Those Who Say Yes, Part 1

1 Samuel 3:1-10

John 1:43-51      

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

What’s wrong with Nazareth? You might very well ask this question.

I have often wracked my brains to come up with contemporary examples that would help us understand Nathanael’s caustic remark: Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Why would he say that? How can we understand this in our world and our time? To what can it be compared?

It has been a hard thing to do, actually, to come up with an example, without risk of deeply offending someone by suggesting that the place they came from is just trashy. It has been something I have been loath to do because of the inherent bigotry in it. To suggest that nothing good could possibly come out of some particular place is a deeply offensive, bigoted, potentially racist, thing to say.

And it’s been hard to come up with a contemporary example that would shed light on this comment Nathanael makes, although maybe some among us have felt the experience of being on the receiving end of such a comment. I remember a day from high school, sitting in my history class and listening to the conversation between some kids who were sitting behind me. One said something about a neighborhood near the school, Robin Drive. Then the boy behind me said, “Oh yeah, you mean the ghetto.” I lived on Robin Drive.

Can anything good come out of Robin Drive?

Maybe people from Alabama have felt that way at times, football notwithstanding. Or Mississippi. When educational or income rankings are published and once again Alabama and Mississippi are vying for last place. Can anything good come out of Alabama?

Can anything good come out of … We probably wouldn’t say such a thing, because we know it’s not true. Can anyone really say that nothing good can come from Haiti? Can anyone say that nothing good can come from Africa? Of course not. Is it in any way reasonable, helpful, or true to say that we don’t need anyone from those countries because they are, in a word, but not the word we have been hearing so much of these last few days, dumps? The very idea of it is anathema. To dismiss an entire nation with a vulgar comment is, at best, ignorant; at worst, it is reflective of a deep-seated racism.

While some might argue it is nothing but political correctness to be concerned about comments like these, I would say it is certainly more than that. To use such a broad brush to condemn a place or a people is a dangerous thing to do.

But people do dangerous things all the time.

Nathanael was merely expressing a somewhat popular opinion when he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” We read this question as a snide dig at all things Nazarene, more than as an authentic query. Nathanael didn’t want to know what was good about Nazareth because in his already made up mind there was nothing.

The fact is that in those days people of Judea, Israel proper, looked with contempt on the people of Galilee, that region to the north. Judeans regarded Galileans as uncouth, country bumpkins. They would have used words like lazy and undisciplined to describe them. But the only reason for looking down on them was that they were different. They spoke differently, with their Galilean accents; they probably dressed differently. Judeans would have looked at a Galilean coming down to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to the temple and seen in him someone not like us, not one of us. And they might have felt contempt.

They also coveted the natural resources of Galilee, which had agricultural and fishing resources far richer. They were, at the same time, both contemptuous and jealous of their northern neighbors.

A lot of people would have endorsed Nathanael’s remark, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Yet, here’s the interesting thing: It seems as though Nathanael, too, was a Galilean.

He was not from the village of Nazareth, but the text suggests that Nathanael was from Bethsaida, a village east of Nazareth, right on the Sea of Galilee. He was just as much “one of those people” as Jesus was, yet he somehow felt superior to him. I chalk this up to our human need to have someone to look down upon.

So when his friend Philip called to him and said there is this guy from Nazareth you have to meet, Nathanael gave him the back of his hand. But Philip was not deterred; he said, “Just come and see.” And when he did, everything changed.

So how do you suppose THAT happened? How was Nathanael’s ingrained, reflexive bigotry overcome in an instant? How did he go from “no way” to “yes” so quickly? Jesus opened his eyes.

We are in the season of Epiphany, which we might call a season of seeing. The Magi traveled across the world to see the Christ. And this seeing sets the tone for the whole gospel story of those who see and those who don’t see.

In this story from John’s gospel, we are introduced to a few men who do see him. Philip: We have found the one Moses and the prophets told us about. Come and see for yourself. Come and see.

Nathanael does come and see, although I imagine Philip had to practically drag him there. I can see Nathanael lagging behind the enthusiastic Philip; humoring his friend, not expecting anything. Then suddenly seeing Jesus.

“Here is an Israelite in which there is no guile, no deceit,” Jesus says to Nathanael. It is a strange thing to say, seeming to come out of nowhere. And it seems to touch a nerve for Nathanael. Because perhaps he, too, deep in his heart sees himself as an honest man, an earnest seeker of truth. Maybe Nathanael is a man who has been disappointed again and again, and has allowed cynicism to become his armor, his protection against further disappointment. Maybe no one before this has ever recognized this truth about Nathanael, this vulnerability in him, and he is overcome with surprise, deeply moved. Jesus says to Nathanael, “I saw you.”

