I SAW YOU UNDER THE FIG TREE

A sermon by George R. Pasley

PSALM 139:1-6, 13-18; JOHN 1:43-51

Nazareth? Can anything do come from there?

Ketchikan Presbyterian- can anything good come from 40 members?

Four people in church two weeks ago- can anything good come from that?

I think it’s human nature to see people at their weakest, or at their worst, and conclude that nothing good will come of them.

I had a good laugh last night while in the midst of writing this sermon. I had the history channel on TV, to hear the biography of President Andrew Jackson. During his young adult years Jackson was quite a hellion, and when he went on to do great things in his later life many people who had known him in his hellion days were quoted as saying, “Jackson! How did anything good come from him?”

Here’s a more personal story. I was pretty much the smallest kid in all of my grade school classes. I was definitely the slowest kid. Those two distinctions made life on the playground pretty miserable, because sides for every team were always chosen, and I was always the last one chosen. Time after time my classmates looked at me and thought, “Nothing good will ever happen if he is on my team!”

Perhaps they were right, perhaps not, but regardless, it hurt. Maybe that’s why I am notoriously non-competitive. I don’t like losing, so I don’t compete.

But something else happened, too. I looked for, and found, areas of expertise in which I could succeed, for whatever reason. Even so, I’m keenly aware of my weaknesses.

Now, when you know your weaknesses, you hate to make a public display of them. Even if you don’t hide them, you’re not too likely to advertise them. That’s why we place such a high value on the privacy of communications with our doctors, our lawyers, and our pastors.

I know a young woman who grew up in a wonderful family. She married a young man who seemed to be wonderful, but he wasn’t. before too long he started abusing her. She divorced him, but the experience played havoc with her confidence. I’m told she is doing well now, but for years she had an off and on problem with full blown paranoia, going into hiding and keeping her locations secret from her friends and even her parents. It can be, and often is, a terrifying experience to know that someone else knows too much about you.

There is a young woman in town whom I respect greatly, she ahs an admirable ethics, she works hard, and she gives a lot of her energy to helping school kids. She’s never been to college, and I’ve been encouraging her to go. She keeps telling me she will, she keeps putting it off, and I keep nagging her.

Finally one day I asked her what I could do to help her. That’s when she admitted there was some problem in her life, something she was ashamed to admit, that was keeping her from applying.

She promises me she is taking care of that problem, and I respect her privacy. But it reminds me, it’s not always a pleasant thing to be searched and known.

So why is it that the author of Psalm 139 says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me?”

One reason is because even a little bit of knowledge about you, in the hands of the right person, can do wonders. Yes, God knows everything about us- every flaw, every weakness, every insufficiency, and every phobia. But God knows something else, too, something that even we don’t know: God knows the plans eh has for us!

Steve Lopez was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times when he discovered a fifty-something old black man living homeless on the streets, spending his days playing an old beat up violin that had only two strings.

Steve was looking for a story, so he made some effort to know this strange man. He learned his name, Nathaniel. He learned the man had studied at Juilliard, though not the violin. His first instrument had been the double-bass. He later started learning the cello. He had played in the same orchestra as Yo-Yo Mon. He developed paranoia schizophrenia, and dropped out of school.

Then Steve found out the name of his high school music teacher, in Cleveland. Steve called the man and heard this story: Nate had displayed exceptional talent at an early age, but he was also lazy. But his teacher told him YOU HAVE A GIFT- DON’T WASTE IT!

Nate began to work harder. Nate got a music scholarship to Ohio State. But he wasn’t satisfied. During his freshman year, he applied to Juilliard, and got a scholarship.

It wouldn’t have happened if that music teacher had not seen something in his lazy student. A little bit of knowledge about us, in the mind of the right person, can make a powerful difference.

So look at the story of a different Nathaniel, the one who doubted anything good could come from Nazareth. He followed his friend to Jesus, and was amazed at one little bit of knowledge.

That knowledge- that Nathaniel had recently been sitting under a fig tree- could have been some sort of parlor trick. Maybe there were fig stains on Nathaniel’s robes!

But Nathaniel believed it was something else, and that belief sparked a flame of joy in his spirit. There was something in that exchange that told Nathaniel, “Here is a man who sees you even when you are hidden, knows you in your insufficiencies, and who knows the plans God has for you.”

Maybe Nathaniel didn’t think all of those things, but that’s pretty much what Jesus said when he told Nathaniel, “You’ll see greater things than that!”

We are into told any of Nathaniel’s weaknesses, but it does not matter. For one reason, we all have them. For another reason, the stories of the Bible tell about a God who delights in choosing the least likely people to be on heaven’s team. But one more reason is compelling.

Regardless of how we may appear to anyone else, we are indeed children of God.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God is the one who made us, and in the eyes of God we are exceptionally beautiful.

Andrew Wyeth died last week. His most famous painting is on display in New York, and Maybe this very day Jamie and Mary will be seeing it.

That painting is “Christina’s World.” I used to have framed print of it hanging in my home, but it’s one of the things I gave away when I moved to Alaska.

There’s a story I remember about that painting. Christian Olson and her brother were friends of Andrew Wyeth, and for many years he used an empty room on the upper floor of their house as a studio. One day, he looked out and saw Christina crawling across the hill. Christina was paralyzed from the waist down.

Christina had limped since she was three years old, but by 1946 (age 53), she was no longer able to stand, had stopped trying to walk, and resorted to crawling. She resisted the use of a wheelchair despite the fact that her own father had begun using a wheelchair as early as 1922. She had a dear friend who lived in a house eight hundred feet away. She could crawl this distance in less than an hour, but would arrive quite fatigued. (Henry Holland, May 2000. Originally published in the Central Va PPS Support Group (PPSG)'s newsletter)

The scene invited a painting. Andrew painted her in all of her frailty- on the ground, unable to walk, pulling herself along on thin, waif-like arms. But Andrew did something else, too. He painted her with what he saw in her- a strength that defied her weakness, a beauty that defied her age and disease, and a nobleness that defied the fact that she was crawling on the ground.

He spent weeks on the painting, and then one day he took it to the Olson house, and showed it to Christina.

She looked at in awe, then whispered, “Thank you for making me so beautiful,” and all America has agreed.

Indeed, God knows us inside out. Wherever we were before we came here this morning, God saw us. Whatever our weakness, God knows. However we crawl through life, God watches. But we are made by God, fearfully and wonderfully, and God has plans for us.

They are great plans, whatever they are. But the only way we’ll know what they are, the only way we’ll see them is if we follow Jesus.

Come and see.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.