URC Daily Devotion 29th September

This fascinating representation of ‘Nathaniel (asleep under the fig tree) by Mark Cazalet which can be found at www.Methodist Church.org.uk follow the link to the  ‘Methodist Art Collection’. It seems at first a simple image of a roughly painted figure asleep in a foetal position under a tree. It is worth however spending time with the image and seeing the nuances in it.
 
For did Nathaniel respond so enthusiastically to Jesus just because Jesus was a good observer? Or what was it that Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree that prompted Jesus to call him? Mark Cazalet chooses to depict Nathaniel as asleep, although the text does not say that. However, is Mark Cazalet pointing us to a deeper sense of the passage. The fig tree is a great symbol in the Bible. Adam and Eve make clothes out of the fig leaf, the promised land was a land of abundant figs, and the prophets spoke of people living and owning their own fig tree as the promise of restoration and stability. Was Nathaniel pondering his own perception of sinfulness or longing for stability or trying to puzzle out how the land could once again be a place of abundance. This coupled with Nathaniel’s dismissive retort of ‘can anything good come out of Nazareth’ and Jesus’ reply suggest that somehow Nathaniel’s eyes were opened and he saw in Jesus ‘the Son of God The King of the Jews’. This echoes Jesus’s call to Andrew and the other disciple – and then repeated by Philip – ‘Come and see’.
 
That is the call of Jesus in John’s gospel, ‘to come and see’. That is an invitation in our own discipleship journey, not only to ‘come and see’, discovering Jesus, but ‘to go and do’ and follow his way in our life and living.