Daily Lesson for January 14, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 1 verses 45 through 49:

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Now here is a story of primordial meaning.

Jesus saw Philip under the fig tree.  Now what does that mean?  If you're thinking you can read ahead in the book of John to find out you can't. You can read ahead -- and you should -- but John never mentions the fig tree again. You won't find the meaning of the fig tree by reading ahead, but rather by reading behind.

Go way back, deep into primordial time, into the Garden.  There, in that beautiful Garden filled with all of the trees of the forest you'll remember seeing two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil. And there you'll also remember seeing or perhaps even being present in the loins of a man or the womb of a woman who having just eaten of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, are now newly awakened to the sickening aftertaste of sin called shame.

And so there they are, and perhaps there we are too "in them", hiding in that garden and finding cover behind the leaves of yet now the third tree mentioned in the Book of Genesis, you guessed it: the Fig Tree.

Then hunched over behind a single and not very suitable fig leaf, comes the voice of Adam: "I heard you calling in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

The story is trying to tell us that Jesus came to earth like God came into the Garden, calling our names walking towards us. But before we could hear anything, long before we could make out even a voice and much less our own names, and way, way before we nervously heard the crunch of God's feet drawing closer on the earth, He saw us. He saw us before we saw Him. He saw us, cowered "in Adam", hiding behind our Fig Trees, full of embarrassment and sin-sick with the rancid taste of the bittersweet and soured fruit stuck in our mouths. He saw us there -- dying of shame in the consequences of our own sin.

He saw us; and that's when He came.