Decisive Encounters

22 . [Translated quote] Antonio Muñoz Molina, Sefarad, Madrid: Editorial Santillana, 2001, pp. 291-192.

23 . John would sign his Gospel with the pseudonym of “the beloved disciple”or “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20). “Even John, the beloved disciple — the one who most fully reflected the likeness of the Savior— did not naturally possess loveliness of character. He was not only self-assertive and ambitious for honor but impetuous and resentful under injuries. [. . .] The strength and patience, the power and tenderness, the majesty and meekness that he beheld in the daily life of the Son of God, filled his soul with admiration and love. Day by day his heart was drawn out toward Christ, until he lost sight of self in love for his Master. [. . .] The power of the love of Christ wrought a transformation of character.” (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, Madrid: Safeliz, 2018, p. 75)

2

The Invitation

The travelers arrive at Bethsaida with mixed feelings. On one hand, they are happy to return home; on the other, they find it difficult to say goodbye to the Teacher, who continues His route toward Galilee.1 Interacting with Him has been an unforgettable experience, which they would like to extend. Will they manage to get Him to stay with them, even if only for one more day?

The village receives them with its loose embrace, nestled between the lake and the stony hill, dotted with hamlets and small fields. Tender green sown fields stand out among the fallow land. Black cypresses, twisted carob and some pomegranate trees encircle the terraces. In the morning peace, the blows of the locals’ mattocks resonate crisp and deep against walls and cisterns, the cacophony of seagulls shaking in tempo.

Those on the way barely stop for an instant to drink from an old waterwheel in the first orchards. They are in a hurry to introduce the Teacher to their people.

The Galilean is an impassioned road companion, a free spirit. His new disciples are disoriented by the unpredictability of His actions and expressions. His personal way of teaching, in contrast to the Teachers from His land, is so open and new that each of His proposals seems to be a challenge, and even an act of protest. But for Him freedom is not the possibility of acting on a whim but the occasion of choosing the best.

The Teacher aspires to nothing less than changing the world, transforming people one by one, as attempting to produce a new type of human being.2 However, He is neither naive nor crazy: He is as realist as life itself. For that reason, He instilled His disoriented disciples, in addition to astonishment, with trust and respect.3

In every word He makes it clear that imparting lessons is not the same as being a Teacher. The Teachers of the law in His environment always want to teach; with Him, one always wants to learn.

It surprises them that He accepts followers as ill prepared as they are. He implies that, “in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea.”4 That is why He distrusts the arrogant scholars, who are so imbued with their own knowledge that they are incapable of learning anything new. He criticizes that, having the key of knowledge, able to open the gate of God’s kingdom, “You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” 5

From the beginning, He has made it very clear that He does not need to avail himself of locations reserved for lecturing sessions, neither to meet with God. He teaches them at any time and makes them feel close to heaven right where they are, whether on the road, under the palm trees of an orchard, among almond and olive trees, or at the very mountain.

On their way back to their homes, Andrew and John express an urgent desire to follow such a unique Teacher full time.

His school is one of free access, open to everyone. Without classrooms or schedules as in it you always learn and at any place . . . with no more manuals than divine revelation and the infinite universe. With no more exams and tests than those involved in existence. And without a graduation diploma, for in the school of life one never graduates.

The enthusiasm of these disciples is such that they do not cease to share their find with their families and friends.6 Influenced by the personality of the Teacher, aspiring to continue learning from Him, these restless, young men rejoice with what was discovered in their first lessons.7 Andrew transmits his joy to his brother Simon and introduces Him to Jesus. From one to another, they gradually pass on the news.

And that is how Jesus encounters Philip. Shortly after seeing him, with that glance that is much more far-reaching than the eyes, He tells him:

Follow Me.

Jesus appears not to see people for who they are, but for whom they can become.

The new disciple, dazzled by his new guide, runs in search of his friend Nathanael,8 to share with him the Joy of the discovery.9 With his heart pounding with excitement, he gives him the news:

I think we have found the Messiah.10 This Teacher is not any rabbi.

Impatient and eager for his friend to meet his new Teacher, Philip summarizes in one phrase the essence of all the conversations they held about the awaited liberator:

He must be the one sent by God, the one promised by the prophets. He is called Jesus, that is, “savior,” although people know him as “the Nazarene,” because he is the son of Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth.