I see you.

Now Nathanael, with his eyes opened, cries out his delight and praise, and Jesus says to him, “That’s nothing, my friend; you’ll see much greater things than this. Stick around and you’ll see the heavens opened.”

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Absolutely. Open your eyes and see. There were others, too, who opened their eyes and saw the Christ, the Son of God. There were others, too, who said yes when he said to them, “Come with me, come and see.” But there were more, it seems, who failed to see.

The Jerusalem and Roman authorities failed to see that anything good might come out of Nazareth. So they crucified him. To use such a broad brush to condemn a place or a people is not only a contemptuous thing, it is a dangerous thing.

The world needs people who can see. In the story of Samuel, the old priest Eli needed young Samuel because, as the text says, Eli’s eyesight had grown dim so that he could not see. The nation was dependent on him, yet he was no longer able to offer them spiritual vision. Eli needed Samuel, Israel needed Samuel, whose vision was clear. And Samuel said yes.

The world needs people who can see, people who will say yes to the call of the Lord. The world needs people who will say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening,” and who will then speak truth to the lies that prevail. The world needs those who will say yes against questions such as – Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Robin Drive? Can anything good come out of Haiti, El Salvador, Cameroon, Nigeria, Syria, and any other place on earth that is the home of God’s children, people Christ died for?  Do we need people from these places? Yes. Yes.

Photo: Nazareth neighborhood. By Tiamut at English Wikipedia - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1922140

The Story of Us

Genesis 1:1-5    

Mark 1:4-11       

Years ago, I used to do a little bit of mental math, to sort of gauge the health of the church. I kept a tally in my head of two things: funerals and baptisms.

For a while, there was some parity between the two tallies, so I felt things were okay. I felt it was safe to say that we were keeping an even keel, as long as, for every member lost, there was a gain. With every baptism, there was newness of life; there was renewed hope.

I stopped doing that a while ago. And the truth is we haven’t had any baptisms at our font for a long time – none in the past year. And I cannot deny that the numbers tell us something – although I don’t think I can tell you exactly what that story is.

As I told you last year, my identity, my sense of purpose in pastoral ministry, is tied up in baptism. To handle the waters of baptism, on behalf of the church as a whole, is perhaps the greatest honor there is in ministry – from where I stand.

It is an act that has meaning that shoots back through time – all the way to the beginning, when the earth was a shapeless void, a mass of water, and God’s wind, God’s Spirit, swept over the face of the waters. The act of baptism, the sound and the sense of water as it moves, touches skin, takes us back to the beginning and what it means to be created by God – and recreated by love.

The act of baptism, which Jesus participated in – even though everyone said, and still says, that he didn’t need it. Jesus did not need to be recreated, renewed. But he did it anyway – maybe just to make an example for us. Or maybe just because it is so wonderful and he wanted it – even if he didn’t need it.

I never miss an opportunity to talk about baptism – on this Sunday when we remember the baptism of Jesus, or on any Sunday when we baptize a new Christian, a new member of our family. I love to talk about it and I feel the need to talk about it because I am afraid we think about it too little.

And maybe there is no reason to expect we should think about it more. After all, baptism is a sort of pre-verbal, pre-cognitive act. Any logical or rational arguments associated with it were tacked on after the fact. The act of baptism is an act as ancient as humankind. The act of baptism is stronger than any argument for its existence. The act of baptism is. It simply is.

We actually do ourselves a disservice, I think, when we make too much of the rules about baptism. Particularly about the prohibitions against re-baptism. We are adamant in the church that baptism – once done – is sufficient. Baptism, no matter how or where or at what age it was done, equips you for a life of faith and all kinds of ministry in the church. I have been among the most ardent guardians of this truth, being provoked to irritation by stories of people who have gotten themselves re-baptized at the Jordan River because it was such a cool thing to do, or re-baptized by immersion at the Baptist Church because it just feels more complete. I become sensitive to any suggestion that our baptism is merely a pathetic dribble of water; that it is inadequate, hardly enough to call a washing away of anything.

And yet, in my zeal to keep us all theologically in line, I might overlook the importance of the experience of baptism. Experience is what baptism is mostly about.

