Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Nazareth Sermon
A Sermon on Good Things in Nazareth
John 1:43–51 The next mean solar day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He constitute Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We take plant him virtually whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come up out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and meet." When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael asked him, "Where did y'all get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you lot are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered, "Do you lot believe because I told you lot that I saw you nether the fig tree? Y'all will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you volition see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."
Sometimes the hardest thing to encounter is what's right in front end of your confront. Have y'all ever been in a panic looking for your keys or your phone but to realize that yous were holding them in your paw, or you needed your sunglasses and they were already on your head? Whenever we exercise something like this we tin can't help but feel stupid considering it should be so obvious, but when you start telling yourself a story similar "My keys are lost and I have to find them and they must be in one of the places I usually get out them," it becomes really easy to lose sight of what we think might be obvious. Our eyes and our brains are really good at filtering information for u.s.a., but sometimes we filter out things that would exist actually helpful.
We similar to remember that nosotros're very objective and rational, that our eyes show the states what'south there, simply nigh of the fourth dimension we run across what we want to encounter. To meet annihilation else, even things that possibly should be obvious, we demand someone to bear witness u.s.. This is what our favorite writers or preachers do for united states. This is why information technology tin exist so helpful to get meet a advisor. This is why we need friends who don't just nod and agree with us all the time, simply who are able to say, "I've noticed yous keep talking this way, simply I think you're existence too hard on yourself." Sometimes to see, to really see, what's right in forepart of our faces, we need someone to see us and testify u.s.a. what nosotros're missing. "Hey dummy, your spectacles are on your head!"
In our story this morning, Jesus helps Nathanael to see what he could not see on his own. This is the beginning of what information technology ways to exist a disciple. Nosotros become disciples when the scales fall from our eyes and we repent of the stories that had blinded u.s.a. to God and our neighbors.
Jesus has come to the Galilee and chosen Nathanael's friend Phillip to "follow him." This is the context for the story: Jesus goes to the Galilee to telephone call disciples, to call people to give up everything and live a unlike kind of life in anticipation of a different kind of globe. This is already interesting because if y'all went to Jerusalem, the big urban center, and you asked someone nigh Galilee, you would probably have heard a story most what that place was like: the Galilee was barely a part of State of israel, it lay on the other side of Samaria from Judea, Jerusalem, the Temple. The Galilee was supposedly poor, rustic; people in Jerusalem talked virtually the people there as simple and uneducated. They were fishers and farmers. If you lot were a professor at Temple University, you did not become looking for your next doctoral students in the Galilee. Merely that'southward where Jesus is from, that'southward the land, those are the people he knows, then he knows that the story told in Jerusalem about the Galilee is not entirely true. So Jesus goes at that place to call disciples.
After Jesus calls Phillip, Phillip goes to Nathanael and tells him that the i promised by Moses has come, and it'due south Jesus from Nazareth. Nathanael's response is incredulous, Can anything good come up from Nazareth? To which Phillip says, Come and come across.
At kickoff, Nathanael tin can't see it. He tin't imagine that the Messiah, the chosen one, the Rex, might come from Nazareth. Even though Nathanael is from Bethsaida, a line-fishing village in the Galilee, he internalizes the story they tell in Jerusalem near the north. That story blinds Nathanael to the possibility that anything practiced at all could come up from Nazareth, much less the new male monarch. Nathanael's status here is one of blindness. The story he tells himself nigh Nazareth, and perchance nigh his own home too, blinds him to the reality that is right in forepart of him.
Part of what this Scripture is doing is reminding us that the stories we accept learned to tell about certain people and places are only that, stories. And stories are ever told from a point of view. And no point of view sees everything. The story Jerusalem tells well-nigh the Galilee might just be wrong, whether or non the Messiah shows upwards there. The Galilee might not be a wealthy place, but there are goods other than wealth, other means to find joy, other means to brand a life. But if you value wealth and power and efficiency above all else, and so you're going to tell a story that makes invisible the poor, the powerless, and those who accept their time. Can anything skilful come from Nazareth?
Its a question, nosotros, living in the U.s. of America, living in Chapel Hill, have been taught, have taught ourselves, to enquire. Tin annihilation good come from Iraq? Can annihilation good come from Libya? Tin annihilation expert come from Republic of haiti? Tin can anything practiced come up from West Virginia? Can anything good come from Mississippi? Can anything good come from Fayetteville Street? Can anything proficient come from a tiny baptist church when in that location are megachurches popping up all over the place? Many of us secretly, or not so secretly, believe in that location are good places and bad places, places that produce good things and places that demand to exist the recipients of good things considering they don't accept whatever for themselves. The world is divided upwardly into those who accept good things to offer and those who non only take need, but have nada to offer. These are the assumptions backside statements like, "Oh no 1 really lives there," or "That's a bad office of boondocks," or "They've really cleaned up that surface area?" No one? Bad for whom? What (or who) was making it dirty?
This way of imagining our world is blinding, concealing the way the world really works. Imagining our world in these terms makes it expect as though the wealthy, the educated, the powerful are the source of all good, and the poor, the uneducated, the bluish-neckband have nothing to offer. The haves have what they have because they are industrious, and smart and moral; the have nots endure because they are lazy and stupid. Otherwise they'd be haves. This story is the greatest play tricks the rich e'er played, convincing the world that they do all the work, while the working class is but a blackness hole of need.