But his friend Nathanael,11 with a rough frankness typical of him, replies with a mocking gesture of mistrust:

Another Messiah? Do you not think that we already have enough disappointments? What’s more, can something good come out of Nazareth?12 How can you believe in a Galilean “savior?” Look in Scripture and you will see that no prophet ever comes out of Galilee.13

Nathanael is an idealist, committed and serious. But even the best believers have prejudices and run the risk of being mistaken.

Philip is hurt by his friend’s doubts, but he has no arguments to dispel them. Because he greatly cares for Nathanael, he foregoes discussing the subject with him. Convinced of its truth, he resorts to the only irrefutable reasoning, the same that was maintained by the Teacher with His first disciples, and that since then would be the principal argument of His recruitment campaign:

Come and see. Get out from under your fig tree, and follow me to Him. Convince yourself.14

Nathanael follows him half-heartedly.

Upon meeting Jesus, his disillusionment is confirmed. The demeanor and attire of the young rabbi does not go together with the idea that he has formed about such an important figure as the Messiah. He even finds it difficult to see in Him a Teacher worthy of trust. There, he only sees a mere traveler, dressed as they are, with the humble attire of poor people.15

But when Jesus observes Nathanael, who approaches him reticently, flaunting skepticism and self-sufficiency, he tells him with an intriguing smile:

“Well, if it is not clear to you that I am not even a good Jew, I see you as a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”

It is like telling him:

“I like your sincerity and frankness. But don’t trust appearances too much.”

Surprised by these words, Nathanael exclaims:

From where do you know me?

The Teacher is very observant. It is not common to catch a young man praying. Healthy young people prefer to presume to be skeptical than devout. Jesus likes sincere and brave young people; that is why he confesses a small secret to him:

“Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. I immediately noticed what you were doing.”

Nathanael blushes. His modesty prevents him from revealing his spirituality. He also feels that his heart cannot hide anything from the Teacher’s piercing glance. He is ashamed of his foolishness and of his unfounded prejudices. He now senses that his friend Philip could be right.

Soon, after observing Jesus more closely and listening to His words, a strange certainty, as coming from heaven, enlightens his mind, and nudges him to confess:

—“You must be the Son of God, the awaited king of Israel.”

And Jesus replies, radiant, happy to have found a disciple so full of potential as that one:

—“You believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. I promise you that from now on, if you know where to look, you will see heaven open and the angels of God descend and ascend on us.”

Which is equivalent to saying: “my presence will put you in direct contact with heaven.”

Do you remember the story of our father Jacob? Fleeing from threats made by his brother, he found himself lost in a strange land, burdened by his anxiety, far from everything he loved. But God was there, with him, in the midst of his solitude, because he never leaves us. I assure you that here today, next to this fig tree, if your eyes of faith were to open, you could also see heaven open, and a direct path that takes us to the throne of the universe. If you open wide the eyes of your soul “you will see that the heavens are open and never close.”16Any place where God is sought is a Bethel, “house of God and gate of heaven.”17

Nathanael, like Jacob in his flight, also believes to awaken from the torpor of a dream to a new reality in which the divine, what seems to be most inaccessible, is found, thanks to the Teacher, within reach of a heartbeat. Within him resonates the echo of the words of the fugitive patriarch:

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 18

And he tells himself, without saying it, what many others who have been discovered by him have said to themselves:

“Christ saw me under the fig tree. He knows far more about me than I do, far more than I could learn from psychoanalysis.19

And it is that the Teacher has the rare capacity to see beyond appearances, to detect the presence of the divine in the human and the celestial in the quotidian. With Him, you learn to see the old things through new eyes, and to stop seeing the new things with the same old eyes. His strange capacity for love permits Him to discern radiant butterflies in the most ugly caterpillars and admirable saints in unworthy sinners. Because to really love “is to see the beauty that exists in the heart of the other person.”20

There are Teachers who teach by guiding their students like horses: step by step. The majority of us need to be guided like that, respecting our pace. There are others who teach by promoting the good that they find in the disciple, encouraging him to advance and grow, because we all learn better when we are encouraged. The new Teacher educates in both ways: keeping in step with everyone, and motivating each one, stimulating any progress with honesty.

The Teacher is further able to understand the dreams of His potential disciples. That is why He can dream of them as they are not yet and imagine the reality they can turn into. He knows that a human being grows when aware of being dreamt about.21

Therefore, these young men, like so many others who will follow, by sharing among themselves the new perspectives that their encounter with Jesus adds to their lives, gradually spread their invitation to follow Him and, little by little, cause the small group of disciples to grow. With such enthusiastic spokespersons, the work of the unusual Teacher increasingly spreads, accepting men and women where they are, just as they are, and step by step transforming them into new beings, full of incredible possibilities.