A baby swims for months through the amniotic fluid of the womb, and out through the birth canal, finally taking his first breath into new life. Every time this child is submerged in the baby bath, or has a soft wet cloth wiped across his face he is bodily remembering that primordial state. The baby doesn’t know the words to describe it, but the baby knows the touch of water.

The world before creation swam in watery chaos until God brushed over the surface with God’s Spirit and spoke – calling out the distinctiveness of creation and all that is in it. Bit by bit, creation articulated itself into species of plants and animals, free from the watery chaos yet never free from the water, which is, we know, life itself. All of life thirsts, leans toward water, which holds the mysterious power of life in it. The world does not have the words to describe it, to do it justice, but something within us is touched, a memory recalled of that primordial state, by thirst satisfied.

The touch, the feel, the smell, the sound, the taste of the water, is enough to recall all of it. Death, birth, beginnings, creation.

It is something that we might relive, re-experience, time and again. It tells us where we came from. It tells us what we are and who we are.

In Judaism, there is a history of baptism – John the Baptizer did not make this thing up. It has always been a ritual of purification that individuals would participate in from time to time, called the mikva. It was part of the temple priests’ purification requirement before they could serve their duties in the temple. But anymore the mikva is used only in a few circumstances, one of which is a monthly purification ritual of married orthodox women.

A woman of childbearing age has a monthly cycle which is marked by cleanliness, uncleanliness, and a return to cleanliness. After her monthly cycle, she goes to the mikva and undergoes a well prescribed and thorough ritual. Every inch of her body is combed, shaved, clipped, scoured to cleanliness. And then she enters the bath, the final stage, where she lowers herself completely under the water, then rises. She is declared clean by the bath attendant, and free to return home to her husband, no longer impure. Now, once again, pure.

There is much about this ritual and the set of beliefs that support it which I find meaningless – except for the single piece that defines the whole: the bath. The submerging into and the rising out of the water is laden with meaning – ancient and timeless.

It is the reason why I find my spirit calming and centering, my emotional temperature lowering, as I approach a babbling brook and sit down next to it. It is the reason why some need to reconnect with the ocean periodically in order to feel fully alive. It is the reason why every mother knows that the recipe for soothing a fussy baby is to insert her in warm water. Water is the source of life; water connects us with the source of life.

Yet most weeks our baptismal font is dry. It sits on the side as a dry symbol, almost forgotten, of who we are.

Well, I have told you a story now – about who we are, where we came from, what we are like. But now you need to tell a story, as well. It must be more than a story about the past. Our stories must retell the past as something that is alive and present, life-giving and surprising. We have no problem telling the story about who we were, once upon a time. But that story leaves us barren and cold. We must tell the story about who we are.

The water is here. Life is here. If you wish to live, if you want to tell a story about who we are, now, in this place, come and be revived by the waters of life.

Finding Our Way to Jesus - Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

There’s an old joke about two fish swimming around. One fish says to the other, just to make conversation, “How’s the water?” and the other says, “What the heck is water?” The point of the joke is that fish don’t know what water is because water is all they know. And also because they’re not that smart.

It’s a dumb joke. But it has a larger point, too, which is that we can become blind to what surrounds us. The water we swim in comes to feel normal, because it is normal for us, even if others might think it very strange. It’s helpful to get an outsider’s view now and then.

And that is true for the scriptures as much as for anything. When the stories we read in scripture feel perfectly normal we have probably lost sight of what they actually say.

Take these three wise men. In so many crèche scenes, I have some trouble discerning who is who, because they all look alike. Usually Mary and the angel resemble each other quite a bit, so I look for the wings. Angels have them, Mary doesn’t. It’s peculiar, actually, that the angel always seems to be a woman, because I can recall no female angels described in the Bible. This one’s name is Gabriel – not Gabriella. So, there is one oddity we have gotten so accustomed to we never even notice it.

And all the men tend to look alike: the shepherds, the wise men, and Joseph. Sometimes the shepherd has a sheep on his person – either wrapped around his legs or carried over his shoulder – so that helps. With the wise men, I look for the gifts. Guys who are carrying packages are wise men. And Joseph? Well, whoever is left over must be Joseph.

The point is this: we have homogenized all these characters. We have whitewashed them so they all look the same. It seems an odd thing to do, and I have to wonder why we do it.

I read an article recently about what it is to be a Midwesterner, and the author said it is very much about being ordinary, being normal. We are, in the Midwest, the definition of normal. And this also means, the author added, that anything threatening to that normality, anything unusual, will often be repressed, because it threatens our self-image. Something similar seems to happen in religion, too. We decide what is normal, what is acceptable, what is – to use the religious word for it – orthodox, and then we make sure everything conforms to it.

