January 14, Epiphany 2B (John 1:43–51)

When the sheriff’s deputies raid the sleazy carnival act, it looks like there’s no way for the performers to get out of trouble. But the show’s bogus mind reader and medium steps up to the lawman and gives him a demonstration of the genuineness of his powers. His mother—Mary, was it?—wants him to know she’s not ashamed that he didn’t see any fighting in the war. Astonished, the converted skeptic lets the show leave town in peace. The other performers crowd around the mind reader, wanting to know how he did it. He picked up a few details from the man’s dress and gait, and he took a guess that Mary would be a popular name in the area.

That’s how extrasensory perception is handled in the film noir classic Nightmare Alley (and its 2021 remake). Even the most hardheaded, upstanding citizen is on some level a mark, wanting to hear something he doesn’t trust himself to know yet willing to believe anyone who says it to him in the right voice. You might think you’re going to the show to figure out the trick, but what you want, deep down, is to believe. Even the amoral and cynical mind reader himself wants to believe in someone (and when he does . . . well, you’ll have to watch the movie to see how it works out for him).

In this week’s gospel passage, Jesus speaks a word of insight about Nathanael that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from a sideshow grift like the ones played in Nightmare Alley. He identifies Nathanael as an Israelite without any deceit after nothing more than a middle-distance glance of him under a fig tree, and Nathanael responds by calling him Son of God and king of Israel. I’ve never quite known what to make of this response by Nathanael. Is it sarcastic? Is it simply credulous? Or is it neither but rather an expression of Nathanael’s deep need to be identified by someone, anyone, as an honest man?