John 1:43-51
“Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Comedian George Burns said that.
Here’s something another comedian, W.C. Fields, said when caught reading the Bible: “I was looking for loopholes.”
Evangelist Billy Graham has something to say about loopholes: “You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.”
Loopholes and sincerity … I bring them up because the character who we’re introduced to in this text is a person who’s apparently quite sincere and isn’t looking for loopholes. He doesn’t need to look. He’s just that nice of a guy.
It’s quite a compliment Jesus pays Nathanael at their first meeting. When Jesus saw Nathanael walking toward him, he says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
That’s not something that could be said about everyone; many of us, even many of us who have good intentions, tend to be calculating in our speech, weighing what we say to put our best foot forward, or to avoid encouraging someone who’s a pest.
“No deceit,” which is the wording in the New Revised Standard Version, is an accurate translation of the underlying Greek word. However, I prefer the rendering of the older Revised Standard Version: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.”
Perhaps I prefer “guile” because even the word has kind of a dark sound to it. A person with guile sounds like someone you’d want to avoid. Indeed, the word “guile” has its roots in the Old English word wigle, which denotes witchcraft and sorcery. In modern English, the word has lost the witchcraft connotation, but it retains the sense of deceitfulness, or of “snare.” (Indeed, the Greek word John used that’s translated as deceit or guile was derived from an even older Greek word meaning “decoy.”)
But Nathanael, Jesus declares on their first meeting, is a true Israelite, without guile – he’s not crafty, not deceptive, and not out to take advantage of others. The Message paraphrases Jesus’ statement as “There’s a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.”
What’s more, any Jew who’d grown up learning the Hebrew Bible would immediately recognize other biblical connections behind Jesus’ comment about Nathanael. Psalm 32:2 declares, “Happy is the one whom the LORD does not accuse of doing wrong and who is free from all deceit.” And Isaiah 53:9 describes the suffering servant of God as one who has “no deceit in his mouth.”
So if Nathanael was without guile, it means that he makes no claim about himself that he does not strive to live up to. He does not wear a mask in public to hide his true feelings. He gives honest answers. He’s sincere and upright. He doesn’t look for a loophole; he’s not angling for some ethical wiggle room.
It was indeed a great compliment Jesus gave him. ….. A compliment, yes – but there’s irony here.
Because Nathanael has no guile, Jesus calls him a “true Israelite.” There’s a certain irony in that, for the person in the Bible who was originally given the name Israel, and from whom the people of Israel took their name, was Jacob. He was the one who, as a young man, took advantage of his hungry twin brother, Esau, and persuaded him to hand over his birthright for a bowl of stew. He’s the one who later tricked his father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau. He’s the one who later fled from his father-in-law’s house after deceiving him about his intentions (Genesis 31:20). In fact, even his name Jacob means “He supplants.” (And supplanting is defined as “usurping the place of another, often by underhanded tactics.”)
Yet after Jacob wrestles with a divine figure, God blesses Jacob in the form of a new name, Israel (which means, “one who strives with God”). It’s not clear that the new name given to Jacob results in a character change, however. Even later that day, after a peaceful reunion with Esau, Jacob deceives him about where he intends to travel next (Genesis 33:12-14).
Jesus’ comment about Nathanael’s being a true Israelite, however, indicates that regardless of how Jacob/Israel behaved, God’s intention for the people of Israel is that they be without guile – people of integrity. So Jesus’ “no-guile” remark makes Nathanael a model for the kind of character Jesus’ followers should embody and display.
That’s reinforced by one more allusion to Jacob which Jesus makes in his conversation with Nathanael. After Nathanael declares his belief that Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus tells him that he will see “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” That references the dream Jacob had of angels, ascending and descending, connecting heaven and Earth (Genesis 28:10-17). In the original event, the place where Jacob had the dream, Bethel, came to be considered holy, but Jesus is saying that the angels will ascend and descend upon Him as they did on Bethel.
The lesson? This reminds us that for Christians, Jesus himself is the holy place. As God dwelt at Bethel, so God dwells in Christ.
