Last summer when Jill and I were in Iceland, our very Viking-like guide, Stefán, carried on and on about Icelandic chocolate treats. They were the best in the world, Stefán repeatedly claimed, and at one stop he purchased a bag of chocolates for us to try. They looked like little mini Twix bars, except, truly, the chocolate was extra creamy and succulent. My mouth started to water, and Jill and I popped a chocolate into our mouths with a smile and bit down. At the same instant, the smiles on our faces shifted, first to confusion and then to revulsion. Jill gagged and spit her candy into her hand. I choked mine down. What we’d learned is that the secret ingredient, the special something in the middle of Icelandic chocolate, is a thick plug of the densest, most potent, home-grown black licorice imaginable. Now, you may enjoy licorice. I do not. Neither do many others. I perused the internet for descriptions of the taste of black licorice; here’s what I found: In answer to the question, “What does licorice taste like?” folks responded, “Like chewy black death,” “a mouthful of carpenter ants,” and “the most delicious poison you’ll ever try.”[i] Icelandic licorice was infinitely more putridly-strong than anything I’ve encountered here. And it was juxtaposed with creamy milk chocolate. It was horrific, and it coined a new phrase that Jill and I thereafter giggled under our breath: “Can anything good come out of Iceland?”
This is the phrase Nathanael utters when his friend Philip approaches him and shares with Nathanael the news that he has encountered Jesus. Nathanael scoffs, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” What’s this reaction all about?
First of all, it’s worth noting (as we learn much later in John’s Gospel[ii]) that Nathanael is from Cana in Galilee, the next village over from Nazareth. Whereas Cana was a long-established town, Nazareth was not. Nazareth was a new bend in the road, settled by folks from the South of the country with tax incentives from King Herod. Nazarenes were poor and—even more importantly—they weren’t from around there. We can imagine how people from the surrounding towns might look upon them. We all understand civic rivalry and the one-upmanship (sometimes light-hearted, sometimes severe) that comes with it. It’s not unlike how the sophisticated folks from Paragould and Jonesboro in my native part of the state might scoffingly look upon people from the little the bend in the road community halfway between our burgs: “Can anything good come out of Goobertown?”
But there’s something else going on here when Nathanael says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” I believe. In twenty years of priesthood and fifty-one years of life, I’ve observed a thing or two about human behavior. And perhaps the most consistent element is that virtually every expression of disdain for another person is truly, deep down in the recesses of one’s soul, disdain for oneself. Whether through simmering cynicism that belittles others with biting jokes and sneering ridicule, or else through more explosive lashing out that sometimes does violence in households and the community, the deep, interior motive is virtually always some subconscious self-loathing.
So many of us don’t like ourselves. And though we deflect by saying of the other, “How can anything good come out of Nazareth?” what we really fear is, “How can anything good come out of me?” We may present to the world like premium chocolate, but we suspect that in our core we are that plug of pungent licorice.
This is what’s going on in John’s Gospel this morning. This is what’s behind Nathanael’s reaction. And how does Jesus respond? Though we refer to these biblical passages where Jesus first encounters his disciples as “call stories,” John doesn’t actually use that term. We see in verse forty-three today that Jesus doesn’t call Philip, as if beckoning Philip from afar; Jesus finds him.[iii] And Jesus finds Nathanael. Jesus seeks and approaches these men, and Jesus sees through to the very heart of them, as Jesus does all people. He tells Nathanael who Nathanael is in Jesus’ eyes. And only after Jesus has found these two does he invite them to follow.
This is a variation on the same theme we see in the Old Testament this morning, except here the subject is not a weather worn Galilean like Nathaneal but Samuel, a child committed to service in the Shiloh temple. It’s important to note that in the social economy of the ancient world, children were not regarded as full persons. (In our own society so centered on children, this may seem foreign, but lest we forget, scarcely a century ago at the height of the industrial revolution, children as young as eight or ten were used and used up in factories and coal mines like cogs in a wheel with no regard for their well-being.[iv] Children as invaluable is a most recent phenomenon in human history.)
The child Samuel is what biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan would call “a nuisance and a nobody.”[v] Samuel is someone who doesn’t register, doesn’t count, isn’t worth considering. Many of us know what that feels like, too. In Samuel’s young life, we hope that he hasn’t yet learned self-loathing like Nathaneal, but undoubtedly he already detects that his existence doesn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. And yet, not once, not twice, but three times and four God finds Samuel. God seeks out and approaches not Eli the judge and priest, but the one who is to society a nuisance and a nobody. God finds Samuel.
Perhaps nowhere recently have the feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness been examined more effectively than in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. One character so dislikes himself that he disdains and lashes out at all others. Another experiences himself as completely unseen and insignificant. The play captures the dual alienation that marks our human experience in a decidedly contemporary way. And the redemption song that punctuates Dear Evan Hansen is titled “You Will Be Found.” It begins somberly, “Have you ever felt like nobody was there? Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere? Have you ever felt like you could disappear? Like you could fall, and no one would hear?” The cast then sings out in hope, “Even when the dark comes crashing through; When you need a friend to carry you; And when you’re broken on the ground, you will be found! So let the sun come streaming in; because you’ll reach up and rise again. Lift your head and look around. You will be found!”
That is the very heart of the Good News. Like Philip, Nathanael, and Samuel, by Jesus we are found. Jesus finds us, and approaches us, and sees into our souls. Deflection fails; pretense sheds; attempts to hide who we fear we are falter. By Jesus, we are found.
You’ve heard me mention my grandmother, Boo, who gifted me with so much in my life. Of all Boo’s gifts, the most important was that when she looked at me, Boo saw not who I was in that moment or season of my life, and certainly not the vision I had of myself, but the version of me that God created me to be. She saw in me someone worthy of love, someone of infinite value, someone who just might be able to follow Jesus. And when Boo looked at me, I believed her.
That is how Jesus finds Philip and Nathanael today. That is how God finds Samuel. That is how Christ finds us. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come from you and me? Jesus looks upon us and knows exactly who we have been, and who we are, and who God creates us to be. And Jesus finds us infinitely valuable; and loveable; and he calls us to come and see what life can be like if we will but follow. Lift your head and look around. You are found!
[i] https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-describe-the-taste-of-black-licorice
[ii] John 21:2
[iii] See Frederick Dale Bruner’s The Gospel of John: A Commentary, pg. 107.
[iv] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm#:~:text
[v] See John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, Chapter 3, “A Kingdom of Nuisances and Nobodies.”
God in the Midst of the City 