The Power of Being Known

When Chris and I got married, some 23 years ago now during our first year of marriage, people would ask me, “What have you learned about him?” At first I would just respond, hmmm? But it happened so frequently, I felt like I had to come up with an answer, but I never did. I mean, what do you think I have learned about him that he would like for me to share publicly? Sure, I have learned things about him over the 23 years. I am sure he has learned some things about me, too, so I’ll not risk sharing! The people we live with, the people we work with, the people we spend the most time with…they know us better than the people we know in passing. But even our parents, even with 4D ultrasounds and baby monitors and Life360 Apps, don’t know us as well as God.

The Psalmist says, “You even know where I am and where I am going. You know when I lie down and when I stand up. You even completely know what I am going to say before I even think it.” God is more intimately close to you than your next breath. I had a friend, I say had because he has passed away now, not because we are no longer friends. I had a friend who used to refuse Communion. He truly believed he was unworthy and therefore should not take it. Yet, the very core of our celebration as we receive Communion is that we are NOT worthy, and yet invited. Pastor and Harvard theology professor Peter Gomes said about the Gospel being Good news that, “The news is not that we are worse than we think, it is that we are better than we think, and better than we deserve to be. Why? Because at the very bottom of the whole enterprise is the indisputable fact that we are created, made, formed, invented, patented in the image of goodness itself….People may take everything away from you…but they cannot take away from you the fact that you are a child of God and bear the impression of God in your very soul.” The Good News of the Gospel is not just that God knows everything about us, and still loves us, it is that God still sees God’s dream for us, the hope God had when God envisioned us even before we were two cells beginning to duplicate in our mother’s womb, God still sees the image of God in us.

But Jesus didn’t know Nathaniel…well, maybe I should say they hadn’t met. And Nathaniel hadn’t heard of Jesus. In fact, Jesus was just starting his ministry. John had been baptizing people in the Jordan River, and his ministry had grown to the point that the Temple authorities had sent a group out to investigate – to find out who he was. And John had assured that he was not the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet. But then, when they asked him why he was baptizing, he indicated that there would be one coming after him, and in fact that he was standing right there among them on the river bank.

It was the next day that Jesus stepped forward and was baptized by John. And the following day that Andrew, who had been a disciple of John, met Jesus and then went and found his brother, Simon Peter and told him, “We have found the Messiah.” The next day, two days after his baptism, Jesus decided to go to Galilee and when they got there, they found Philip, who was from the same town as Andrew and Simon Peter. And Philip goes to tell Nathaniel that they have found the Messiah. Nathaniel is a skeptic, though, “Really, you think you’ve found the Messiah and he’s from Nazareth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But when Philip just responds with “Come and see,” he goes back with him.

As they are approaching, Jesus greets Nathaniel with what might seem to us a strange greeting, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathaniel would have immediately heard Jesus quoting back to him the hymn that must have spoken his heart’s longing. It’d be like someone seeing you approaching and saying, “You once were blind, but now you see” or “His eye is on the sparrow and you know he watches you” or a line from your favorite hymn. The hymn is Psalm 32. It is a Psalm about guilt and sin, about confession, and about God’s forgiveness. This is what it says:

Blessed is the one whose sins are forgiven.
Blessed is the one whose sin the LORD does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.
When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Nathaniel has been on a journey. We don’t know what he was involved with, or what sin weighed heavy on him, but this hymn resonates with him. He knows the relief of admitting his shadows, of stopping hiding his sins. He knows the blessing of forgiveness and of a clear conscience, of having no deception, no lies, no deceit in his spirit. And before Philip even introduces him to Jesus, he says, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like you!”

“Where did you get to know me?” “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” We might not catch the reference, but Nathaniel did. It is a reference to the prophet Micah, who spoke God’s promise of a hopeful day when “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. they will each sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one will make them afraid again.” Sitting under the fig tree meant that you were at peace.

Jesus knows Nathaniel. And it is in being known that Nathaniel realizes who Jesus is. “Teacher, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Interestingly, even though Jesus knows everything about Nathaniel, we know very little. After the resurrection, he is one of the disciples who went fishing and then met Jesus the next morning as they came in to the shore. That’s it. He’s not a hugely important figure. He doesn’t emerge as a major figure in history or in the church. As I read commentaries on John, I was struck by the desire to explain how he might have been someone else…someone more important…and Nathaniel was a second name. Maybe he was, or maybe the important message for you and me is that he wasn’t.

Jesus didn’t seek him out. Philip did. – *as an aside* – I do think that this is one of the most important lessons in evangelism. Philip didn’t say to Jesus, “You are better at talking about God” or “You have more answers than I do.” And Philip didn’t try to convince Nathaniel either. He simply shared that what he believed, “We have found him, the one Moses and the prophets talked about, and this is who he is – Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” And when Nathaniel was skeptical, Philip just said, “Come and see.”

And Jesus knew him, already. Not because of who Nathaniel had been or who he would be, but because of who Jesus was – the Word made flesh, the Word who had spoken him into being, the Word who had breathed life into him, who knew his thoughts before they were formed into words, who knew his heart, and who invited him to be his disciple.

And Jesus knows you. Jesus knows you – better than your spouse, your children, your parents, your best friend – Jesus knows the real you – with all your flaws and all your struggles and with God’s image planted deep inside – and Jesus invites you to be his disciple.