Like Nathanael, we each have our own discernments, some of them false. It is difficult for us to understand that God may propose different paths than those we know. For that reason, The Teacher baffles with the apparent simplicity of His approach.

We all tend to admire the extraordinary, the great accomplishments of humanity, the great figures from history.22At the same time, as it is clear that we cannot all be first in everything, and very few can bring to fruition their delusions of grandeur, the vast majority condemn ourselves to fitting into the category of the “masses.” This reality appears to have triggered defense mechanisms in an infinite number of human beings, which keep them in what the classicists called aurea mediocritas23 and that could be translated as “Apology of the acceptable.”

Across all societies economic hardships, ignorance, life’s injustices, the challenge of studying certain careers or finding interesting work undermines the natural optimism of childhood and the idealism of adolescence. As youth gradually passes and adulthood becomes complicated, circumstances lead the discouraged to avoidance, resignation or inhibition, often producing lives that are routine, conformist, disillusioned—doomed to failure.

Invariably, many young people quickly lose their most legitimate ambitions, as it pertains to the sphere of study, work or personal success as well as to the spiritual realm of ideals and values.24 In all areas of existence, the prevailing inertia is to be content with mediocre results or to justify them.25 Not committing, not daring to try anything new because of convenience, because of fear of exerting effort or fear of ridicule, acquiescing to the “push and pull” between improvisation and despondency, when so many could attain a highly motivating reality with a bit of effort and more will.

That’s where Jesus sets Himself apart from other Teachers.26 It is true that He preaches a simple and modest lifestyle, but He arouses noble aspirations and teaches a profound philosophy of existence. He radiates “a hidden power, which cannot be wholly concealed.”27 Even His enemies must confess that “No one ever spoke the way this man does.” 28

If there is something that is made clear to his followers, it is his desire that they achieve excellence:

What do you do that is extraordinary? — He will ask his disciples demonstrating that He does not settle for little. He even dares to encourage them to be “perfect,” that is, to develop the innumerable possibilities pulsing in their beings!29

This is how He transforms their lives, demonstrating that they are capable, and what they can become if they let in the power of divine grace.

Since the start of his ministry, the Teacher calls young and even younger people to turn their ordinary lives into extraordinary lives. To change that mediocre existence of which they do not feel satisfied, for something grand, noble and beautiful. By calling them to follow Him, He invites them to enroll in a mission committed, consecrated to a great cause. His calling removes them from their routine reality and casts them to a fabulous, risky, intense, difficult, even heroic adventure in which there is no room for either meaninglessness or superficiality.

Those who follow Jesus soon stop being ordinary citizens. His example stirs in the depths of their beings the answer to the call from the ideal, and, in that way, those young people will soon be willing to continue the impassioned journey initiated by Him.30 By giving meaning to their existence, Jesus gives their ordinary lives an extraordinary dimension.

The Teacher senses that His ministry on this earth may be very brief. For that reason, He experiences it in such an intense way. After having spent His youth as a carpenter31 building homes to dwell in, plows to cultivate the land and yokes to share the loads, He now has set His mind, as an educator, on building a more inhabitable world, devising new tools to cultivate hearts, and searching for more united ways of sharing human hardships.

Since not entirely pleased about the manner in which the majority of people live their spirituality in the religious community they were born into, He decides, rather than abandoning it, as most who are dissatisfied do, to do something infinitely better, but much easier, in other words, gradually build together with His followers a new community, which he decides to call His “church.”32

The representatives of the clergy and the leaders of the country mutter:

Do not listen to him. This carpenter is not qualified. He is an ignorant megalomaniac.

He does not know what he does.

But He does not become disheartened for He knows that, when someone decides to do something important, He must face the opposition of those who would have wanted to do the same—but do not venture to take the risks—with the criticism of those in support of something different, and above all, with the resistance of those who never do anything.

At the beginning, He relies on nothing more than His own support and already has close to 30 followers. But the passion of those first disciples won over for His cause is so infectious that they themselves gradually extend the invitation to others.

