Lectionary Commentaries for January 14, 2024
Second Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)

Nathanael’s preconceptions could have kept him from seeing the Son of God. But he was given more than he could have imagined when Jesus stuck around and a friend invited Nathanael to “come and see.”

Origins and expectations

The question of Jesus’ origins permeates John’s Gospel, beginning with a soaring prologue that corresponds to the grand expectations many people had for God’s anointed one.¹ Surely, they thought, he would appear in or near the great city of Jerusalem, site of political and economic power, religious authority, and God’s own dwelling place in the Temple.

If not there, then at least a place to display holy grandeur or kingly authority—in today’s terms, perhaps leading a parade in New York City or a March on Washington, streaming on multiple digital platforms or preaching from the center of a massive stadium, surrounded by gilded props and supported by an entourage of beautiful people.

Given such a context of expectation, one might forgive Nathanael for sounding like a disgruntled teenager, reflecting the prevailing view (see John 7:41, 52) while muttering derisive comments under his breath. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Who would imagine that God’s anointed one could come from a place so distant from the center of power? A messiah from Nazareth, in Galilee?! Inconceivable!

Even today some are incredulous to hear that Christ may be found in a country store or corner bodega, or a dementia unit, a hospital room, beneath the rubble of a bombed-out city, or even lifted up on a Roman cross—places where Christ can indeed be found. God is not obliged to be confined by Nathanael’s (or our) limiting expectations. Indeed, it is the central claim of John’s Gospel that “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).

What’s up with Nazareth?

Recent excavations of Nazareth suggest a thoroughly Jewish population, with evidence of quarries nearby and of craftspersons working in the village. Based on material finds around the site, the community was probably religiously conservative, particularly compared to the more cosmopolitan (but still overwhelmingly Jewish) city of Sepphoris, a couple of hours’ walk away.²

None of this fully explains Nathanael’s scorn, and we know little about him that could help to put his remark into narrative context. He is not included in any Synoptic lists of the Twelve. He appears nowhere else in the New Testament, except in this episode and again after the resurrection, where we learn that his hometown is Cana and that Jesus appeared to him and several other disciples while they were fishing (John 21:2).

The silence in the text invites us to imagine possibilities for Nathanael’s negativity. Was there a rivalry between Cana and Nazareth, as some commentators suggest, something like the divisions that often occur in congregations between long-time and new members, commitments to external outreach versus internal care, “red” and “blue” political views, et cetera?

Whatever the genesis of Nathanael’s opinion, neither Jesus nor Philip argues with him. Instead, Jesus remains nearby and Philip simply invites Nathanael to “come and see”—apparently, not a bad evangelism strategy.

Slow to believe

Nathanael’s skepticism foreshadows several episodes in John where people come to Jesus, on the way to believing, with questions firmly in tow.

Nicodemus approaches at night (frightened, perhaps, by the implication of his questions?) and shares his confusion that Jesus’ ability to do signs must mean that Jesus comes from God, and how could such a thing be (John 3:1-10)?! Later, however, he defends Jesus (even if obliquely) to the temple police, chief priests, and Pharisees (7:50-52), and he joins Joseph of Arimathea in giving Jesus a proper burial after the crucifixion (19:39-42).

The woman at the well returns to her village after meeting Jesus and wonders aloud, “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” Her question leads many to follow him (4:28-29).

Even Thomas, who had proclaimed his willingness to die with Jesus before the final entry into Jerusalem (11:16), demands proof of resurrection just as his fellow disciples received. Seeing the evidence, Thomas confesses, “My Lord and my God!” (20:24-28).

In the narrative world of John’s Gospel, a questioning faith may well lead to believing that Jesus is the one who has come from God.

What God has given

When Jesus refers to Nathanael as an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, the referent is Old Testament stories about Jacob, namesake of Israel, known for using deception and guile in order to grasp after the things he desires. Nathanael’s frankness stands in contrast to Jacob’s duplicity.

However, Nathanael’s declaration that Jesus is Son of God and King of Israel echoes Jacob’s amazement following a dream about angels ascending and descending upon a ladder to heaven—a dream that sounds very much like the image Jesus paints at the end of our passage (Genesis 28:12, 16; John 1:51). Jacob exclaims, in words we might also imagine coming from Nathanael, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”

Nathanael’s name in Hebrew means “God has given,” a fitting appellation.³ Jesus has given Nathanael a promise to see “greater things than these”—greater than his skepticism, greater than Jesus’ prescient knowledge, greater even than the titles he has attached to Jesus.

Tomorrow (in narrative time) at a wedding in his hometown of Cana in Galilee, Nathanael and others will be given the first of Jesus’ signs, through which Jesus “revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11).

Come and see.

