The Gift Under the Tree John 1:43-51

When I was much younger, I loved to read adventure books about pirates and buried treasure. I loved Sinbad the sailor and Treasure Island with X marks the spot. I read Westerns where the bad guys would rob banks and then hide the loot near a landmark, like a tree or some rock formation. They thought that their hiding place was in some permanent site that could never be forgotten only to discover that when they came back for the treasure some years later that the tree had been cut down, somebody built a house over the site where they buried the money, or somebody had dynamited the rock formation in order to build a road.

In some books landslides covered the hiding place or maybe an earthquake had destroyed all of the landmarks. In one book, I remember that the water hole had dried up and all of the cacti had died and disappeared. In every case their treasure was lost to them forever.

The text this week has a number of interesting echoes of other Bible stories, not just the calling, but the types of landmarks that are presented. The first real landmark we get is Peter. In the verses leading up to this lesson, we hear that when Andrew brings his brother Simon to Jesus, Jesus says to him that his name shall be Cephas (which means rock). Simon’s other name, Peter, also means rock. No matter how you think about it, if your name is Peter, you’re just dense.

Now one of the big topics of philosophy that the people of the time would have been aware of was Aristotle’s ordering of the world. It was called the Great Chain of Being. At the top of this chain were the gods. In descending order from the gods were the cherubim and the seraphim, archangels, angels, principalities, powers, and so on down the chain until you get to man and below that woman.

After humanity, you get the higher animals and then the lesser animals, reptiles, insects, and when you get all the way to the bottom of the chain, the very lowest form of life in Aristotle’s world is the rock. How encouraging it must have been for Cephas, Peter, to know that henceforth he would be known as Rock.

So it is that Peter is not just a person, he is a landmark as well. Peter is the foundation stone of the church, the anchor that will hold us in faith to bear witness to who this Jesus is, although, in the course of the story, this has not been revealed to us yet.

Next, we are given this wonderful image of Nathaniel sitting under the fig tree. Maybe he’s casually chilling with a glass of lemonade and a book. This fig tree initially looks like any old fig tree, but, in the context of the Gospel of John, in this story of new creation, of new ways of living, this fig tree is to remind us of the Tree of Knowledge way back in the story of the Garden of Eden.

In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Tree of Knowledge is not just any tree, nor is it an apple tree, it is a fig tree. The fruit of the forbidden tree was a common food, a mainstay of the diet. It was not just a fruit that the people ate once, but a fruit that they continued to eat every day, a fruit reminding them of their continued sinfulness and their broken relationship with God.

So, alongside this rock, Cephas, or Peter, under the fig tree, we find Nathaniel. Now John is very intentional about telling us that Cephas means rock, but he is not as helpful in letting us know that Nathaniel means “gift of God” so we are tempted to think that Nathaniel is just one of Jesus’ disciples, but when we consider what Nathaniel means, we find a treasure under the tree. It is like an X that marks the spot of where this hidden treasure can be found. When we come to this fig tree, instead of finding the tree of sin, we discover, not a tree of condemnation but Nathaniel, a gift from God.

So why is it important to us today that Philip calls us to this Gift of God, this Nathaniel, in the midst of a new community? I think, in the life of Albany Lutheran Church there are lots of ways of coming to this fig tree today and seeing a fig tree of death and condemnation not a gift of life and hope. I want to challenge you today to hear these words of Jesus’ calling, calling the Church together, creating a new community of faith with new disciples.

Jesus continues to create new communities of faith, calling his people to search for and find this gift of God that lies at the foot of the fig tree for us. For, my brothers and sisters in Christ, there is a gift under the tree for us today. It may not be a gift that calls us to be here, but it is a gift that calls us into the world.

Not so many days ago, many of us found gifts under the Christmas tree. We gathered them to ourselves and carefully unwrapped them. Okay, maybe we tore into the wrapping and liberated our presents from the prison of wrapping paper. We were curious, we were excited; we were overjoyed to discover the gifts we received from our loved ones. Now, we receive a gift from God who loves us enough to give his only son for our sake, this Jesus of Nazareth, this son of Joseph, the son of God, the king of Israel.

