To be fully known and fully accepted: is there any richer human experience? That is a gift God offers to us. Sometimes it is the way God gets our attention. That’s certainly how it happened when Nathanael met Jesus.
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you come to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Just before this, Nathanael’s friend Philip had told him about Jesus, and he had responded with a big dose of skepticism. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But when he meets Jesus, Jesus speaks as though he already knows him, commending him for his lack of guile. Maybe Jesus is getting in a gentle dig, knowing what Nathanael had said, backhandedly praising him for holding nothing back, even sarcasm.
He surely gets Nathanael’s attention: “Where did you come to know me?” Jesus replies, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Now, Nathanael had been alone and Jesus nowhere close by. He could not have known this by natural means. As miracles go, it’s a mild one – but it captures Nathanael and opens his heart to seeing who Jesus is. And boy, does he see – he sees the whole truth! “‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’”
It takes months and years for Jesus’ disciples to comprehend his Messianic identity, and here, Nathanael gets it in the first five minutes. Jesus opened Nathanael’s heart by showing that he knew him, and then he made himself known to that open heart.
Who would you say knows you best in the world? How fully does that person know you? Do they accept you for all of who you are, the good, the bad and the ugly? Have you been able to receive that gift? And have you given it to another?
Have you experienced being known by God? I will sometimes receive a word in prayer that reveals a deep truth about myself, something I may dimly know but haven’t fully recognized. And often I sense a kind of acceptance of who I am, much more profound than I am able to offer myself. Sometimes allowing ourselves to be known by God helps us with the endless journey of coming to know ourselves.
In Jesus, God made the unknowable knowable, so that we might know God, at least as well as our limited human perceptions allow. And in coming into human life, human time, human experience, Jesus also made a way for us to feel what it’s like to be known by God. My prayer today, for you and for me, is that we will let that knowing love take root deep inside, so that we too can be without guile, without shadow, transparent as glass.
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