Notes

1. Notice the piling up of titles in the call of the disciples narrated in John 1:35–51: Lamb of God (1:36); Rabbi (1:38, 49); Messiah (1:41); Son of God (1:49); King of Israel (1:49); and “the one about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (1:45). As John’s narrative develops, however, it is clear that the disciples’ ability to name titles does not mean they understand who Jesus is, at least not until after the resurrection.
2. Ken Dark, Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and Its Hinterland (London: Routledge, 2021).
3. See also John 17:24: ‘Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

It is not a good time for God’s people. The word of the Lord is rare, and there are not many visions (1 Samuel 3:1). Faith has grown cold. The older, long-accepted version of faith can no longer see clearly. Its eyes are dim (3:2). It fails to restrain its children as they devour God’s people (3:13). And since it can no longer hear the Lord, it is completely dependent on overhearing a word to a boy who does not yet even know the Lord (3:16-18 and 3:7).

Today is not the only day that our faith communities have seemed blind, deaf, hapless, and without resources.

Eli comes off badly in this passage. He is faith’s yesterday. He has an important office in God’s temple, an illustrious role among God’s people. Yet his fate will be so catastrophic as to cause the ears of all who hear it to tingle (3:11). Punishment for his house forever. Sin that cannot be forgiven. No expiation or sacrifice or offering can undo it (3:14). There is no future for Eli or his family—only death.

And you thought our churches were having a hard day?

There are some important warnings here for God’s people. As important, as safe, as preeminent in God’s eyes as we may think ourselves to be, we can be nudged aside in a moment. This is not just a warning for clergy. And it’s certainly not a warning for clergy or other religious types to discipline our children more harshly. It’s a warning for the church as a whole.

Sure, God has chosen us, invited us into God’s company, given us holy work to do. And God can undo those invitations as quickly as God made them in the first place. The house of Eli had been promised God’s favor “forever” (2:30). Now it is promised God’s opprobrium “forever” (3:14). Now, be careful with these curses and their everlasting timelines. God does have a soft spot for those who are excluded, even if they were once God’s favored and favorite. But the warning is against religious arrogance. In this story, Samuel is an outsider (3:7), Eli an insider. Epiphany shows that those roles can be reversed.

But Eli is not entirely useless in God’s saving work. It may take him a comedic three tries, but he does know what to do when God calls. He at least has a dim memory of when this sort of thing used to happen in this house (3:8). Tell God, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (3:9). Samuel does just as Eli says, and then hears the word that makes ears tingle. Eli’s day may be over, his house finally done with making a hash of God’s calling. But he knows what to do when God turns back up in God’s house.

As one who does not often receive God’s word, Eli also knows what to do when someone else has. He berates poor Samuel into telling him exactly what God said. He even seems to have a premonition that the news might not be good: “May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me” (3:17). Even if news from God might be bad for us, it is still news from God. It must be proclaimed. Eli also knows what to do when he’s heard from the Lord. “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him” (3:18). One could hear this as a passive word of resignation. Or one could hear it as a faithful response to a word from God, whatever its content—like the response Job gives to his unbearable suffering (Job 1:21).

I take this from Old Testament scholar Stephen Chapman: Eli’s day might be past, but he still has a role to play in God’s economy.¹ He knows what to do when God appears. He knows to ask the Lord to speak, and how to listen himself. He blesses the Lord even when the news is bad for him and his house personally. Samuel’s day is coming. His youth and newness show that God has not forgotten his people, Israel. God will raise up faithfulness in the debris of human unfaithfulness.

And in a religious world where we often cling to the husks of things long dead, this is good news. There is a new generation coming. God will not let its words fall to the ground (3:19). The best days of God’s people are not behind us, with the exodus and Sinai and the promised land. No, the best are still to come, with yet more prophets, and an entire world redeemed. God’s people cannot be known for our nostalgia. We must be known for our hope.²

And yet, there is something to Eli, to the temple, to his office, to all these matters institutional, that is still essential. Such institutional fixtures know how to distinguish between a word from God and any old human word. They know what to do when that word comes. And they know to praise God’s name, however badly something may affect us and our family. Eli needs Samuel: there is no future without him. But Samuel also needs Eli: he would still be popping out of bed and asking confused respondents “What do you want?” if Eli hadn’t noticed that the address was emanating from another plane.

The church, like the synagogue, is one of the only places in our culture where the young and the old make our lives together. Where else in our culture do people from four different generations entangle themselves in mutually dependent relationships without sharing the same last names? I’ve wanted to weep when I see parishioners sit together with great-grandparents or children, often unaware what a treasure they have. God is the God of all generations, ancient and new, and God needs us all, together, to make this the world God dreams about.

Notes

1. Stephen Chapman, 1 Samuel as Christian Scripture: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).
2. I’m echoing here Samuel Wells in A Future That’s Bigger Than the Past: Towards the Renewal of the Church (Norwich: Canterbury, 2019).