When He decides to start building the community of believers with which He dreams, the Teacher makes it very clear that He does not want to establish a religion, but a school. He already has a true religion: it is the one God has revealed. Now He wants to teach for the purpose of putting it into practice. The essence of his doctrine can be formulated in a pair of sentences:

A pure and unblemished religion in the eyes of God consists of tending to the needy in their straits and not allowing itself to be contaminated by the world.33 Or, said in a different way: being a good believer consists of living in communion with God, and in treating fellow man with the empathy and solidarity with which one would like to be treated in his circumstances.34

To Him, spirituality and education have a common objective: to teach to think, to teach to be, to teach to live and, consequently, to teach to coexist; that is, to teach to love.35

This courageous reformer has many innovative ideas and very few prejudices. For that reason He accepts in His team young and old, learned and ignorant, men and women,36 something completely unheard of in that world, because He also accepts them without any prior training. And He does everything independent of the most-established religious institutions of their time, that is, outside of the temple and of the synagogue. He knows that “the special truths for this time are found, not with ecclesiastical authorities, but with men and women who are not too learned or too wise to believe the word of God.”37

His great topics are life itself, courageous truth, sincere love, true freedom, real happiness; thus, His focus is formation of character. He tells His disciples that, if they are unhappy with the society they live in and want to change it, they must begin by allowing themselves to be transformed. Only in doing so can they convince others, providing them better reasons to live and a higher scale of values. To this effect, He asks them for reflection, discipline of body and mind, eagerness to work, joy in sharing, the desire to carry out responsibilities and respect for others.

He teaches them not to confuse humility with fear, or contentment with laziness.38 That is to say, to recognize their limits; yet, without refusing to use their capabilities, allowing themselves to be guided by God to make them perform to their highest ability.

Being able to be content with few material goods does not mean to not have great plans and noble ambitions, or to accept with excuses what is inexcusable, or to confuse spontaneity with superficiality. God has for each an ideal of progress and excellence. Hence His endeavor to spur the utmost use of the possibilities without falling into an inferiority complex, nor giving in to vanity or arrogance.39

The young Teacher knows how to encourage, excite, tactfully correct, motivate to desire to give their best, and He does so with patience, firmness and affection. By means of constant analogies, stories and images, and above all, through His example, He teaches His disciples to understand the Scriptures, to interpret reality, to listen to nature and to learn from experiences, to not fear death and to take existence seriously; to pray intelligently and to fill their daily activities with spiritual strength; to live in solidarity, to exercise forgiveness; to be willing to suffer before causing others to suffer and to undergo evil before causing it.40 In a word, to live entirely positive lives, which will turn their surroundings into a better world.41

In a short time the common lives of John and Andrew, of Simon, of Philip and Nathanael, by reflecting that of the Teacher,42 will gradually turn exceptional. They need only follow Him and continue moving forward with Him on that steep and narrow but thrilling path, which goes from the lowest lands of their human mediocrity to the highest peaks of the divine realm.

And they will follow Him so closely that the members of His group will be known by their environment as “those of the Way.”43

1 . John 1:43-44.

2 . Augusto Cury, The Master of the Masters, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008, p. 75.

3 . “Jesus Christ said great things so simply, that it seems as though he had not thought them great: and yet so clearly that we easily see what he thought of them. This clearness, joined to this simplicity, is wonderful.” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, no. 797, Madrid: Valdemar, 2001, p. 309)

4 . Oscar Wilde, De profundis, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1977, pp. 92-93.

5 . Matthew 23:13; cf. Luke 11:52.

6 . John 1:40-51, Bethsaida means “house of fishing.” There are at least two places that claim that name, both along Lake Genesareth.

7 . John and James, sons of Zebedee, must have been quite young at that time, considering that three years later their mother was still trying to find them work (Matt. 20:20). The fact that John effortlessly leans on Jesus in the last supper, is better understood as a juvenile gesture of trust (John 13:23-26) rather than a calculated stance of an adult, which could have other connotations. The fact that this same disciple, near the year 100 is still serving, is fully understood if he was about ten years younger than Jesus.

8 . John 1:40-51.

9 . Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship. The Following, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2004, p. 235.

10 . Text based on John 1:43-51.

11 . “Philip knew that his friend was searching the prophecies, and while Nathanael was praying under a fig tree, Philip discovered his refuge. They had often prayed together in this secluded spot, hidden by the foliage.” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, pp. 83)

12 . “Their uncouth pronunciation of Aramaic, the common language of the time, caused them to be held up to ridicule [. . .]. The Nazarenes were contemptuously called by the old equivalent to our “dung,” am-ha-arets, men of the land, farmworkers.” (R. Aron, The Hidden Years of Jesus, Bilbao: Ediciones EGA, 1991, pp. 43-44)

13 . John 7:52.