So what Jesus is saying is that honest character, like that of Nathanael, is to be one mark of the people of the new Israel – those who respond to the call of God in Christ Jesus, and that, of course, includes us.
Well then, what does it mean for us to be people without wiggle … without guile … without deceit? Perhaps we can see it better by thinking about what it does not mean.
To be without guile does not mean to be pushovers or naïvely trusting of all comers. In the animal kingdom, dogs comprise one species that’s surely without guile. It’s generally easy to know what dogs are feeling, because it shows all over their bodies. If they’re happy to see you, you know it. If they’re frightened, you know it. And so on. What you see is what they are. They don’t seem to possess the genes for deceit; they essentially are simple, trusting creatures who can, at times, be easily fooled.
I don’t believe Jesus is calling for us to be dog-simple or easy targets for scam artists and identity thieves. When Jesus sent his disciples out to proclaim the gospel in the towns of Palestine, he told them, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
Likewise, to be without guile does not mean to deny that we are complex individuals who are sometimes driven by motives that we’re not even aware of, or shaped by experiences and scars from earlier times in our lives. In the living of our days and in our dealings with others, we sometimes use defense mechanisms such as denial, rationalization, or passive aggression. When we’re able to be radically honest with ourselves, however, we can work to get past such mechanisms and deal with conflicts in more straightforward ways. But still, it’s doubtful that Jesus was trying to make us feel guilty for being human. Being without guile is not a call to deny our complexity, but to live by our highest values.
Consider the TV show House. Its main character, Dr. Gregory House, is a diagnostician at a major medical center. He’s clearly a complex man, but one who is filled with guile. His highest allegiance seems to be to logic, not to honesty or kindness or fair play, and certainly not to God, who doesn’t fit into his view of the world. Yet those who know him best tell him he’s actually driven by the desire to avoid the pain of honest relationships.
House’s behavior makes for interesting television, but it would be a cold world if everyone were like him. What’s more, he operates on the assumption that everybody lies, and he frequently reminds his team of that assumption. At times, when faced with a patient whose illness he’s having trouble diagnosing, he sends members of his team to break into the patient’s home to see what the person might be hiding. He assumes that his patients have not told the truth while giving their medical history. And sometimes he’s right. The shows are often a study in guile.
What’s more, to be without guile doesn’t mean that we have no social skills. Often social skills are taken to assume that we lie in relatively innocent dealings with others; we tell so-called white lies. We say, “No, that doesn’t look like a toupee at all” when we can spot it a hundred feet away, or “The cookies were great,” when we didn’t like them, or “What an adorable baby!” when we’re thinking, “Too bad she looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid!”
Actually, it’s possible to be sociable and friendly without lying, though it takes a bit more thought.
More importantly, to be without guile means to live with our hearts open to truth, and not run from it. It means that when we become aware of unflattering truth about ourselves, we make the necessary changes truth requires of us. We don’t bend facts to fit some false idea of ourselves. We’re truthful with others and truthful with ourselves. And we admit it when we have made a mistake or a misstep. (Note how Nathanael quickly abandoned his prejudicial statement about Jesus – “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” once Jesus spoke with him. One commentator describes Nathanael as “a good man, hampered by prejudice, but quite willing to be enlightened.”)
Have you ever lived or worked around someone who is sneaky? How did it make you feel to be around that person? Probably not good. Fr. Roy Cimagala, a priest in the Philippines, writing about this Scripture reading on Nathanael, says that people without guile are … “humble enough to accept things as they are, never bending them to make the pieces fit [their] own ideas. Rather, the contrary. That’s why you immediately feel good every time you meet such persons. They always exude such welcome and wholesome aura about themselves in spite of their imperfections. They contribute in making society more at peace and in harmony.”
Make no mistake, living with integrity and exuding a wholesome aura is not the sum total of Christianity. But living without guile is one expression of loving God and loving neighbor.
There come times for all of us when to lie, to be sneaky, to take advantage of someone else, to misrepresent our actions, to deny our wrongdoings, or to do some other devious thing would be expedient. But Nathanael can serve as a reminder for us that Jesus praised living without guile, and so that makes it, well … the Christian thing to do – and isn’t that what we’re called to do?