There are lengthy debates in academia about the origin of the modern notion of the “self.” The notion seems so natural to us that we can hardly imagine any alternative. But the notion of the “I,” relatively independent of family or faith of origin, patch of ground on earth, history, or anything other than one’s own consumer preferences, is a relatively new thing in human history. Charles Taylor, the great Canadian philosopher, blames St. Augustine, with his invention of the autobiography, the Confessions. Taylor might be the most learned human being drawing breath, so disagreeing with him is fraught. But I (!) just wonder whether the origin of the “I” might be much older: in the Psalms of Israel.

Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved of the Psalms. You might have it in needlepoint somewhere. “You hem me in, behind and before”(verse 5). “Wonderful are your works” (verse 14). “It was you who formed my inward parts” (verse 13). “How weighty are your thoughts of me, O God! … they are more than the sand” (verses 17–18). It does not take too much sentimentality to come to tears in response to such notions of God. 

But there is something else here too, perhaps missed because of this psalm’s iconic status. There is a note of menace. Go ahead: try and escape a God like this. You can’t. Anywhere you go, even to the depth of hell itself, and God is already there (139:8). There is nowhere far enough away to escape from God, no darkness thick enough to hide (139:9–10 and 11–12). St. Augustine comes to the only rational conclusion: the only possible way to escape from God is to run toward God. Only then will divine pursuit stop and will you find mercy.

The psalm reminds this parent of the Margaret Wise Brown children’s book The Runaway Bunny. A baby bunny tells his mother he plans to run away. But she can go to extraordinary lengths to find him. If he becomes a fish in a stream, she can become a fisher and fish for him. If he becomes a bird, she will be a tree in which he can land. If he becomes a little boy, she will be the maternal presence he comes home to. 

“Shucks,” he concludes. “I might just as well stay here and be your little bunny.” 

“Have a carrot,” says his mother. 

Parents will go to any lengths out of love for their child. Likewise, there is nowhere to escape God. Except God’s own arms of kindness.

The psalmist sees God’s presence not only after our lives—where biblical faiths tend to linger in thoughts of the afterlife—but before our lives. God had thought of us before we ever were, keeping careful custody over the process of our assembly in our mother’s wombs (verse 13). Biblical scholar Pat Miller notes that most of us don’t worry too much about “where” we were before we were born. Similarly, the psalmist insists, we should have no worry about “where” we will be after we are dead. God, the only eternal one, has both “times” in steady hands.

So far, so edifying. But the psalm dips into the genuinely fantastic, going deeper than the merely edifying. We preachers should take note: our job is also to reenchant the world. Two fabulous notions are present in our verses (at least). The language of our “unformed substance” came, in Jewish tradition, to be understood as the golem, an unformed being. J.R.R. Tolkien took this notion for his character of Golem, a hobbit so enticed by the ring of power that he becomes a sort of shadow self, able to live to extreme old age, but only as a hollowed-out shell of a creature. 

Another verse here speaks of the “book” in which all the psalmist’s days are written before one of them even exists (verse 16). The psalmist’s plain proposal that there “is” such a volume reminds me of a friend’s riposte to the hymn “There is a fountain full of blood”: “Is there? Really?!” All the history of demythologization in modern, liberal churches traces from that incredulous question: “Really?!”

The psalm replies, simply: “Really.” We might put it this way: God’s book, in which our days are written, is more “real” than any book you or I have experienced, more “there” than any book we can hold in our hands. These objects familiar to us are the derivative ones; God’s own is the archetype. This is no claim about predestination—a rare Augustinian doctrine of which I am not overly fond. It is a statement of comfort. 

God’s menacing, all-knowing care hovers over every microsecond of our lives, every molecule in creation. God is so perpetually present we cannot even speak of God in past or future tenses. God simply is, without change or derivation. The psalmist peers deep into this reality … and is terrified. But keeping on pondering, he becomes pleased, satisfied, secure.

All this is true of the psalm on a literal level. But in Jesus Christ, God takes on Jewish flesh and wears the psalm as literally as any Jew wears tefillin. It is not only we who are “fearfully and wonderfully made”; God is too. In Christ, God has eyelashes, a spleen, and a Jewish mom. The divide between Creator (maker of all) and creature (made thing) is smashed, and there is now traffic between the one and the other. The only “I” worth belonging to, biblically speaking, is the resurrected body of one Jew, whose raising presages the resurrection of all creation. 

And that is frightfully good news.

At the heart of today’s passage is the reminder from the apostle Paul to the believers in Corinth of the reality and significance for them of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and that they too will also one day be bodily raised from the dead: “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (1 Corinthians 6:14).

This is the first reference to resurrection in the letter, a note which may initially surprise us as we are so used to thinking about 1 Corinthians as being the source of the longest and most in-depth exposition of resurrection in not only the entire Pauline corpus but the entire New Testament writings. 

