The Nazareth Way

 

Jesu Juva

St. John1:43-51                                                            

 January 17, 2021

Epiphany 2B                                      

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          I make it back to my hometown about once a year.  And every time I return, I’m astounded to discover that the entire town has shrunk.  No joke.  The streets are narrower.  The buildings aren’t nearly as big as they used to be.  Even the people are smaller.  The old neighborhood where I played “kick the can,” the creek where I caught crawdads, the hallowed halls of Lincoln Elementary School—a scourge of shrinkage has been unleashed upon the entire city.

          The only other possible explanation—rather far-fetched if you ask me—is that Iola, Kansas was never really that big to begin with.  I personally don’t buy into that theory; but it is true that Iola never made it onto any top ten lists.  No famous civil war battles were waged there.  There was a crazy prohibitionist who blew up several saloons one night.  The boyhood home of General Frederick Funston is there; and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who General Frederick Funston was.

          But unlike my incredible, shrinking hometown, the hometown of Jesus was known for next to nothing.  Nazareth in Galilee was barely a blip on a map.  No one famous was ever born there.  No battles were fought there.  No famous bank robbers or serial killers to boast about.  Nazareth didn’t even merit a single mention in the entire Old Testament.  Nazareth was a one-donkey nothing of a town. 

          It turns out Nazareth was something of a joke back when Jesus was just beginning His ministry.  Today’s Holy Gospel gives us a glimpse of that.  Jesus had just called His first disciples.  “Follow me,” He said to Philip, Andrew, and Peter.  Those boys were from Bethsaida; and Bethsaida was a town to be reckoned with—right on the Sea of Galilee.  Philip, in turn, rushed off to find his friend Nathanael—told Nathanael that he’d found the Messiah, the one about whom all the Law and all the prophets testified—and that His name was Jesus—Jesus of . . . Nazareth.

          “Nazareth!?” harrumphed Nathanael, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?!”  Now, what Nathanael meant was that Nazareth was no place for God to be doing anything—let alone to be the hometown of the Messiah.  There were far more proper places for God to be doing His thing.  “Jesus of Jerusalem” certainly had much more gravitas than Jesus of Nazareth.  Nathanael had certain ideas about how God was supposed to be God, and those ideas didn’t include any one-donkey towns—especially one-donkey towns that don’t even get mentioned in the Old Testament.

          But God likes to do things in the Nazareth way.  The Nazareth way is usually His way of doing things.

           Nathanael needed to learn that God’s way was usually the unexpected way—the humble way—the way you never would have guessed.  Now, there’s every reason to think that Nathanael was a good man.  In fact, Jesus called him “a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”  We also learn that Nathanael had been sitting under a fig tree when Jesus first saw him.  It just so happens that the shade of a fig tree was the perfect place for reading the Bible.  And maybe that’s what Nathanael was up to.  But Nathanael teaches us that it’s possible to read the Bible twice a day, under a dozen fig trees, and still miss the main point.

          I know, I know, you thought reading the Bible was a good thing—and it is.  But it’s possible to read the Bible in such a way that you prevent yourself from getting the real message.  For instance, you could just read the Bible as a manual on how to be a good person because it contains lots of rules to keep and examples to follow.  Read the Bible; be a better person.  That sounds perfectly reasonable; but it leaves out the most crucial part—namely the Jesus part, the Savior part, the Nazareth part.  Read the Bible only as a manual on how to be a good person—and you will die in your sins.

          Or, even worse, you can read the Bible in the “Corinthian way.”  The Corinthians mistakenly thought that the Bible really only applied to a person’s soul or spirit, and not to one’s body.  Read the Bible in the “Corinthian way” and see that God is only concerned about your spirit; while your body, on the other hand, is yours to do with as you please:  prostitutes, pornography, immorality, adultery—everything is lawful when your body belongs to you.  But read the Bible only in the “Corinthian way,” and you will die in your sins. 

