The bride of Christ, the Church, is a most beautiful city. It has twelve gates on which are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve courses of stones on which are inscribed the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The city described in Revelation honors the covenant that prepared the way for the Lamb, and the covenant that continues His mission unto eternity. Today we honor the apostle Nathanael, also known as Bartholomew, whose name is inscribed in this great and eternal city.
Being from a small town myself, from Hoxie, Kansas, a place insignificant in many respects, I love Nathanael’s question – Can anything good come from Nazareth? Were we not to learn shortly thereafter that Jesus declares there to be no duplicity in Nathanael, we would be tempted to read sarcasm into Nathanael’s question, but apparently there is none. Nathanael simply reflects the prevailing expectation that the Messiah would come from a more significant place than the sleepy town of Nazareth. Nathanael’s lack of duplicity is much more apparent in his confession of Jesus as the Son of God shortly after Jesus tells him that He saw him under the fig tree. We all have a tendency to become more duplicitous as we get older; we tend to doubt before we believe and to stop expecting anything new. Nathanael’s simple faith is a reflection of Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom of God belongs to little children. Nathanael even foreshadows a bit in today’s Gospel the apostolic faith in the resurrection that has now been passed down through two millennia of human history. Nathanael believes in Jesus as the Son of God through the slightest of miracles, through Jesus’ simply knowing Nathanael’s name before they were formally introduced. How ready is the faith of this simple yet great apostle, to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and to be an eyewitness to the miracle that has opened up the gates of heaven for you and for me!
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