‘You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” That one phrase, those five words, heralded the most profound change in the history not only of film, but of worldwide entertainment. Which is interesting, considering it has since been replaced in popular usage with the phrase, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
That phrase was popularized in the early 1970s by a gimmicky 
rock song that even the band intended to be a joke and never intended to release until their label goaded them into it. But “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet” was the original phrase, and it is the one that was utterly transformative. It occurs in the original version of The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 and starring Al Jolson. In the film, Jolson plays the son of a Jewish synagogue cantor who turns his back on that world in favor of becoming, well, a jazz singer.
There a scene where his character is singing at a jazz club with an orchestra. He concludes a song to enthusiastic applause, and then holds up his hands. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he protests; “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet; you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” Then he gives some instructions to the orchestra, and they kick into another song.
That doesn’t sound that transformative on the face of it, does it? What was transformative wasn’t the scene itself, though; it’s that the moviegoing audience heard the sound of Jolson’s voice saying, “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” That, quite simply, had never happened before, not only in this film but in cinema itself. The Jazz Singer was the first real “talkie,” and even so was really a combination between the standard silent film format, in which the actors would perform with title cards interspersed in the scene providing narrative description or dialogue in quotes, and scenes in which the actor’s voices were present in their performance, the way we’ve seen film ever since.
Now, aspects of the The Jazz Singer have aged very poorly since 1927, specifically its use of the repugnant and irredeemable racist practice of performing in blackface. Yet the film itself still indisputably changed the entire history of cinema. It was a massive blockbuster hit, and it essentially ended the era of silent films overnight. If you thought it was a big deal to see Christopher Reeve believably flying as Superman in 1978, or the appearance of realistic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in 1993, or any of those other quantum leaps in filmmaking, they are all nothing compared to the impact of The Jazz Singer.
Audience members screamed and cheered wildly when they heard him say “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet” for the first time, almost unable to believe what they were hearing. Films that were already in production were shifted from silent to “talkie” in midstream, because the producers knew instantly that things had irrevocably changed almost overnight. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” was true for the in-film audience in that jazz club, but it was much more true for filmmakers and audiences in the broad sense. Everything that followed would simultaneously start with this precise moment of filmmaking and expound upon it in incalculable ways.
Both of those dynamics are in play right here in this scene with Philip, Nathanael, and Jesus. Jesus is just getting started in his ministry. A few days earlier, he walked by the John the Baptizer, who pointed him out to two of his disciples and identified him as “the Lamb of God.” Those disciples then started following Jesus, and one of them, Andrew, was the brother of Simon Peter. He told Peter about Jesus and brought him to him. The next day, as our passage today noted, Jesus decides to go to Galilee from Bethany, a village outside of Jerusalem near where John was baptizing people. Jesus comes upon Philip and, without any interview or aptitude test or anything, simply says, “follow me.” Then it seems like some description is missing, because we jump straight from that to Philip finding Nathanael and excitedly telling him that “we have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
Now, the one whom the Law and the Prophet foretold is, of course, the Messiah, the Anointed One whom God would send to save and redeem God’s people. Which is why Nathanael responds with disbelief, even disdain: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth? Really? Nazareth? Having the Messiah come from Nazareth would be like saying the Academy Award for Best Actor is going to the reigning WWE professional wrestling champion, or the James Beard Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Culinary Arts is going to a line cook at Arby’s. Nathanael is a sophisticated resident of the big city of Jerusalem; to him, Nazareth is a dead end in the middle of donkey walkover country between Jerusalem and Damascus. Nothing worthwhile comes from there, much less the Messiah, of all things. Don’t be ridiculous, Philip, he sneers.
Philip, to his credit, doesn’t take this elitist bait, but simply says, “Come and see.” Now, just like in English, the Greek verb “to see” has many layers of meaning. It can mean see in the simple sense of seeing something with your eyes that is visible; it can mean to watch or witness something, like when your reckless friend in high school would say “watch this” and you would immediately start wondering if you had to get ready to call an ambulance or run from the cops; it can mean recognizing, perceiving, or understanding the meaning and significance of something; it can mean an experiential seeing, like “I can’t explain it, you have to see it with your own eyes.” I suspect Philip basically meant all of the above when he said, “come and see” to Nathanael. What’s really important here is that Philip didn’t try to “sell” Nathanael on either the merits of Nazareth or on Jesus being the Messiah by argument or persuasion. He simply said, “come and see.”
