Yesterday morning I woke with a headache. It seems that the cat and the dust are conspiring against me, to what end I don't yet know. Benjamin and I get up relatively early on Sunday mornings so that we can have breakfast and prepare for church without having to rush. Normally this involves sitting in the living room reading together for thirty minutes to an hour, but because of my headache Benjamin wisely decreed that we should go outside to read. As I have often bemoaned, we don't have any outside area here (no balcony, porch, or patio) but we do live two strong-armed throws from a French Bakery. The bakery shares outdoor seating around a fountain with the other shops and restaurants that we live behind and has croissants that both Benjamin and I love. It was a lovely morning and so all the tables were already occupied when we arrived, but there was still a bench by the fountain. While Benjamin enjoyed his croissant and an essay by Rowan Williams I savored pain au chocolate and read from William Temple's
Readings from St. John's Gospel. I've only recently started this work and have been surprised at how enjoyable and enriching I find it.
The passage for the morning was
John 1:43-51 Philip is the disciple who Jesus goes to, up to this point everyone has been coming to him. As soon as Christ comes to him, Philip goes to get Nathanael. Here things get really interesting because in Temple's translation it Jesus says to Nathanael, "Behold an Israelite in whom there is no Jacob." Then there's that bit where Jesus tells Nathanael what he was doing before Philip came to him and Nathanael is amazed, but Christ tells him that he hasn't seen anything yet. I've never really been sure what to make of that transition. It always seemed like Jesus was saying, "I'm even more awesome than you think and I'm gonna prove it." Which of course is a true statement, but did jive well with my understanding of Jesus. So did you catch the difference in Temple's translation and the ESV? The ESV says, "in whom there is no deceit." Other translations say, "in whom there is no guile." But when Temple replaces those words with "Jacob," a patriarch known for his guile and deceit, he gives the key to what Jesus is saying and who Nathanael is.
When Philip comes to Nathanael, Nathanael has been sitting under the fig tree wrestling with God. Not physically like Jacob and the angel, but wrestling with whether or not Jesus could be the Christ. When Philip tells Nathanael who the Messiah is, Nathanael doesn't ponder the suggestion or ask who Jesus of Nazareth is. No, he says, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth." Nathanael has been thinking this over weighing the options and keeps stumbling over Nazareth. When Jesus surprises him with His knowledge, Nathanael announces him the Son of God (a Messianic name). Then Jesus says, "
Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe?" But this is the great thing, it isn't that Jesus said he saw Nathanael under the fig tree, but that Jesus saw Nathanael contesting with God and announced upon his arrival that though he wrestles like Jacob, he has not the deceit of Jacob. It was this that helped Nathanael past Nazareth and to belief.
But the images don't stop there! "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man,” Jesus says. This is finishing the story of Jacob the patriarch. Jacob slept and saw the ladder ascending into heaven and the angels ascending and descending. The angels or messengers of God were doing his will, bringing his messages, bridging the gap between heaven and earth. But Nathanael will see Jesus on the cross, bridging the gap between heaven and earth communicating the will and messages of God and the pleas of His people.
Now I'm sure that this isn't surprising to many folks, but his got into me and encouraged me. I've said for years that the Old and New Testaments are not different books, that Jesus is in the Old Testament as well as the New, but not until reading this did I realize that I'd forgotten the place of the Old Testament in the New Testament. The Patriarch and prophets don't make sense without Jesus, but I'd never realized that they were the key to understanding Jesus's parables!
That was a lot of revelation over pain au chocolate and before you think I'm very spiritual, you should know that I spent a decent amount of time at the fountain thinking about the figure's awkward pose and that it looks more like a spring than a fountain.
The sunshine and outdoors helped, my headache was gone within the first five minutes. After church my bike survived it's first ride without a tube popping and Benjamin and I enjoyed a great lunch with friends. Around five that afternoon we decided to go out again, but by that time it was in the nineties and a bike ride didn't sound pleasant. I confessed to Benjamin that this morning the fountain had struck me as something I should try to sketch and so we went back. I made my sketch of the fountain and just before we left I went up to see what in the world it was supposed to represent. Imagine my surprise when I read "Jacob and the Angel" stamped on the post!
