Please, Anywhere But Nazareth!
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 18, 2009
John 1: 42-51
A pastor shares this story: "I know a woman in our church who prayed daily for God to deliver her from a painful and difficult family situation. Her husband was an alcoholic and her adult children had paid a price for his problems. They had caused her much sadness in their adult lives. She told me that every night before bedtime she knelt and prayed that God would heal her husband of his addiction and would bring some sort of order and direction to her children's lives. Night after night she prayed, but still the problems persisted. Had God turned a deaf ear to her prayers?
"Yet she did have something to be thankful for. She had some wonderful friends, loyal and very attentive. One called her every day just to check in. They would talk and her friend would listen without judgment. This woman also had her church." The minister recalls that once, when he was thinking of canceling their Wednesday night suppers and Bible studies because of poor attendance, the woman said, "Please don't end those Wednesday night gatherings. I live for those times when I can get out of the house and study the Bible and be with my friends."
"But still it was hard. One morning she confessed to her good friend, the one who called every day, that she was disappointed, even angry with God. Why had God not seen fit to deliver her from her family distress? Her friend listened patiently, as she always did, then said, 'But Alice, God did answer your prayer, at least partly. God sent me!'" Do you ever consider yourself, yes, even one such as you, as one of God's messengers, as someone whom God might have in mind for important ministry?
Some of you know this story. Several years ago, the governor of North Dakota was asked to host a very famous person, someone held in high regard all over the United States. He was coming to speak at the Bismarck YMCA and had the reputation as a spell-binding speaker. The governor's aide was to meet the speaker, take him to the hotel for dinner, then on to the YMCA where the governor would meet him. Unfortunately, the aide was delayed. Realizing he could not get to the airport on time, he called the governor's minister and asked him to meet the speaker, for he was also known as a man of deep faith, who often referred to his faith in his talks.
The pastor rushed to the airport, where he was shocked to find himself confronted by a twisted little man, about five feet tall, who had a face truly only a mother could love. In all honesty, his appearance caused most people to stop and stare. The shock must have shown on the pastor's face. The little man looked at him, he had seen the shocked expression many times before, then smiled and said, "Isn't it wonderful what God can use?" Again, do you ever think of yourself as someone for whom God has chosen a significant ministry, as someone God can use?
I love the honesty of this morning's text. Phillip is so excited. He has seen the Messiah, God's chosen. He just has to tell someone. So he goes to Nathaniel. He can't wait to share all he has heard and seen. But he makes a mistake. As he is telling the story, he happens to mention Jesus' hometown - Nazareth. And that is all Nathaniel has to hear. "Nazareth! Did you say he comes from Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" And clearly, Nathaniel already knows the answer to his own question. "Say Jerusalem, say Jericho, say Capernaum, even say Alexandria in Egypt. Please, say anywhere but Nazareth! Not even God can use someone from Nazareth!" All Phillip can say in response is, "Come and see." And when Nathaniel does, everything changes.
It is amazing to me, quite an intersection of history and calendar, that we will inaugurate our first African-American President in the same week that we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. In all his marvelous dreams, I wonder if King ever dreamed of this? What I say at Advent and Christmas, I want to repeat today - never underestimate or discount the power of a promise or of a dream to shape, even change, our lives - perhaps even the life of a nation. Don't let anyone or any situation ever make you afraid to dream.
I remember standing in the pulpit of the little Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, where it all began. They offered a tour and I just had to spend a moment in the pulpit where King preached and from where he began a movement that would forever change a nation. I stood there and felt... very small and unimportant. I spend a lot of time in a pulpit, but I will never do what he did. But then I came across some words of Peter Gomes, chaplain at Harvard University, who also happens to be African-American. He once preached a sermon on the Sunday of the King holiday in which he said, "We are led to remember Martin Luther King, Jr., not because the liberal press says we should, or self-serving organizations and individuals hold us moral hostage to do so. We hold him in remembrance because he was in our time a part of that great company of witnesses from before our time whom God has raised up to raise us up from our bondage to the things that are, to the liberty of the things that can and ought to be. If we look for human perfection in him we will not find it, for he was a man born of woman and shared in the sins and weaknesses of our human flesh. If we look for him to be the burden-bearer of our times, our race or our nation, we will find that he is unable to bear that burden, for he was in the struggle fully as much as we." (It occurs to me that we could say much the same thing about Barack Obama) "But if we look to see in King what God is trying to do and to say, if we look beyond the cult and the deeds, if in fact we look where he was looking, we may begin to see just what it was that sustained him, and is freely available to sustain us as well..."
The echoes of greatness in that church in Montgomery, echoes which we might hear on Tuesday, were not there to make me feel small, inadequate or to wonder if anything good could ever come out of the pulpit of the Community Church of Sebastopol. No, those echoes were really a testimony unto God, a testimony reminding me and all faithful hearers that God has always taken frail human flesh and made of it something of his own, that God has always taken frail human flesh and through it done the work God needed to do. From Montgomery to Sebastopol to Washington D.C. on Tuesday, we are all heirs of the promise, all bearers of the hope that God continues to inject into this world and into our hearts. We are a part of it. And we can share it.
Nathaniel sneers that nothing good can come from Nazareth, from such common people in such a common place. My guess is that he doesn't even really believe that anything good can come from himself. Little does he know that a light is about to penetrate his darkness. Jesus is going to take him and use him for what Jesus needs to get done. In the words of United Methodist pastor, Cynthia Anderson, "What changes Nathaniel’s life isn't Phillip's description of Jesus. It's not even Nathaniel’s observation of Jesus. It is not what he sees about Jesus that changes things, but what Jesus sees about him. Being seen and known by Jesus turns this ordinary encounter into a life-changing experience that opens Nathaniel to the light that's come into the world to reveal heaven itself." And each of us, is a bearer of that light which no darkness can overcome.
You don’t know this, but recently I missed my fifteen minutes of fame. The memorial service for Mark Felt (deep throat) was almost here. But we and the family decided our church was too small. Many consider him a brave man - daring to speak the truth when so many were afraid of the truth, to help shine a light on what was a great darkness. He stayed behind the scenes, but still dared to take a stand. And because he did, things changed. He made a difference, helped to change history. Lots of powerful and well-known people paid him a deserving tribute last Friday.
I missed that memorial, but I attended another one last week, on Wednesday in Ragle Park. It was for Robert Christiansen. I knew him for years - we walked in the park. He was the first volunteer for the Sonoma County Parks. We were told he opened the gate over 6,000 mornings. Years ago a bench was dedicated in his honor. On Wednesday, we met at that bench and remembered Bob, his faithfulness, his love of the park, all the lives he touched simply because he came for 6,000 mornings and opened that gate, and walked and greeted people. Not exactly Mark Felt. Opening a gate at Ragle may not have changed history, but still someone through whom the light shined, who was faithful, who in his own way made a difference.
And that is the word of Christ to Nathaniel and to all of us. There is just too much to do for any of us to feel small or inadequate. There is something for each of us to do to make the world better. There is something God cannot get done as well without us. Each of us has a part to play, and if we don't play it, we will be missed. You just never know, in the midst of our ordinary lives, perhaps even in the midst of an ordinary sermon on an ordinary Sunday, when the power of God will explode in our midst and we will be pushed beyond our conventional horizon. One author says: "It is a paradox of human life that it is in the routine of everyday that we find the possibilities for the greatest transformation." It will happen, and when it does, much to our shock and surprise, we will discover that something very good does come from Nazareth, and even from Sebastopol.