Sometimes we go looking for trouble. Sometimes it comes looking for us! Either way, the experience changes us. It’s the same when we deal with God.
John, Andrew, and Simon were looking for the Messiah. But, as we also find out, Jesus was also looking for them: after all, he saw Nathanael under the fig tree.
Either way, the experience of meeting God, in the face of Jesus, changed the disciples.
This isn’t the first time this had happened in scripture.
In the Old Testament, when Jacob encounters God in the form of an angle and wrestles with him, it changes him.
His name is changed from Jacob to Israel, a name that means, “struggled or fought with God.” And, for the rest of his life, he walked with a limp.
When Simon meets Christ, he’s changed. His name goes from Simon to Peter, a name that means “rock.”
However, we know that Peter will falter. At a critical moment, he’ll deny Christ.
But the experience will change him.
He’ll become that “rock” for which he’s named.
It’s the same with us.
Our encounter with Christ will change us.
Perhaps, it’ll leave us also with a limp, like Jacob, but it’ll also draw us closer to God and transform us into who we are meant to be.
The Reading
The next day John again stood there, and two of his disciples as well. And, watching Jesus walking by, he says, “Look: the Lamb of God.” And the two disciples heard him saying this and followed Jesus. And turning around, and seeing them following, Jesus says to them, “What do you seek?” And they said to him, “Rabbi”—which is to say, when translated, “Teacher”—“where are you staying?” He says to them, “Come and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and stayed with him that day; it was about the tenth hour. One of the two men who had heeded John and were following him was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter; The first thing he does is find his own brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (which, being translated, is “the Anointed”). He led him to Jesus. Looking at him, Jesus said, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated as “Peter” [Rock]). On the following day he wished to go away into Galilee, and he finds Philip. And Jesus says to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city from which Andrew and Peter came. Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, “We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the Law and the Prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can there be anything good out of Nazareth?” Philip says to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael approaching him and says of him, “Look: truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile.” Nathanael says to him, “Where do you know me from?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw that you were beneath the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.” Jesus replied and said to him, “You have faith because I told you I saw you below the fig tree? You shall see greater things than these.” And he says to him, “Amen, amen, I tell you, you shall see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:35-51)