Nathanael, for all his sneering, does so. As he’s walking up, Jesus says to him. “Here’s an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” It’s an interesting greeting; you could hear it as either a compliment about Nathanael’s character or a recognition that Nathanael isn’t pretending to be anything other than suspicious of who and what Jesus is. Similarly, Nathanael replies with, “Where did you get to know me?” which can be heard as either an expression of sincere surprise at Jesus’ insight or one of suspicion at the same. But then Jesus explains, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” And on hearing that, Nathanael immediately goes from somewhere between partially and completely suspicious to jumping on Team Jesus with both feet: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” It’s a remarkably, even astonishingly, rapid turnaround. Even Jesus seems to think so. “Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree?” He smiles, and continues: “then you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
What he actually says is, “You will see greater things than these,” but it’s the same thing. Jesus’ ability to see beyond what is immediately perceptible by the human eye is one of the least impressive things about him. This is the person who will walk on water, who will feed 5000 people from the scraps of a child’s lunch, who will be crucified and die and be raised from the dead after three days in the tomb. But Jesus doesn’t even stop at one of those mind-boggling miracles to come. He goes straight to the utterly transformative heart of his identity, his mission, the part that means that nothing, nothing in this world, will ever be the same: “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
That sounds a little esoteric at first, but it seems to be an allusion to the story of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis 28. In that story, Jacob is on the run from his brother Esau, whom Jacob swindled out of his inheritance, when he falls asleep and dreams of a ladder on which the angels of God are ascending and descending. And after seeing that in the dream, the Lord stands beside Jacob, affirms God’s covenantal promises to Jacob from his ancestors and onto his descendants, and then says, “know that I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.”
Then Jacob woke up and exclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” By referencing this famous and familiar story, Jesus is not only connecting Nathanael to Jacob, someone who recognizes God’s presence where he did not expect to find it, but he is identifying himself with the ladder: not simply the one through whom the messengers and therefore messages of God move, which would have been staggering enough, but the connective link between the realms of heaven and earth, between God and humanity, between the fragility and frustrations of this world and the eternal and abundant life that God offers in and through Jesus.
So much of the gospel story is one long series of episodes have something amazing, lifechanging, world changing taking place in them, something that is simultaneously mind-blowing, exhilarating, and even a little terrifying, and Jesus then saying, “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” The good news is that phrase isn’t a warning; it’s a promise: a promise that in Jesus Christ, God is up to so much more than we can ask for or even imagine, as the author of the letter to the Ephesians would famously put it years later.
Despite it feeling sometimes to the contrary, God never asks us to step out alone in faith; God always, always, asks us to follow where Jesus has already gone and meet Jesus there. That can still be lifechanging and world changing, still exhilarating and even a little terrifying, but there’s a big difference between stepping out in faith and joining up with Jesus in faith. The former is something we would have to do alone; the latter is going where Jesus has already gone and where Jesus is still waiting for us. And that’s all the difference in the world.
And I believe that is what God is calling us to do right now. For years now, I have said that our current era is the most exciting time to be in congregational ministry in at least 150 years, because we are finally free to experiment with what forms of church life and ministry are most faithful and effective for the present and the future instead of constantly trying to reinvigorate old forms that simply no longer work in our context, which is almost indescribably different from the way things were even as recently as twenty years ago.
Now again, exciting does not mean comfortable; in fact, it can mean both exhilarating and even a little terrifying, as we are learning as we lean into these new mission opportunities for us as a congregation. And yet by doing so we are leaning into both life and faith, stepping forward to meet Jesus where he has already gone. And each time we catch up with him, we hear both reassurance and invitation. Yes, I saw you coming, Jesus says; and do you believe because of what you’ve already seen and heard? Because, let me tell you: in terms of following me, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Thanks be to God for that reassurance, that promise, that invitation, and that hope.