Where Are You From?
Read John 1:43-51.
Yesterday, the question for Jesus was, "Where are you staying?" Today, the question is, basically, "Where are you from?" The answer is not well received!
I feel his pain! I am from a tiny town. Sedalia, Indiana is a speed bump on a state highway that most people would never have slowed down or noticed were it not for the railroad tracks that you had to slow down for. Blink, and you'll miss my hometown. Most people do. It was, though, a wonderful place to grow up. I knew everyone in town and they knew me...which meant, as a kid, that you couldn't get away with anything. News would make it back to your parents before you did!
Jesus is from a town like that. Yes, he was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. Nazareth was not an important enough town to be on any of the lists of cities and towns that still exist from the first century. Everyone overlooked and bypassed Nazareth! Much more important, in the world's eyes, was nearby Sepphoris, a cosmopolitan city that loved to show off its Roman culture. It's entirely possible that Jesus and Joseph worked in Sepphoris, for its rebuilding heyday was during those years when Joseph would have been teaching Jesus his trade. Everyone in the area knew of Sepphoris, and while they might have heard of Nazareth, they didn't think much of it.
You see that clearly in Nathanael's response. When he is told the Messiah has shown up and that he is a local boy from Nazareth, Nathanael immediately responds, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" It's a nowhere town! That's not where the Messiah is going to come from! They expected he might come from Bethlehem, the hometown of their greatest king, or at the least from Jerusalem, the center of power. But this Jesus comes from Nazareth (yes, he was born in Bethlehem, but most people would not have known that), a place from where "no good thing" comes.
How often do we judge what God is doing just because of where it seems to come from? How often do we underestimate what God might do because of the one through whom it comes? There might be some who say, "Sedalia? Can anything good come from there?" Who would have thought a world-renowned preacher would come from a dairy farm in North Carolina? Or that a civil rights advocate would come from a parsonage in Georgia? Or that a small woman from the Ottoman Empire would grow up and care for the sick and dying, and through the power of her testimony be granted a world stage to speak for those who are vulnerable? Never underestimate what God can do, or where God might do it. Even now, in the quiet corners of the world, God might be grooming someone to do a great work in the world.
Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? Why, yes, it can. It did. And Jesus, the Son of God, from Nazareth, changed the world because he showed us the path to God.
By the way, one thing that is fascinating to me: as you can see from the pictures above, Sepphoris, the city that was all the rage in the first century, is but ruins today. Nazareth, not important enough to mention in the first century, is a bustling city today, all because this "no good thing" came out of there.
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| Modern city of Nazareth, viewed from the Mount of Precipice, 2017 |
I feel his pain! I am from a tiny town. Sedalia, Indiana is a speed bump on a state highway that most people would never have slowed down or noticed were it not for the railroad tracks that you had to slow down for. Blink, and you'll miss my hometown. Most people do. It was, though, a wonderful place to grow up. I knew everyone in town and they knew me...which meant, as a kid, that you couldn't get away with anything. News would make it back to your parents before you did!
Jesus is from a town like that. Yes, he was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. Nazareth was not an important enough town to be on any of the lists of cities and towns that still exist from the first century. Everyone overlooked and bypassed Nazareth! Much more important, in the world's eyes, was nearby Sepphoris, a cosmopolitan city that loved to show off its Roman culture. It's entirely possible that Jesus and Joseph worked in Sepphoris, for its rebuilding heyday was during those years when Joseph would have been teaching Jesus his trade. Everyone in the area knew of Sepphoris, and while they might have heard of Nazareth, they didn't think much of it.
 |
| Sepphoris, 2017 |
How often do we judge what God is doing just because of where it seems to come from? How often do we underestimate what God might do because of the one through whom it comes? There might be some who say, "Sedalia? Can anything good come from there?" Who would have thought a world-renowned preacher would come from a dairy farm in North Carolina? Or that a civil rights advocate would come from a parsonage in Georgia? Or that a small woman from the Ottoman Empire would grow up and care for the sick and dying, and through the power of her testimony be granted a world stage to speak for those who are vulnerable? Never underestimate what God can do, or where God might do it. Even now, in the quiet corners of the world, God might be grooming someone to do a great work in the world.
Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? Why, yes, it can. It did. And Jesus, the Son of God, from Nazareth, changed the world because he showed us the path to God.
By the way, one thing that is fascinating to me: as you can see from the pictures above, Sepphoris, the city that was all the rage in the first century, is but ruins today. Nazareth, not important enough to mention in the first century, is a bustling city today, all because this "no good thing" came out of there.
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