"Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." (John 1:50)

Do you remember “Tomorrow’s World”? It was a programme back in the 1960s to the 1980s about technology and it told you about the technological marvels that were coming and how they would change our lives. We’d all, for example, have our own personal jetpack that would fly us around. It did get the whole microprocessor thing right, though - we have, indeed seen technological wonders greater than we could probably have imagined. The idea that I’ve got in my pocket a phone with many times the computing power of the computers that took people to the Moon in 1969 is something I find astonishing.

Of course, for people growing up today, these things are just part of the world they’re growing up in. To a point, I suppose, they’ll take them for granted. We rapidly lose our sense of wonder for amazing things in our pursuit of still more amazing wonders. I wonder how often, for example, we read the New Testament and jog pretty quickly through this exchange between Nathaniel and Jesus. Jesus tells Nathaniel that he saw him sitting under a fig tree before Philip called him. Nathaniel is amazed. Are we? OK, it impressed Nathaniel but as miracles and wonders go, for us who know what’s coming, it’s not up there with the feeding of the five thousand or the raising of Lazarus, is it? As Jesus says himself, “You will see greater things than these”.

Still, there’s a couple of really important things in this passage. First of all, Jesus’s greeting of Nathaniel as someone who knows him - reminds us that God knows each and every one of us intimately. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses: the times when we have stood firm in the face of temptation and the times when we’ve succumbed. He knows the times when we have opened our ears and listened for his voice and the times when we’ve turned away. He knows the times when we’ve sat under fig trees. 

When Jesus asks Nathaniel if he believes because he’d seen him under the fig tree, Jesus then turns to those who were there as well - to his followers - and includes them when he says, “You will see greater things than these”. Now you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, Andy. How do we know Jesus does that?” In Greek there are two words for “you” - one for if you’re speaking to one person and another if you’re speaking to more than one. At this point, according to John, Jesus switches abruptly from the first to the second, and whoever John, the writer of this Gospel was, his Greek was excellent.

And it’s no less than the truth. They would see greater wonders than these. They would go on to see all those big miracles I mentioned. They would see the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. They would see the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. They would be witnesses to events that would change the world and announce a new relationship between God and his children - a relationship that would call them to love one another and look out for one another as part of loving him. 

More than that, though. The writer of John’s Gospel thought very carefully about the way he wrote. When Jesus switches from you-singular to you-plural it’s almost as if Jesus turns not just to those who were with him, but to look out of the page at us and say to us, “You will see greater things than these”. I wonder if John meant it to have that effect. I wonder if he meant those who were hearing these words read to them would have that sensation. John was writing toward the end of the first century when persecution was real; when Jerusalem - the heart of Judaism and the place where their faith had found its first home - had been destroyed by the Romans. They were small scattered communities desperately in need of encouragement. “You will see greater wonders than these”.

They did. Within a generation there were Christian communities all over the Empire and beyond. In generations that followed the Empire itself would become Christian, the message of the Gospel was carried across Europe, out to India and, eventually, across the whole world. And in its wake other wonders were done: the sick were healed as we set up hospitals, the hungry were fed as Christian communities arranged for bread to be made available to the poor, gradually, bit by bit, the message that lies at the heart of Christianity worked wonders in the world - greater wonders, perhaps, than even the Apostles saw - the message that every human being matters: that the poorest child in the coldest, dampest slum in the most rundown district of the most forgotten parts of the world is precious in the eyes of God.

That idea has worked wonders greater than anyone could have imagined. For we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God, our father and creator, has equipped us to do amazing things. He has given us the intelligence, the creativity and the imagination to develop sciences that develop medicines and treatments to cure the sick. He has given us the compassion, the wisdom and the power of communication it takes to organise ourselves in communities where we look after each other and care for the weakest and poorest among us as our brothers and sisters. He has made us sufficiently different from one another for each of us to be unique, but sufficiently alike for us to reach beyond those differences to embrace each other as family. As humanity. As the children of God.

Or not. It’s our choice. We can listen to the insistent voice within us - the voice of God - to be more than we have been and to grow spiritually. Or we can give way to the cynicism that can so easily tempt us: what difference can I make? I’m not important. I’m nothing special. I’ll just see that I and mine are all right and the devil take the rest. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me we’ve heard way too much of that mood music lately. Maybe, in this country, we’ve started to forget the idea that everyone matters. Maybe we’ve become comfortable that charity begins at home and that getting a few new nice shiny things is more important than looking after one another.

We can be so much better than that. We are the children of God, made in the image of God and, if we listen, he’s still calling us. He’s calling us to bear witness in the world around us: witness to his love for all his children. He’s calling us to speak up for compassion and love when the world tempts us with hardness and selfishness. He’s calling us to look after our neighbour when she fetches up on our doorstep when she’s been driven from her home. He’s calling us to forget all the times when we’ve fallen short of what we’re meant to be - all the times when we’ve bought into the lies of the world that encourage our selfishness and greed, that sound the drums of war and rouse hate in our hearts.

Forget them because that’s the Gospel. Yes we’re fallible. Yes we sometimes get lulled into thinking that there are folk who don’t matter. Sometimes we’re selfish. Sometimes we get gulled into thinking that folk who are different are, somehow, our enemy. You think God doesn’t know that? You think God doesn’t know when we’ve sat under a fig tree? We can be so much better than that - that’s what the Cross is for. Let all that go and maybe - if we all did that - we would see greater wonders than we could imagine. 

Lord give us vision to see that you work wonders in the world and that you work them through us, your children. Give us courage and confidence to speak your word in the world. This we ask in the name of your greatest wonder - our Lord Jesus Christ

Preached at Kirkpatrick-Fleming Parish church