A couple of weeks ago,  I had a conversation with a First Nations woman and asked her what Indigenous people most needed from the settlers. Without hesitation she replied, “we want to be seen! most of the time, I feel invisible!”

I came to Canada fifty years ago for two reasons: the first was that I wanted to teach First Nations children and the second was to live in a faith community.  I was genuinely interested in learning about the culture, in this case, north of Fort St. John, Beaver and Cree people on three different reserves. There was a lot of poverty on the reserves and a lot of restrictions and I was appalled by the lack of basic services.

At that time, I had no knowledge of the residential school system, or the Indian Act, or the degree to which the church was complicit in these things. I did not know that the government had a specific policy to extinguish indigenous culture and language. As a newcomer from England, nobody told me about any of this, I learned about it several years later when I studied at the University of Saskatoon and took classes on the subject. Growing up in England, Indigenous people were presented in very stereotypical ways and there was no discussion about colonialism. I learned later that there was little about Canadian policy towards Indigenous people on the Canadian school curriculum when my Canadian peers were growing up. I asked my son about it the other day and told me that he too was taught very little in high school and he’s a fairly recent graduate. Other Canadian friends have told me that they grew up close to a reserve but there was almost no interaction. We all need to be seen. We can’t serve the brothers and sisters we don’t see. 

Today’s Gospel is a very encouraging one and it is about someone who is truly “seen” first by a friend, who brings him to Jesus, and then on a very deep level, by Jesus himself. Nathaniel is a man who is sincerely seeking a relationship with God. We first encounter him when Philip brings him to Jesus and when Jesus sees Nathaniel approaching, he says of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” “How do you know me?” Nathaniel asks. Jesus relies, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Then Nathaniel declares, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” - John 1:47-51. 

What is the significance of the fig tree and what exactly did Jesus “see” in Nathaniel?  The scripture tells us that Jesus called Nathaniel an “Israelite in whom there was no deceit, some translations use the word ‘guile’. The dictionary defines the meaning of guile as sly, cunning or duplicitous intelligence, e.g. “He used all his guile and guts to free himself from the mess he was in”.  The dictionary definition of deceit is the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. Jesus saw none of this in Nathaniel. What he saw was honesty and transparency. He was sitting under the fig tree reflecting on his life. He may well have been weary from the struggle of trying to overcome his own sins and weaknesses, but he wasn’t pretending to be something he was not. Nathaniel wanted a relationship with God, he meditated on truth, and honestly tried to deal with his sins. He must have been exhausted by his concentrated effort. But then he heard the words of grace as Jesus reminded him of the graciousness of God who forgave Jacob and David their great sins. Nathaniel was introduced to grace, the only true path to God, and in that grace he recognized Jesus as the son of God.  

Jesus’ first meeting with Nathaniel, is similar to His first encounter with Peter. Both men were introduced to Jesus by a friend or brother. In each case, Jesus saw something special about the man and described it. Upon meeting Nathanael, Jesus recognized his character and his history. He was “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.” That is ironic since the patriarch Israel’s original name was “Jacob,” which means “supplanter” or “usurper.” His early life story was a cycle of him deceiving his brother, father, etc. Perhaps Jesus saw an honesty in Nathanael that personified everything God wanted to see in His people. 

There must have been something significant about the fig tree. Jesus probably could have said, “I saw you under the fig tree” to almost anybody, and they would have said, “What’s so special about that? Everybody sits under a fig tree sometimes!” Perhaps he had been meditating about the life of Jacob one day while sitting under a fig tree. Jesus had already mentioned Israel, and He now compared Himself to the ladder that the angels ascended and descended in Jacob’s vision as described in Genesis. 

Jesus knows your history. He knows your character. He will make you the person you should become, and He will reveal all of His glory to you if you are willing to see it. 

 We all want and need to be seen but our deepest longing is to be seen and loved as we really are, with our particular cultural and gender identity, with our strengths and good qualities, but also with our flaws and weaknesses and yes, even our sins. Real love is being seen and accepted exactly as we are. We have all struggled and continue to struggle with the shadow side of ourselves, and we all know the frustration of trying to overcome our weaknesses entirely through our own efforts. I was struck this week by the title of a book by Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece.  The title of the book is “Who Could Ever Love You?” A sad question indeed, but one that does have an answer: that the God of Jacob, the God of David, the God of Nathaniel and the God of all of us, does indeed love us exactly as we are, and through the profound grace of that love, we are able to grow, to overcome personal and communal sins, and ultimately to become everything God created us to be. Our call is to honor God’s love with our lives, not earn it. This unconditional love has already been given; it is ours through grace. The dictionary definition of grace by the way is unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification, a virtue coming from God.   

We may all have grown up with little or no awareness of our government’s policy towards our First Nations, and with little or no knowledge of the residential  schools, but as Maya Angelou said: “when we know better, we should do better”. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission published 37 steps towards reconciliation. Several years later, only two or three of those steps have been accomplished. It is incumbent on us now, here at St. Matthias, to pay some attention to what we can do, beyond the land acknowledgement at the beginning of our Sunday service. I know I’m going to be giving a lot of thought and prayer to that, because everyone deserves to be seen. 

 

 

 

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