JOHN 1: 43-51
Jottings on John…Epiphany 2…Revised 2018
The ‘next day’ crops up in vv. 29 & 35 & now here it is again in v. 43. Ch.2 begins with ‘On the third day’. Is John simply sketching a time line, or is he conveying a sense of urgency (like MK with his persistent, ‘immediately’)? In Church circles, doing things the ‘next day’, or even ‘on the third day’ may result in accusations of irreverent haste! Maybe this is about the distinctions between God’s kairos & our chronos? In v.41 Andrew goes off & brings his brother, Simon, to meet Jesus. Now Philip brings Nathaniel (Bartholomew?) JE appears to be highlighting some urgency in bringing family & other contacts to Jesus. Without being dismissive of anyone!
The fig tree in vv.48-50 appeals to me as an icon here. In a corner of our back garden is a large feral fig tree. Many years ago some bird drops a seed in that spot. For most of those intervening years, though our tree grows & grows, it produces not one fig! A few years ago we have a tree expert inspect it with a view to taking it out; his verdict is, “Let it be; one day it may come good”. No such thing! A couple of years later we call in another tree-man. The outcome? “Give it another year or two just in case”. The next year our fig does actually produce some fruit. We begin to get excited. Dry as chips! Totally inedible! Five years ago when the land behind us sells for a new estate, our fig tree comes into its own, but not in the way we’d hoped. When it’s in leaf, which is most of the year, it gives us & the folk behind us privacy from each other!
Would you believe, three years ago, after producing its usual inedible crop, lo & behold our fig produces a 2nd crop of small, but edible figs. And it’s been doing that since. God is good! Even if sometimes we have to wait for things to happen in God’s time rather than ours!
What does all this have to do with our passage? Try this: Nat is in the 1st instance dismissive of Jesus simply because He comes from Nazareth! “Can anything good come from that place?” But Jesus is not in return dismissive of Nat, even though he comes from up the same way! Jesus instead discerns Nat’s ‘a true Israelite, who hasn’t a trace of deceit in him’ & tells him so! Nat doesn’t go all, “Shucks I’m not really that good!” He takes Jesus & what He says at face value by responding, in some puzzlement, “How do you know me?” What does Jesus respond? “I saw U under the fig tree…” This incident related by JE points to the importance of making right judgments based on godly discernment & personal experience, not on being dismissive of people or situations. Nat immediately - not the next day or even on the third day - says to Jesus, “Rabbi, You’re God’s Son; You’re the King of Israel!”
That fig tree of long ago, & our fig tree of today are both of them icons inviting us in to discern people & opportunities, lest we dismiss God & the God in them. God can make not only unpromising fig trees fruitful, but even unpromising human beings like us.
