T
hey slept well into the third morning, Jesus gathering strength from rest and food. As they breakfasted, Jesus announced that he wished to leave for Galilee. Peter and John, both professional fishermen, were pleased. Galilee was home for them. They had already decided however, to leave their nets and follow Jesus wherever he went. Life could no longer exist without him. Had Jesus chosen to return to the wilderness, they would just as easily have followed him there.
In time, they came to the green, rolling Galilean hills. As they journeyed, they encountered a small group of men harvesting figs. The figs were almost too ripe for picking. Birds had left many of them hanging on the trees with gaping holes in the fruit where they had dined. The ground beneath the trees, littered with rotting fruit. Wasps, yellow jackets, honeybees, lured by the aroma of the summer spectacle, swarmed lazily on half-eaten figs, crawling over each other with apparent nonchalance. One had to be careful.
One of the men stripped to the waist rubbed his torso vigorously complaining bitterly of the itching residue the leaves left on his body. When he noticed the watching travelers, he shouted, “Come friends. Help yourself. There is enough here to feed a legion of Romans.” Jesus walked over to where the man was standing, each foot braced against a limb of the tree. Accepting a plump fig from the man in the tree, Jesus smiled as if to comment on the good flavor, as if the quality of the fig was something to be elucidated, but instead of a simple “Thank you,” he said only, “Follow me.”
Philip laughed nervously. His eyes darted from Jesus to his friend Nathanael, also picking figs. “Nathanael,” he said, “come here,” he paused, his eyes now fixed on the face of Jesus, “and meet this man.” Follow me? Philip pondered. Before Nathanael responded to Philip’s call, he knew what he would do — what he had to do. It took only an instant and without further consideration of the matter, almost as if he had been struck, Philip knew he would follow this man wherever it might take him.
As Nathanael approached, Jesus remarked, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is nothing false!” It was meant to be a humorous remark, as if finding such a man was rare indeed. The term, “Israelite” was a reference not so much to race, as it was to the Jewish religious leadership, most of whom were notoriously false. Smiling, Nathanael asked,
“How do you know me?”
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” He could have said, “I have known you for a very long time. I knew your unformed substance, before you were in your mother’s womb.” But he did not say that.
Like Peter and John, Nathanael was a Galilean and a fisherman. He was indeed an honest man, worked hard and loved figs. Like most people of intelligence however, he did not like to gather them. The stinging insects, the spoiled fruit lying like a moth-eaten carpet on the ground, the prickly leaves all combined to make fig harvesting a delicate and often unpleasant task. In his hands, he held a basket filled with the figs he had picked. He held the basket out to Jesus who took another fig and savored it.
Nathanael called Cana, a small town west of Galilee not far from Nazareth where Jesus grew up, his home. Now, listening to him speak, Nathanael knew. What was it? The quiet, confident tone of his voice? The easy way he smiled? His arresting gaze? Nathanael was not sure, but whatever the compulsion, he blurted, “Teacher, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
Peter and John reacted in surprise. Only Philip knew Nathanael well. Others had seen him among the fishing crews, laughing and yelling as fishermen do. But none could have conceived such words coming from this sailor’s mouth. They did not believe him capable of such a statement. Nathanael however, had said his peace. He knew what he knew and had declared it with straightforward directness.
Even Jesus was incredulous. “You believe this merely because I told you I saw you under a fig tree picking figs?”
It had not occurred to Nathanael just what it was that justified his blind acceptance of this man or his declaration. The faith of a child needs no justification. That Jesus had knowledge of him before this moment did not enter his head. He was not certain of what it was, perhaps the force, the power and simple presence of this man. Perhaps an inner revelation. He let Jesus’ question hang.
The silence between them spoke more than words. At length Jesus added, “My friend, you will witness greater things than that.” Then he said, “Let me tell you how great Nathanael; In the future, you shall see heaven open, and you will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
In decades to come, in moments of triumph and failure, when his hands shook and his eyes were old and watery, Nathanael never forgot this moment, these words.
