Honest Bias

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20), 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, John 1:43-51, Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

“Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” (Mk. 1.47)

Or, as the King James describes him, Nathanael, “in whom is no guile.”  I like the sound of the word “guile.” Somehow, its sound conveys something of its meaning: deceit, trickery, cunning. 

On the face of it, Jesus seems to say that Nathanael has none of these things: he is honest, straightforward, direct. Philip approaches Nathanael as someone steeped in the stories of his people, someone who not only understands who Moses and the prophets wrote about, but is presumably hoping, looking, waiting, for that person. Nathanael is a student, someone who does not simply hear the word of God, but takes the time to engage it, wrestle with it, discuss it. This is what men do under fig trees in ancient Israel, specifically it is where rabbis go to study the Torah, and to study it with others. 

Nathanael has a reputation as someone who takes scripture seriously, and it is based on this reputation that his friend Philip first tries to convince him to join a few others as followers of Jesus. Philip appeals to Nathanael’s natural inclinations in his invitation to “come and see” Jesus, and Jesus, right off, sees Nathanael. 

What Jesus sees however, may not be as guileless as his exclamation, “behold, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” initially sounds. I wonder if there is not a bit of sarcastic double entendre in Jesus’ response, a recognition that perhaps Nathanael, so confident in all he has gleaned under the fig tree about Moses and the prophets and the one who is to come, might not actually understand the one who is to come. 

After all, Nathanael’s first retort to Philip was “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” An undoubtedly excited Philip has just told Nathanael that they have found the one about whom the scriptures write, “Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth” and Nathanael gets stuck on the last word out of his mouth, “Nazareth.” 

Nazareth is a small, hill-village filled with the working-poor whose livelihood likely depended on servicing the occupying Roman army who had a garrison at or near Nazareth. Nazareth was hardly a center of religious observance or scholarship. It was remote from the center of religious life, no one of note comes from Nazareth, much less a prophet of God.

Nathanael is not just being sarcastic about a region and village. He is reflecting a deep bias: the movers and shakers of the world, the sources of truth and knowledge, come from the power centers of the world. Nathanael, in looking for the one to come, in looking for the liberation of his people, is not looking for someone from Nazareth. And that bias, that prejudice, means that his first response to the good news that someone has come is a sarcastic rejection, “nothing good is going to come from that person.”

In light of the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., I use the word prejudice intentionally. We are a prejudiced people. In our culture, in any culture, we cannot help but assume that our way of doing things is simply the way, and other folks just don’t get it, don’t understand it, or perhaps, don’t deserve it. We all have prejudice, we all have bias, and in this country, if you are white, that prejudice takes the form of racism because we white folk also have the power. We white folk have the power to enforce our language and idioms and inflection, our ways of doing business, of building families and sharing (or not sharing) wealth. 

One of the most insidious forms of racism, and one I think Episcopalians with our emphasis on knowledge and learning are sometimes the most susceptible to, is the assumption that “we know best.” We white folk struggle to imagine a world where perhaps a black woman on a bus knows something more about sharing space than we do. Where perhaps a brown grape picker has something to teach us about a just workforce. Where folks who deal every day with the impact of laws overwhelmingly enforced in communities of color might have something insightful to say about just how broken our legal system is. Racism so often takes the form of, “we in power know better, we know how it should be done, let us fix it.” 

The bitter irony of Nathanael’s response to Jesus is not just that he was reflecting the bias of the power-brokers of his day, those that assume answers come from those already in power. But that Nathanael himself may also have been from a neighboring Galilean village, Cana. So when Nathanael allows his bias to dismiss Jesus, he is also dismissing his own people, he is buying into the lie that nothing good can come from people like him. 

Like all of us, Nathanael is complicated. He knows what he knows. He does not know what he does not know. And he wants to know more. His first response may be snark, but Philip insists that he come and see, and so he does. And the first thing that happens is that Jesus sees him. 

Jesus immediately calls out Nathanael’s prejudice, his bias, and then Jesus makes doubly clear that he really sees him. Jesus sees not only someone with a bias, someone whose prejudice gets in the way, but he also sees someone who has spent a life under a fig tree, looking for the truth, looking for the one who will change the way things are.

Nathanael is both of these things. Someone sure in his knowledge because he has spent a life seeking knowledge for the benefit of others. But that knowledge is shaped by the bias of his culture, his people, his place in the world. Like Nathanael, all of us have certain expectations of where God is going to show up, who or what can teach us about God. We also have embedded assumptions, biases, even racist tropes that blind us to seeing where God is actually showing up.

But like so many words of Jesus, they can mean so many things at the same time. Perhaps Jesus is being a bit sarcastic with Nathanael, calling out his bias a bit while also reminding Nathanael at his root, he really does seek the one who is to come and liberate his people. Jesus applauds his honesty even as he calls into question what it is that Nathanael believes, and then goes deeper: I know you are one who wants be where God shows up. So, come and see.

I hope all of us are a bit like Nathanael: willing to speak our bias out loud, willing to allow someone to call us on it, and willing to accept an invitation to come and see where God is showing up, even if it is in a place or a body that we least expect it.