the Door

‘Show us the Father, and we’ll be satisfied’ — you bet they would! It’s been the prayer of countless people down the centuries, to ‘see God’ and have all our doubts and misgivings put to rest.

Here, a mystified apostle, on the night of Christ’s betrayal, having heard wonderful claims from his lips that he is the way to God, the truth about God and the life of God, can finally contain himself no longer. Just show us! If you are that close to him, ‘show us the Father, and we’ll be satisfied’.

The response of Jesus was a rebuke. How could Philip not understand? He’d been alongside Jesus for over two years, since he was called to follow him in Galilee (John 1:43). He’d seen the miracles, he’d heard the wonderful teaching, he’d observed at the closest possible quarters the calibre of his life. ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?’
There then followed the most staggering claim that could possibly fall from human lips: ‘whoever has seen me has seen the Father’. In other words, if you want to know what God’s like, look at me.

Philip seems to have been a master of the deceptively simple observation. He observed at the feeding of the five thousand that a hundred days’ wages would be inadequate to provide bread for the crowd.

Here, his almost naïve request to ‘see the Father’ in fact brought to light a claim that has transformed our understanding of divinity. Jesus is God-like, yes; but God is Christ-like, too. The One who made us is a God of self-giving love, who cares for the poor and outcast, who welcomes sinners and eats with them, who takes children in his arms and blesses them.

Philip is named as one of those in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, but that is the last reference to him in the Bible. All the rest is supposition or legend. We know even less about the James who for centuries has shared a feast day with him. This is ‘James the Less’, to distinguish him from ‘James the Great’, the brother of John and son of Zebedee. He is ‘the son of Alpheus’, and often identified with the James whose mother stood by the cross of Jesus. Sometimes it is claimed that he was the first bishop of Jerusalem, and wrote the Letter of James. None of these may be correct, or they might all be. He is traditionally believed to have been martyred in AD62.

Philip shows us the value of the honest question, even when it’s based on misunderstanding. James on the other hand may well have given us the most down-to-earth, practical and robust book in the New Testament, the Letter that bears his name. With many echoes of the Sermon on the Mount, it challenges any notion that genuine faith can be divorced from the way a person lives. So this strange duo, eternally linked together with a shared saints’ day, remind us of two profound and paradoxical truths: the Christ we follow is divine, and his stumbling human followers are called to be Christ-like.
The Feast Day of St Philip and St James takes place on 1 May.

Canon David Winter is a former Diocesan Adviser on Evanglism, former BBC head of religious affairs, a broadcaster and author of many books including Journey to Jerusalem (BRF 2008), The Bible Made Clear and Espresso Prayers (both Lion Hudson 2008). His book, Seasons of the Son (Canterbury Press) includes reflections on the various festivals and holy days of the Christian year.