Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, January 14th, 2024

In this country we have become accustomed to having an almost unimaginable number of choices. Go into any grocery store and count the number of kinds and brands of cereal; you will be there for quite a while. Even just looking at a restaurant menu – once you have decided which restaurant to go to – is enough to make one’s head spin.

This availability of choices is a matter of pride for many residents of this nation – for many, America is all about freedom to choose one’s path in life; one’s job, one’s place of residence, the books one reads, the kind of peanut butter to buy. This assumes that what makes us us, and what makes life worthwhile, is the choices we make, without anyone anywhere limiting or guiding those choices.

That in itself is of course a fallacy, the idea that we have complete and utter freedom to choose what we want. Our economic resources, our gender, our ethnic and racial identity, our cultural norms, all shape the choices we even are able to make. The messages that surge over us in social media and advertising mold our desires and our choices often without us ever realizing it. There is even such a thing these days as an influencer, someone who makes a living by influencing their followers to adopt certain products, lifestyles, and activities. How ironic, in a culture that prides itself on freedom of choice, to be so dominated by self-appointed gurus promising that if we model our choices on theirs, we will find happiness and success.

In today’s gospel, you could say that Jesus is depicted as a kind of ancient influencer; he seeks people out and says “Follow me.” He must be good at it, because they do. On the surface, it seems straightforward – Jesus encounters people, offers them something, and out of their capacity to make a free decision, they choose the product he is offering. That is the way many over the centuries have viewed their religious commitments; they survey the choices, the many traditions and messiahs, and they pick one that best suits their values and needs. 

On the surface, that may seem to us what we are doing as well. Perhaps you have checked out different congregations, different expressions of Christianity, or even different religions, before settling at St. Paul’s. Perhaps you are even now in the middle of such a process of selection. I have certainly made those choices during my life – choosing, after careful exploration of theological and liturgical traditions, to be confirmed as an Episcopalian after growing up Lutheran, is just one of those choices I have made.

I wonder, however, if that is what is happening as Jesus calls Philip, and Philip finds Nathanael, and Nathanael seeks out Jesus. Is this just a story of offering a superior product and of effective word-of-mouth marketing? I think it is revealing and offering much, much more. 

Nathanael is at first skeptical, but overcomes his skepticism enough to move toward Jesus in response to Philip’s enthusiasm. Is it just me, or does Nathanael’s profession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God seem a bit unwarranted, given that all Jesus told him was that he saw Nathanael earlier under the fig tree? I’m sure Jesus saw a lot of people under a lot of fig trees – that does not prove he is the Messiah!

This is not about impressive powers of sight or a magician’s parlor tricks – this story is telling us something else about what it means to be called by and to follow Jesus. When Jesus says, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you,” we are being shown a mystery. Preacher and scholar D. Mark Davis puts it this way:

Before Philip [and Nathanael] see [they are] seen; before [they know they are] known; before [they choose they are] chosen. The God made known through this Messiah is not like a garment hanging passively on a rack or a circus animal for whose performance the barker says, “Come and see!” The God made known in this Messiah is the God whose power of vision comes first.

Yes, Nathanael and Philip, and all the other followers of Jesus, have the power to reject or to respond freely to this invitation. But the deeper truth is that before anything and everything, before we choose or even come into being, Jesus sees us. 

Really sees us. And really sees us. 

The only reason we are here at all, on this journey, is because we have already been seen fully, known fully, chosen fully, by Christ. The evangelist John loops back to this mystery near the end of the gospel, when Jesus is speaking to the disciples in the upper room before his death. He tells them, “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you” (John 15:15b-16).

Friends, what would it be like to hear these words from Jesus spoken directly to your own heart? 

You did not choose me but I chose you. I chose you. I see you in the very depths of your heart. 

I see your fears, I see your need, I see your deepest desires, and I see your beauty. And I 

choose all of that. I choose you to be part of my Body, to participate in the redeeming of the 

world.

I don’t know about you, but there is a part of me that resists hearing these words from Jesus, even as I long for them with every fiber in my being. I resist them because I am afraid it will make me lazy. I am afraid because it will reveal everything that is broken and inadequate in me. I am afraid that if I really hear Jesus saying he chooses me, my life will be wrested from my control and taken to strange and difficult places.

This, I think, is why we are afraid of prayer, why we immerse ourselves in activities that in themselves are good, but which actually flow from our own anxiety about whether or not God actually loves and chooses us. The only way to truly hear Jesus say, “I see you, and I choose you,” is to stop and listen and open our hearts in prayer, whatever that prayer looks like. 

So can we let God choose us, instead of idolizing our own frantic choices? Can we, in the end, simply let Jesus see and love us before we have done anything at all, while we are just sitting under the fig tree resting in the heat of the day?

Each one of us – each and every one of you in this place today, Jesus has seen, and loved, and chosen to abide in that love. What might be possible if we actually prayed, and allowed Jesus to show us heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending? What might be possible if you allowed Jesus to see, and love, and choose you? Do you dare, like Nathanael, let that loving gaze break you open and change your life?