I saw you under a fig tree. There’s a lot more to come. Heaven opened, angels ascending, descending – the big picture. The full glory.
How much we need that bigger picture; that deeper experience; that sense of the hugeness of the Gospel and its amazing message. With Nathanael, we need our faith reviving and we need to get rid of the negativity – those petty concerns for the ridiculous. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to only listen with my Right ear. I will only hear praise and thanksgiving about God, about each other. The left ear is closed to all negative thinking. And I’m going to use the delete button more often when negative e-mails come in on the computer.
We can so easily let people drag us down. We can stop believing in the possible – even the impossible – because we don’t know that real good can come, after all from Nazareth and sweep us towards an Eternal, Kingdom view of things. I hear so much criticism about the church, about people, about how little we can achieve. We’ve got to stop dragging the Gospel down to our own level in which we say that’s it. Course it’s not. There’s a Kingdom, a Glory, an Eternity, out their waiting to be embraced – and it should be embraced here – WITHIN – within our Church life; within each other; within hearts that are on fire with love for God.
And it all changes when we refuse to be Eeyores and sceptical Nathanaels. When we embrace the efforts of each other to share our experience of the Good News and bury anything which prevents that flourishing.
Come & See says Philip
You will see greater things.
Accept both those invitations so that, in 2012, we as a Church can grow away from our tiny expectations in order to fulfil God’s great one’s of us. Bury the Eeyore within and embrace the Lord who waits to lead us outwards and onwards in a faith adventure that is truly amazing. But don’t be inspired by these words. They are nothing if we don’t fulfil them together in deeds.
God is continually converting those who desire him to do so. May that be you!