The problem with this normality is that we don’t see what is right in front of our faces sometimes. Look at Matthew’s gospel.

Who among us has carefully read the first chapter of Matthew. You would not be alone if you admitted that you haven’t. It’s a genealogy. Yawn. Everyone skips over the genealogies, the same way we skip over the long tedious lists of ordinances in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. These things are not really part of the story – except that they are.

If you have read Matthew’s genealogy carefully then you know that there are a few women included, which in itself is weird; but the women he chose to include make it even weirder. Matthew’s genealogy includes the names of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and a fourth woman who is not actually named. But it’s not hard to figure out who she is; her name is Bathsheba.

What is weird about the inclusion of these women is that not one of them was an ordinary, respectable, Jewish housewife. Each one of them had a story that most families would try to closet away; these are the relatives families don’t talk about. Take Tamar: for the purpose of tricking her father-in-law into impregnating her, Tamar pretended to be a prostitute. You heard me right. Rahab didn’t have to pretend. Ruth came dangerously close to becoming one. And Bathsheba – she wasn’t a prostitute, but this wasn’t a bedtime story she told her children.

So that’s chapter one of Matthew’s gospel. All these women were part of Jesus’ family tree. And then in chapter two, things get even weirder.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men came from the East. They were not kings, even though we often call them kings. They were Wise Men. Magi. Men who practiced magic, which was definitely not kosher. They were not Jews, they were not even close. Sources say they were probably from Baghdad, or thereabouts. They were men who swam in very different waters than the people of Judea. What are they doing here now?

The preacher Debbie Blue says we ought to sneak characters like Bart Simpson figures into our crèches. We ought to put an odd Batman action figure or a Barbie doll in there with the holy family. Because, if we did people would say, “what are they doing there?” As we should be asking about the magi. What are they doing there?

Maybe they are here because only a foreigner could see what was going on.

It’s a classic case of being too close to something to even see it for what it is. The people surrounding Mary and Joseph had no clue, apparently, that the Son of God was in their midst. It took these men who were foreign in every way to recognize him. These men from faraway lands were closer to the Christ than anyone around him was.

And that’s the way the story unfolded. It is a story of the people closest to Jesus having the most trouble understanding who he was. It’s a story of being rejected in his own hometown, rejected by the authorities of his own religion, being rejected by the very ones who had been waiting for him. And in fact, this is a pattern that continues even now.

It is often those who claim the most familiarity who have the most difficulty really seeing Jesus. The ones who claim the most knowledge of the gospel might have the most trouble hearing it. It has become too commonplace, too ordinary, too normal. We have too much invested in our interpretation of it. If the gospel of Jesus Christ stops seeming strange to you, you had better be concerned. You might be losing your ability to find your way to Jesus.

These wise men – and actually, who knows how many there were? We always say there were three just because they brought three gifts – these men were as strange as strange could be to the land and people of Judea, yet they found him. They didn’t know their way around and they had to stop and ask for directions from Herod – of all people! But they kept at it, diligently following the star in that peculiar way of theirs, and they found him.

Of course, this was months later and he was no longer a newborn lying in a manger. Mary and Joseph were living in a house, probably with some of Joseph’s family. And these wise men probably looked very strange riding into town on their camels. I wonder what the neighbors thought of them.

Here is the thing: these men who were complete outsiders found their way to Jesus. They used methods that the residents of Bethlehem would have considered blasphemous. They are not believers in this God of Israel. They just know that the divine has broken through into our world, and they care enough about it to put their lives on hold, put themselves at risk, and travel this long journey to a distant and foreign land to pay him homage.

Everything about them was wrong, yet they were the ones who found him. Do you see how strange it is?

My hope is that we, the church, will wander away from what is normal, what is acceptable, what is orthodox, for the sake of finding the Christ in our world. My hope is that we will open our eyes this Epiphany – a word that just means illumination or insight, revelation perhaps – and see the danger of hewing too close to the standard, the conventional, the normal. My hope is that we will wake up and see that God is guiding us, by a star or a dream or whatever it might be, to something different than what we expect. My hope is that we will, like the wise men, hear God leading us – warning us – to go a different way, to make a new path, to never, ever stop seeking, finding our way to Jesus.

photo: Kokopelli? What's he doing there???