“You Will See Greater Things than These!”
Epiphany + 2 – January 15, 2012
Lucy wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen on that rainy, dreary day. She and her siblings had recently arrived at the Professor's house, their temporary home during the war, and since they couldn't go outside to play, they decided to explore the big old house. In one room, there was an old wardrobe, and while Peter and Susan and Edmund didn't see anything there worth looking at, Lucy decided to look inside. When she found the fur coats, she couldn't resist! She got into the wardrobe to touch and feel the coats, going further back, through the 1st row to the second behind it, until much to her surprise, Lucy found herself no longer in the wardrobe, but in the middle of the woods, with snow falling all around her.
Lucy was surprised of course, and a little afraid, but she was drawn into this strange place, wanting to know more, wanting to explore, and so she did. She was gone quite a while, and had tea with Mr. Tumnus the fawn, but eventually, had to go home. She retraced her steps, and tumbled out of the wardrobe, shouting to her brothers and sister that she was okay, “It's all right, I've come back!”
Of course, if you know the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you know that back in Lucy's world, our world, mere seconds had passed, and her family hadn't even realized she was missing. The story of what she has seen and experienced spills out of her, but they are skeptical. They don't believe her, thinking she's just making up stories to entertain herself. No, Lucy protests, “It's a magic wardrobe. There's a wood inside it, and it's snowing, and there's a Faun and a witch and it's called Narnia; come and see!”
And even in their disbelief, Lucy is so excited, so convincing, that they all follow her back to the room, flinging open the doors to see this new world. Except they don't see it. Nothing is there but old fur coats that smell like moth-balls, the back of the wardrobe as plain as day. Lucy is crushed. Rejected. All she wanted to do was share this amazing thing she has seen, but they don't have her same experience. Peter and Susan and Edmund wonder what all the fuss was about.
Isn't that what we are afraid of? That we, who have seen this new thing, who have encountered a world beyond this one, who have a sense of something bigger than we are, who have encountered God in that strange place, may tumble back into our normal, everyday lives and run to tell our family and friends of this experience that has changed us and the way we see the world, that we will say “Come and see,” and race ahead, dragging them along behind us and throw open the doors, climbing into the wardrobe where we have found God and hope and faith, and they will get there, and see
NOTHING.
That they will reach into the wardrobe and find nothing but old fur coats and fancy clothes, bumping into the solid wall that is the back of the wardrobe. That they will dismiss us or scoff at us or reject us, wondering why we are making up such amazing tales and why we made such a big fuss, when there was nothing magical there at all, just like they knew all along there wouldn't be.
I wonder if any of these fears or thoughts went through Philip's head on that ordinary day when Jesus came to Philip on his way to Galilee and said, “Follow me.” Somehow, Philip saw in Jesus something beyond this world, beyond the normal, beyond his expectations. In those brief moments with Jesus, Philip found what he had been looking for his entire life. He is drawn into a new dimension, a new world, and he knows that he has to share it. He has to tell someone, and he runs to Nathanael, saying, “We've found him! We have found the one Moses in the law and the prophets wrote about! It's Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth!”
Imagine how he must have felt when Nathanael comes back with scorn, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” He's a good and faithful Jew, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, Jesus calls him, but he doesn't expect God to show up in anything so lowly and common as a carpenter's son from the backwater town of Nazareth. Like many of us, he's perhaps a bit world-worn and weary. Jaded. Skeptical. But brave Philip doesn't argue with him, just says, “Come and see,” trusting that the experience of meeting Jesus will speak for itself.
Nathanael, willing to humor Philip, curious about what has got him so excited, comes along to see Jesus for himself. And the rest, really, is up to Jesus. Just like Lucy can't control whether the wardrobe will open up and lead to Narnia, Philip can't control whether or not Nathanael will see in Jesus what Philip sees.
Of course, Nathanael does. He has this little exchange with Jesus, who tells him he saw him under the fig tree, and whatever that means, something about that encounter opens his eyes, compelling him to confess Jesus as the Son of God and King of Israel. “That's not all though,” Jesus says. “You will see greater things than these!” This is just the beginning! There's so much more to come. “You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” That's a reference back to Jacob's ladder in Genesis, where Jacob dreams of just this, of the heavens opening and angels going up and down – causing him to exclaim when he wakes up, “Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it!” John's gospel is saying that Jesus is the place where God is. Jesus is the place where the earthly and the heavenly intersect, where human and divine cross. He is the bridge between this temporal existence and all of eternity. In some ways, Jesus is like the wardrobe – the entry point into another world, the place where God breaks through and draws us into God's kingdom which overlaps our everyday normal world, if only we had eyes to see it.
This is what Philip experienced. It's what Nathanael had to come and see for himself. It's what Jesus promises us – that we will see greater things than we can imagine, that in him, we with catch glimpses of God's reign breaking into our world, where our jaded, cynical, skeptical selves are transformed by meeting God in the flesh, where the divine comes into our human existence, changing us and the way we see the world forever, leaving us so excited that we come tumbling out of the wardrobe, shouting, “Come and see!” And it may be that the people we invite won't see what we see, won't experience what we experience, at least not at first. Don't let that stop you though. This story of God's love, of Jesus living and dying and rising again for us, is too good to keep to ourselves. All we have to do is tell it, to live it, and then invite others to come and see. Jesus will do the rest. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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