Does anything skilful come up from Nazareth?
Yeah. There are people there, people who live and swallow and have babies and worship and piece of work and produce. The city needs the countryside, or they don't eat. The general needs the soldiers, or he's just a guy in a costume. The CEO needs thousands of cashiers, or their businesses don't piece of work. The xiii American colonies needed Republic of haiti to imagine revolution. During Reconstruction, when white supremacists were asking why Blackness Americans shouldn't go to Africa, the Black liberationist writer David Walker answered, "Because we built this place." White folks got rich because they gear up things up to where they didn't have to pay wages, but blackness folks did the earthworks, the lifting, the planting, the hammering. Can anything good come up from Nazareth? Please. Tin can anything proficient come from Jerusalem or Washington DC? Maybe everything expert is already in Nazareth! Just Nathanael doesn't see it. And so he doesn't see who Jesus is either. He thinks he knows that place every bit desolate, so he tin't imagine finding water, much less living h2o in that location.
And maybe Nathanael can't see information technology for himself either. Maybe this is also a story Nathanael tells near his own life. When Phillip comes, he gives Nathanael a claim nigh Jesus and a call for Nathanael. "This is the one whom Moses talked near" and the implication is "Come with me to follow him." So when Nathanael asks Tin can anything good come from Nazareth, he is request both "Is this guy for existent?" and "Is this really possible for me?" Recall, Nathanael is not from the big metropolis either. He'south from the Galilee, Bethsaida. If he's better off than Jesus, it'southward not really by much. If Jesus is from the projects, Nathanael'due south from the trailer park. Can anything good come from Bethsaida? Why would the messiah be calling me? How could I have anything to do with what God is doing in the world? That's for other people, more than talented people, more gifted people, people with more resource. What good can I do? The messiah tin can't actually come from Nazareth because if they could, that means I could exist one of their followers.
Many of the stories we tell nigh the world likewise disqualify us from working for God's kingdom. The powers of this earth are just so big. Who am I, up against insurance companies, and banks, and armies, and Walmart and Amazon?
Maybe in response to these chiliad concerns, the Spirit speaks to us as Phillip spoke to Nathanael, "Come and see."
Nathanael goes with Phillip to Jesus, and Jesus says to him, Hither is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, which I'm sure for Nathanael was an odd matter to hear from someone who he's meeting for the starting time time. How could you perhaps know that? I saw you under the fig tree earlier Phillip called yous.
When Nathanael can't see, Jesus sees him. Nathanael is seen earlier he learns how to see, and it'south in existence seen by Jesus that he gains sight. Jesus sees Nathanael under the fig tree just as God saw Adam and Eve hiding in the garden backside their fig leaves, and he calls him out simply the same. (Nathanael, your spectacles are on pinnacle of your head!)
Jesus sees usa. Jesus sees what we're hiding from each other and from ourselves. Jesus sees the stories we hide backside, that we tell ourselves and that we use to filter out our neighbors and our own calling to work for God's kingdom now. God sees and because God sees, our ain sight does non set the limitations for what is possible. There were adept things in Nazareth earlier Jesus ever got there, there are proficient things in the Galilee, there were already goods in the colonized, gentrified, exploited places of our world, in that location are appurtenances that you have to offer God's kingdom in the struggle against the kingdoms of this world.
And even if you don't run into them, nosotros believe in the God who sees, who makes a style where there is no way. Black women have for years written and preached that it was Hagar, the African slave woman, who names God as "the God who sees" considering God came alongside her in the wilderness and promised that her seed too would be a great nation. When God's people would narrow our vision, declaring certain people, sure places, certain classes, certain races, even ourselves "no good," God nonetheless sees and calls the states to encounter, likewise.
I think this is why Nathanael responds the way he does. His eyes are opened when Jesus tells him that he is seen. Nathanael, the whole world and the voices in your caput tell yous that you're no good, that no good thing could come from y'all, but I see you. And you volition see the heavens torn open and angels ascending and descending upon the son of human. You will see, and in one case you see y'all won't cease seeing. Yous'll see expert news in yourself, you'll see information technology in your neighbors, you lot'll run across it in Nazareth and the Section viii housing and the trailer park and supposed "tertiary earth" countries, and you'll weep that you lot'd been so blinded to the people who are already there and the honey y'all might've shared with them if you hadn't been then loftier and mighty.
Friends, God sees you, too, underneath your fig tree. God sees your fears, your secrets, your shame, your incomprehension to yourself and your neighbor, and God doesn't look away, every bit though to say "Zip adept could come from them." In Jesus, God says, I see you. At present, come and encounter for yourself. Open your eyes to what I am doing in the earth, to the good that was always, already here. Open up your eyes to your neighbors who are expert, too, who were never invisible to me even if they are to Washington and Wall Street. Encounter the heavens open and proclaim the adept news ascending and descending from my new globe. Amen.
Source: https://kevingeorgas.medium.com/a-sermon-on-good-things-in-nazareth-ce22fd202704
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