When Philip comes to Nathaniel, he says, “Hey, you’ve got to come with us because we have found the one, the messiah.” To this, Nathaniel responds, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” To hear this in Scripture seemed incredibly timely after listening to the news this week and hearing “Can anything good come from Haiti or El Salvador or Africa, from Muslim countries?”

In our hearts, we intrinsically know from the gospels that goodness can come from the worst parts of the world. As Christians, we bear witness to that. For Jesus came from Nazareth, which was, by the way, sort of a hole. It was out of the way, under-developed, a small gathering of huts on the edge of a cliff. We have no idea what the population of Nazareth was then, but we do know that the town disappeared at one time and was then rebuilt in the 1950’s. Today it is still not a big city. Yet in the midst of this out-of-the-way place, Mary and Joseph raised a child who changed the world.

We are challenged by this text to remember the value of all of God’s people in the world, to look for God’s gift under the tree. When we look under the tree do we find death and condemnation? Or, do we discover life and hope ahead of us?

Philip answers Nathaniel, “If you don’t know whether good can come out of Nazareth, then come and see. Come and be in relationship with, come and know, Jesus. Come and see who this person is, this one we acknowledge as the son of God, the king of Israel, the one who sees us where we are and knows us in the places where we live, the one who calls us to follow, the one who is also a gift from God.”

If we can come today and see the gift that is under the tree for us, then we will also see greater things. We will see angels ascending and descending on the son of man. We will be witnesses that the boundaries between heaven and earth have been eliminated so that we can be in a new relationship with God and life in a whole new way, that life is no longer limited by the time of this world.

One afternoon I was sitting in the living room of the Lutheran Campus Center eating lunch with friends. A man came in from the street and sat down with us. From his accent, he was clearly a foreign student. He sat there for a while, and then he said, “I have a question for you.”

I was expecting him to ask where the Chemistry building was, or how to open a checking account, or maybe where to buy something, or where he could get help with something, but he asked, “Do you think that God has planned out all of our lives and knows everything we are going to do before we do it?”

I was about 20 at the time. I was trying to figure out life for myself. I certainly was not ready to start discussing the omnipresence of God with a total stranger. I was not ready to discuss who God is and whether God makes plans for the world. I was not ready to speculate on how it is that Jesus might be able to see Nathaniel under the fig tree before Philip called him.

Yet the man’s question was sincere. The answer I came up with that day, I continue to hold. God who exists outside of time, beyond our understanding of time, is able to see all of world history as it unfolds. It is not that God controls our actions, but rather that God knows what we do before we do it because God is not limited to the time we live in, and therefore God is able to be there for us to forgive us when we go astray. God is there to call us back to Godself, to walk with Christ in the world in ways that bring healing and wholeness.

God is not dictating what we do, but God is able to witness what we do from beyond ourselves and beyond our time. God is not some puppeteer pulling strings but the one who is able to always be with us in that unique relationship of love that transcends time and space. In this relationship with God, God knows us and knows our lives completely. God is not determining our every action, only that all should be saved when we fall short. In the gift of God’s redeeming forgiveness, we continue to live and grow, being witnesses of that gift of salvation we receive.

How can we know that gift of redemption? We know that gift of redemption because we have a relationship with God’s only son who was raised up on the cross, and died for the sake of the world, who descended into the world of the forgotten, into hell itself, where he remembered and claimed those there, only to rise up from the dead, and, in so doing, Christ raised up all of creation.

There is this gift that sits at the foot of the fig tree and at the foot of the cross, a gift that continues to call to us to follow, to follow Christ out into the world. It is not a landmark that can be moved, cut down, blown up or destroyed. It is not a landmark that will shrivel up or fade away. This gift is solid and constant. It is as solid as a rock and available at every tree we see. This Nathaniel, this gift of God for us, is God’s love and forgiveness freely given by Christ himself, and, for Christ’s sake, God forgives us all of our sins. Today we can confidently say our treasure is here. It is not hidden but visible, above ground, and available for all. Come, see, and follow the one in whom there is abundant life.

What I have said today is more than what I was able to say that day in the Campus Center. When I was done that day, the man looked at me for a while nodding as he thought, and then he left. I never saw him again. Yet his question was for me a gift. It is a gift that has challenged me to look under the tree to more fully discover God’s gift to the world. Come and see that the Lord is good, and then follow where he leads.