I’ve been trying to understand why I found the baby’s hand grasping House’s finger to be such a compelling picture of the Incarnation (see my post of 12/22/08). A little person reaches out, and a “what” that had seemed a safe abstraction to the cynical surgeon (a “fetus,” a “thing”) becomes a “who” with relational demands.

God himself came as just such a “who.”

A “what” is something I can control.

A “who” — I can’t.

And so I think it’s more comfortable, sometimes, to relate to a concept (“redemption”) or a thing (“the cross”) than to the person who reaches out from Mary’s womb. I can mine the doctrine of redemption for what it is I think I need from it: freedom from guilt, purchase from evil, hope for resurrection. Same for the cross. But the Person who redeemed, freed, purchased, and promises resurrection will not be reduced to those benefits.

I’m realizing I need to spend more time with Jesus, not just with truths (true as they are) about him. This Advent/Christmas season, I have been contemplating the Jesus whom John’s gospel portrays for us. Here is the Bible’s most exalted Christology: “… and the word was God.” Here is also the Bible’s earthiest: “… the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

In this and a few posts to follow, I want to ponder the ways Jesus — God’s hand from Mary’s womb — takes hold of ours.

The word becomes flesh and grabs a seeker. When Jesus senses that Andrew and a friend are following him, he turns, and asks point-blank:

“What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).

What a profound question. What a probing question. Jesus wants to know our agenda, what aspirations we’re projecting onto him. Surely John the Baptist’s teaching about Jesus being “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” had prompted a myriad of questions for Andrew. So Jesus puts the question to the seeker, and the seeker has to decide whether it’s a “what” or a “who” that he is after.

Instead of pulling out a list, though, Andrew simply asks in return, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” In other words, “Well, I know I don’t know the answers to my questions. I know I need to know the One who does. So, I’m pretty much more interested in a relationship with you than in getting all the right answers.”

Time and again, I sense Jesus putting the same question to me: “Just what is it you are looking for in me?”, all the while waiting for me to set aside my “next topic for discussion.”

The word becomes flesh and grabs a non-seeker. Some of us are seekers. Some are not. Andrew is. Nathaniel is not — at least he’s not looking for anything from Jesus. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is his retort to claims that Jesus might be the Messiah. (Jesus and Nathaniel were from different towns in Galilee — who knows, maybe they went to rival yeshivot?) Reluctantly, though, Nathaniel agrees to go with his brother Philip to check things out.

Jesus seizes the initiative. And what an initiative it is: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” (John 1:47). Nathaniel is surprised: “How do you know me?” Surely with the most generous laugh, Jesus responds: “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48). OK, that’s pretty enigmatic. It has to mean something like: “Look, I know you’ve simply been trying to be a faithful Israelite — learning your Torah, saying your prayers, going to synagogue, giving alms. All that time, I’ve had my eye on you. Truth be known, from eternity I’ve been shaping you for me. I’ve been anticipating the day we’d meet and become friends.”

It’s enough for Nathaniel. Whether it’s what Jesus says or how he says it — regardless, the lights come on. Here’s God’s Son, he realizes, Israel’s King. Quite a leap, but just because Nathaniel has been living in as much of the light as has been available to him, he “gets it.” And Jesus promises (I paraphrase): “You figured all that out on the basis of how little I showed I already know about you? Just wait” (see John 1:50-51).

I’m struck, first, by how “from out of nowhere” it is that Jesus shows up in Nathaniel’s life, second, by how affirming Jesus’ expressed purposes are, and third by how much Nathaniel’s future has been prepared for simply by his staying “under the fig tree.”

One of the most unexpectedly encouraging conversations I ever had was with the pastor of the not-especially-evangelical church of my upbringing. When I returned home from college for Christmas after trusting Christ my freshman fall, my parents were stunned and disturbed by my “born again” experience, and they wanted their minister to straighten me out. The minister wisely said: “As you start this new life, make sure to take along with you everything good from the old. The God who created you is the same God who is recreating you — he doesn’t waste anything.”

I could recall hearing nothing about the need for personal faith from this church. Still, I had to admit to myself, much of the basic biblical portrait of God had been instilled there. The Bible stories I had learned in Sunday school had given me an essential trust in the Bible and an inchoate sense of the biblical storyline.

When Jesus showed up to make me new, he had already, so it appeared, put in place at least some of the building material. I learned to be grateful for the “fig tree” under which I had lived … and, of course, even more grateful for the One who already knew me there.

Seeking … or not seeking … it doesn’t seem to matter much to Jesus. Life in him, after all is “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but of God” (John 1:13).

He just comes, grabs, and won’t let go.