A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Philip sought out Nathaniel and said to him, we have found the one Moses spoke of in the law and the prophets also, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathaniel's response to this was, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip replied, come and see for yourself. When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him, he remarked, this man is a real Israelite.
There is no guile in him. Nathaniel asked, how do you know me? And Jesus answered, before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree. Rabbi, said Nathaniel, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.
Jesus responded, do you believe just because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree? You will see much greater things than that. Then Jesus went on to tell them, I solemnly assure you, you shall see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, once again, we have here a prime example of what we call prejudice. Now prejudice means a prejudgment. You make a decision, you have an attitude of mind before, before you have the evidence to justify any such attitude or persuasion or conviction. Prejudgment.
Prejudice. It's one of the worst things that can possibly happen to anybody. Now we're we all have them. We all have them. Let's face it.
Anyone thinks they're they have no prejudice is kidding themselves, and that's the worst possible position to be in. That's the worst possible position. Because that's like a baby born, let us say, color blind. And they will never discover they're color blind until something happens, and I had a very startling example of this. I was driving down to Galesville one day with a gentleman I'd been going I've been seeing for for years.
And, for some reason I asked him something about a stoplight ahead of us. He couldn't tell the difference in the color. It was the first time that I knew he he he was color blind. It was the first time he knew he was color blind. Now I'm not exaggerating, this actually happened.
I there was another gentleman who sailed with me a lot. And I'd be my distant vision is pretty good, but it's not exceptional and it's not abnormal at all. It's not nearly as good as the kids that sail with me. And I began to wonder at this man. He just wasn't seeing things out there.
He didn't know he wasn't seeing them. So one day, without any argument, he had to admit I was seeing what he wasn't seeing. The thing was out there, the buoy or the marker. He couldn't see it. He hid himself over to an ophthalmologist and got brought back a pair of glasses.
Then he began to see. He didn't know he couldn't see. That's the worst possible position, and that is the essence of prejudice. You have it and you don't know it. And if you're not mature enough to know the danger of it, if you don't have and this is a matter of education and training and analysis.
This is what the superintendent of schools is in Montgomery County just this week. He says, what's missing in our schools is teaching the children to analyze propositions. What he's saying is they're not learning to think. Because think thinking means that you have a proposition and you not only say it's true, but you say, I know it's true, or I know it's not true because here's the evidence. That's what we call analysis, logical analysis.
It's not commonplace today, believe me. It's not because we've away from those. We call them intellectual disciplines. Notice discipline. And when you use that word today, people think of a whip.
They forget that the word discipline is exactly the same word as disciple. So here's a prime example of that. See Nazareth was a nondescript town. It was nondescript. It was inland from the lake, and it was just a forgotten little old assembly, a collection of some houses in the boondocks.
That's all it was. It wasn't in the center of activity. It was far north from Jerusalem, which was the where every all the action was. It was away from the lake where there was a lot of action. This was Nazareth.
What good can come out of Nazareth? The answer is nothing. Okay. If that proposition is true, then the the the next it's a syllogism. Then Jesus comes from Nazareth, ergo.
No good. You see, it's it's perfectly consistent. That is the horrible evil of prejudice. You begin with a major universal proposition, well, for which you don't have evidence. Now, no, it may be true.
It may be a true proposition. On the other hand, you don't know whether it's true or false unless you have evidence. And where is the evidence? And is the evidence sufficient to justify, to warrant my saying or stating the proposition that I'm stating? Or is the evidence enough to simply suggest the possibility?
Is the evidence just enough to suggest probability? Is the evidence just enough to create a certain amount of certitude? Or is the evidence overwhelming and apodictic, as we call it? These are all stages of truth and of certitude. Notice, Newman wrote a whole book on this.
It's one of the best things that's ever been written in English. Unfortunately, he called it the grammar of ascent. And who in his right mind would read a book with a title like that? So no one reads it anymore. Anymore.
But it's one of the most most helpful books that's ever been written in English to to help us to think, to analyze, to weigh, to get at evidence, to be sure that we don't overstep evidence, to realize what goes into making an assent. Yes, it's true. Yes, it's false. That it's not just an action of the mind up here. It's it's an assent of the whole person.
The whole person. And whether we had a good breakfast or a poor breakfast or we've had we've had an argument at home or something can affect our thinking. So Newman's grammar of assent, there's nothing to match it. But of course, it's not red. Now let's come back to this.
See, I'm I'm talking about this problem of of of prejudice. Why wasn't why wasn't Jesus accepted by the high priest, by the learned men of the law, by the elders of the people? Some did accept him or at least they said, look, let's wait. Let's wait. Don't hate.
Don't be now this is one of the one of the pharisees. He said, don't rush in there because if this man isn't what he says he is, it'll flop. On the other hand on the other hand, if he is what he claims to be, then we shouldn't be obstructing him. This happened after the resurrection. That's common sense, but men generally don't operate with intelligence or reason.
As Newman said, it's almost a definition of a man to say that he is an irrational animal. And I've mentioned on more than one occasion a book on anger by a very reliable psychiatrist who and the very first sentence says, man is not a reasoning animal, he is an emotional feeling animal. So don't don't don't overrate yourself. But on the other hand, don't underrate yourself. Know what you are.
Know what it means to say that is certain. Know what it means to say that is probable. Know what it means to say that is possible, but I don't know whether it's true. Know those differences. Why didn't this gentleman here this morning say what good can come out of Nazareth?
Because he felt nothing that's worthwhile to come out of that little old collection of huts. Prejudice, prejudice. It blinds us. We see everything through some kind of an artificial, unreal Well, call it what you want. Eyeglasses, vision, light, color.
If I look at that glass over there or everything I see through it's going to be blue and green. For all I know it's it's it may be in the glass, it may be in the thing. I'll never know unless I investigate it, unless I analyze, unless I pull it apart. Now notice how Nathaniel is answered. He doesn't argue.
Remember, Newman said no one has ever converted by a syllogism, meaning nobody was ever converted on the simple basis of logic and reason and intelligence. Notice Newman said that, and he ought to know. He went the route. Notice, the answer is he doesn't throw out another great question about whether or not it's a logical inference. He says, Come and see for yourself.
In other words, he is reducing the proposition to a matter of experience. And experience is pretty good evidence if you keep it in the proper sphere. And our blessed lord sustains it. And notice this little tiny thing where he our where our lord shows a knowledge which this man couldn't understand and he's overwhelmed. So he must have been something of a thinker to recognize the the importance and the power and the thrust of Christ being able to say, I saw you under the fig tree.
That takes some thinking to know that what the inference of that is, that a man knew that I was under the fig tree when when he didn't even see me under the fig tree. In other words, that there's a kind of knowledge which is not sensory. You can build up a big system from just this little text here. Now we this isn't something for us to cast off of our little old shoulders and say, this doesn't bother me. I know Christ.
I accept Christ. Sure you do. But how much? What is your persuasion? How much in your daily life does your conviction of an acceptance of Christ mean in fact?
As Newman would put it, do you have merely a notional assent that Christ is the son of God, born of a virgin, come to save us? Or do we have what Newman called a real assent, or what we today call a gut reaction? Which is I'll tell you which one counts, the last one. The last one. And that's not a syllogism.
That's an act of faith. And in the last analyses, it's a gift of God. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.