Prior to this point, Paul’s emphasis has been upon the significance of the cross and insisting upon the centrality of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the lives of the Corinthian believers. As a result, we can now recognize that a corner has been turned, a new vista has opened up, and Paul is introducing a new phase of interpretation at this point—one based upon the resurrection.

The reality of bodily resurrection 

The reality of a bodily resurrection is key to appreciating this passage. Paul is seeking to teach, or perhaps to remind, the Corinthians that they will be raised from the dead and this will only happen with—and not apart from—their bodies. (It is worth noting that in 15:1-3, Paul seems to suggest that he had already taught them about resurrection when he was with them.) Therefore, Paul is reminding the Corinthians that on the basis of what they have been taught and have apparently accepted about the reality and implications of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (15:1), what they get up to with their bodies, and/or what they put into their bodies, matters because these same bodies are headed for resurrection. 

Honor God with your body—it will be resurrected

First, Paul has to counter the Corinthians’ mistaken conception of freedom and autonomy. He does this by quoting and then undermining a slogan that most likely has become popular among the Corinthians. Paul makes a double response to the popular slogan “All things are lawful for me,” and with each response there is the sense that the Corinthians’ confident assertion of freedom and autonomy is not founded on Christ-like or Godly principles. Paul’s response is simple enough: “but not all things are beneficial,” and “I will not be dominated by anything.” 

And so we can see that Paul is not for a moment suggesting that the Corinthians are not free. After all, we note that three times in 1 Corinthians 9, in verses 9, 18, and 19, Paul speaks of his own freedom. We might imagine that freedom is a concept that Paul has previously spoken to the Corinthians about. This may be a sense of being free from constraints—perhaps particularly from the law, but most particularly misunderstanding a freedom from obligation to others—after all, Paul does say, “I am free and belong to no man” (9:19).

Rather, therefore, Paul is making the point that their freedom is bound up with their fundamental responsibility, first, to recognize their connectedness to all other believers through the vitality of the body of Christ and, second, to honor the presence of the Holy Spirit within them.

Similarly, Paul counters a second slogan: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (6:13). He reminds them that their bodies are intimately connected to the Lord: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” What Paul is suggesting here is that one’s body was created with a divinely ordained intention—to serve and honor the Lord. Furthermore, this stress upon the connection of the body to the Lord through creation is emphasized with the final phrase in this section, “For you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body” (Paul repeats this reality in 7:23 but on that occasion links it with slavery).

All this is to say: Your body matters. What you do with your body matters. What you put into your body matters.

Honor God in your relationships—you are united with Christ

What follows is a Pauline analysis of the metaphysical impact of relationship with a prostitute. What is so interesting is that Paul does not suggest that any of the Corinthians are in reality cavorting with prostitutes. And we might expect him to do that if it were true; just remember how Paul explicitly counters the sexual behavior of some Corinthians in chapter 5.

Rather, what Paul is concerned about is the Corinthians’ awareness of their existential  relationship with Christ—“anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (verse 16).

To understand Paul’s argument here we need to place Paul’s quote from Genesis 2:24 at the center: “the two will become one flesh.” 

Sexual relations result in the physical, mystical, and spiritual union of two people. The Hebrew Scriptures are clear that such union confirms the lifelong unity (or marriage) of two people. However, sexual relations with a prostitute complicate things. The very nature of a prostitute’s occupation means that the prostitute becomes united with numerous people, potentially several times a day. In terms of the Genesis declaration of sexual union, this is somewhat complicated—who, ultimately, is the prostitute united with?

Likewise, your involvement in fornication complicates your association with Christ in the resurrection. 

It may be helpful to link this with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, reminding us that we who are many are united in one body, even the body of Christ. Additionally, there is also the corrective at the end of Paul’s words on communion, warning about acting without “discerning the body” (1 Corinthians 11:29). This theme of connectedness and relationality continues as Paul teaches on the wise use of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

Honor the presence of the Holy Spirit in you

The inherent relationship of the physical body to God is communicated in three ways. First, through creation: Paul reminds the Corinthians, “Your body … you have from God.” 

Second, through redemption: “You are not your own … for you were bought with a price.” 

And third: “Therefore, glorify God in your body.” In other words, your body’s purpose is to reflect, radiate, and resound with the glory of the loving, kind, merciful, beautiful character of God. 

The purpose of resurrection, which is at the heart of this passage, is the reunification (or reconciliation) of all things to God (2 Corinthians 5:19). This is the work of God in the actual and bodily life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.

Paul’s obvious concern is that the Corinthians learn to live as holy people in both body and spirit. While Paul, in 3:16-17, encourages them to understand that they are corporately the sanctuary of God, here in chapter 6, the emphasis is on each of them as individuals who make up the body of Christ: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”