24 August 2020
Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle
I grew up in a small and obscure island in the Indonesian archipelago. While I never deny my life history, I never like to be identified with the place where I grew up. One of the issues is that many people tend to have certain pre-conceived notions about my identity based on my hometown and they immediately make a stereotype about me based on my place of origin. For instance, my birthplace was an exile and prisoner island. In some ways it is like saying that I am from Alcatraz. Therefore, people can easily label my home island as a place with guns, goons, and gamblers. In modern-day Indonesia, there is a notorious politician from the neighboring island. Whenever I said where I was from, people associated me with this notorious politician. I am neither a supporter nor a fan of the notorious politician. Moreover, he is not from the same island where I grew up. Another trademark of my home island is its famous fried pork recipe. After my ordination, there is a parishioner who wanted to chat with me about something that he said was an important issue. I was thinking that this fellow wanted to chat about a pastoral issue or a theological issue. Instead of discussing Aquinas or a pastoral issue of marriage, this fellow discussed the fried pork recipe from my home island. I am vegetarian and I do not know why this fellow wanted to waste his time talking about fried pork with a newly ordained priest.
Today we celebrate the feast of Bartholomew, who has traditionally been identified with Nathanael: a name that means “God has given.” From the little information that we have from the Gospel, Nathanael came from Cana (John 21:2). Interestingly, he made a big deal about someone’s origin, especially Jesus. Recounted in John Gospel, Philip told Nathanael that he had found “him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). Nathaniel merely responded with a strong prejudice “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). This prejudice is mostly based on the Judaic expectations that the Messiah could not come from such an obscure village like Nazareth (John 7:42). But at the same time Nathanael’s prejudice signifies the universality of the human heart that tends to identify or judge someone based on his place of origin. In fact, Jesus was not exclusively from Nazareth. He was born in Bethlehem (Mt 2:1; Lk 2:4) and grew up in Egypt (Matthew 2:14-15). More importantly, Jesus came from Heaven. It was not until Nathaniel met Jesus personally that his heart was moved by Jesus and he understood Jesus’ identity. He made a confession of faith: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (Jn 1:49). In this statement, Nathaniel shed light of two aspect of Jesus’ identity: first, he recognized how Jesus originally came from heaven, as Jesus has a special relationship with the Father in Heaven as His Only Begotten Son. Secondly, Jesus is not merely a poor carpenter from an obscure village in Nazareth. While Jesus grew up in Nazareth, his identity is not being defined as a Nazorean, but as the awaited Messiah.
In our lives and interactions with others, perhaps we should stop identifying or defining someone’s identity based on his or her place of origin. Rather, we should look into his or her relationship with Christ. Or, if you are like Nathaniel, maybe it’s time to make a conversion so that you can see the person in front of you based on his or her virtue, wisdom, and the world view that he or she adheres instead of his or her hometown.