14 . The questions having to do with Jesus: ‘why does a believer hold that his salvation is in Jesus Christ?’ as well as other questions of the same nature: ‘and who do you say that I am?’ can only be answered personally [. . .] because the question and the answer are only possible if previously there has been a non-transferable experience: the experience of the encounter.” [Translated quote] (Martín Gelabert, Salvación como humanización, Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas, 1985, p. 13)

15 . Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 83, 84.

16 . Ibíd., p. 116.

17 . The episode of Jacob’s dream is told in Genesis 28:10-22.

18 . Genesis 28:16, NKJV.

19 . Emmanuel Carrère, The Kingdom, Barcelona: Anagrama, 2015, p. 61.

20 . Jean Vanier, cited by Peter Van Breemen in The God Who Won’t Let Go, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2001, p. 98.

21 . Idea adapted from Danilo Dolci’s, Everyone Grows Only if Dreamt About.

22 . From the oldest of times to the Guinness era, our world extols champions.

23 . This expression is well known among Latinists, and it comes from the Latin poet Horacio (who lived from 65 to 8 BC. It appears for the first time in his Odes, Book II, (Ode number 10 to Licinio).

24 . In Spain, the term“ni-ni generation,” applies, since the first decade of 2000, to young people who neither study or work, and even more precisely to those who do not want to either study or work.

25 . In the religious field, a lukewarm attitude is usually referred to as “the Church in Laodicea» (Rev. 3:14-22).

26 . Dr. Augusto Cury talks about the wisdom of Jesus in this way: “There are two types of wisdom: and one is far superior to the other. The first type is measured by how much a person knows, but the second is gauged by the extent to which a person is conscious of how little he really knows.” True wise men are the most convict of their ignorance […]. Superior wisdom tolerates, inferior wisdom judges; superior wisdom relieves, inferior wisdom blames; superior wisdom forgives, inferior wisdom condemns. Inferior wisdom has diplomas, no one graduates in superior wisdom, there are no masters or doctors and everyone is an eternal apprentice.” (The Master of Love. Analysis of Christ’s Intelligence, Nashville: Grupo Nelson, 2008, p. 15)

27 . Ellen G. White, Ministry of Healing, p. 51.

28 . John 7:46.

29 . Matthew 5:47-48.

30 . “Jesus has taught something infinitely better than a sophisticated purification or a civic morality based on justice; he has sought to transform men in his likeness, according to the words of his announcer Ezekiel: ‘I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.’” (G. Papini, The Story of Christ, p. 326)

31 . In the Hebrew tradition, manual labor is sacred: “He who works for a living is greater than he who shuts himself up in idle piety,” Because God already put man in the Garden of Eden“to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15). And the work is so honorable, they go on to add, that: “an artisan at his work does not need to defer to the greatest of doctors.” Therefore, to name just a few of the most prestigious rabbis, Hillel was a woodcutter, Yehuda a baker, and Yohanan a cobbler. The first great Christian rabbi, Saul of Tarsus, was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3).

32 . The word that our Bibles translate as “church” (ekklesia in Greek) means a gathering of people who have replied to an invitation (Matt. 16:18). “With the calling of John and Andrew and Simon, of Philip and Nathanael, began the foundation of the Christian church.” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 86)

33 . James 2:27.

34 . Matthew 22:37-40.

35 . cf. Enrique Rojas, Live your Life, Planeta: Temas de Hoy, 2013, p. 83.

36 . Luke 8:1-3 states that there were many female disciples; it mentions by name Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’ household.

37 . Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 79.

38 . cf. Philippians 4:11.

39 . Philippians 4:13.

40 . Dionisio Byler, Jesus and Nonviolence, Terrassa: Clie, 1993, p. 48.

41 . Augusto Cury asserts: “If the political, social and educational worlds had minimally experienced what Christ experienced and taught, our miseries would have been eradicated, and we would have been a happier species.” (The Master of Masters, 2008, Thomas Nelson, pp. 189-190)

42 . “As the flower turns to the sun, that the bright beams may aid in perfecting its beauty and symmetry, so should we turn to the Sun of Righteousness, that heaven’s light may shine upon us, that our character may be developed into the likeness of Christ.” (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 69)

43 . Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22.