          Nathanael wasn’t a bad person; he just had a bad theology.  He had all the wrong ideas about how God liked to do things.  Nathanael needed to learn about the Nazareth way—that the God-man who hailed from no-place Nazareth would one day have to die in utter weakness.  Nathanael needed to let go of his homemade theology—and get a new theology and a new God—namely, Jesus of Nazareth.  This, of course, would lead to a new Nathanael—Nathanael the devout disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.

          What about the Whitefish Bay way?  Is there a North Shore way?  Well, education is very important according to the North Shore way.  A good education and good grades help you to come up with good ideas and good opinions which then can become your truth.  But with this self-chosen “truth,” bad things happen:  marriage gets massacred.  You’ve got single people pretending to be married; and married people pretending they’re single.  You’ve got girls imagining they’re boys; and boys imagining they’re girls.  But in the North Shore way, god is good with all of that.  He’s just glad to have a few folks show up at church for a few hours each week—and He totally understands if sports or a late night out on Saturday prevent you from showing up.  Yes, there’s a place for “god” according to the North Shore way; but that tame, impotent god is not the living God.  And the North Shore way is nothing like the Nazareth way.

          To really understand the Nazareth way requires someone like Philip.  Philip didn’t try to argue Nathanael into submission when he started throwing shade on Nazareth.  Philip knew that nobody could sell the Nazareth way like Jesus . . . of Nazareth.  So with just a wave of invitation he said, “Come and see.”  Philip then brought Nathanael to Jesus (that’s what friends are for, after all). 

          But here’s the surprise: It turns out that before Nathanael ever laid eyes on Jesus, Jesus had laid eyes on him.  Jesus told him so:  When you were under the fig tree I saw you.  Nathanael had no idea!  Way before Nathanael saw Jesus—or knew Him or loved Him or believed in Him—Jesus knew Nathanael, and loved Nathanael, and believed in Nathanael.  The first question of a good theology is not whether you believe in God.  The primary question is:  Does God believe in you?

          Nathanael teaches us that God does believe in you.  God in Christ knows you and loves you—even when you’re stuck under your own private fig tree, operating with a wretched theology, enamored by every which way . . . except the Nazareth way.  Way back when you were too little to “get it,” God the Holy Trinity saw you, knew you, and loved you in the waters of Holy Baptism.  Baptism is part of the Nazareth way.  Only the God who hails from a hometown like Nazareth could give a splash of water with the Word and declare that by it your sins are forgiven, you are rescued from death and the devil, and eternal salvation belongs to you, and to all who believe.

          Jesus even told Nathanael, His newly-minted disciple:  You will see greater things than these.  But, of course, Jesus meant “greater” in the Nazareth way.  If a Messiah from Nazareth was a tough pill to swallow, then so would be a Messiah whose crown was of thorns and whose throne was a cross, whose power was made perfect in weakness.  Those thorns and that cross and that weakness are at the heart of the Nazareth way—Jesus humbling Himself entirely, taking the punishment for your sin.  That’s how it is with our sins—either Jesus takes them for us, or they stick to us.  I say the Jesus way is far better.

          And if Jesus can do things using the Nazareth way and the Calvary way, then I fully suspect that He can do His thing by way of the North Shore too.  Every week the Lord Jesus would have us “come” here and “see” here, where Jesus has promised to meet us.  Here we can taste and see His goodness and forgiveness.  Here we come to know that our bodies are so important—destined for resurrection.

          And even when we aren’t here in the Divine Service, well, Jesus sees us under our fig trees—sees us, knows us, loves us, and forgives us.  Can anything good come out of the North Shore—out of you, out of me?  Yes, because the Nazareth way runs right through your heart in whatever town or village you happen to find yourself—whether you are “oohing” and “aahing” at the sights of Iola, Kansas, or taking in some other metropolis.  Our Savior is Jesus—the Nazareth Jesus who died and rose to save you.  And He is not ashamed to believe in you.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.