Thomas J Parlette
“A Village with a Poor Reputation”
John 1: 43-51
1/17/21
According to a recent report from the BBC News, inhabitants of a village in northern Nigeria are celebrating to renaming of their village. The old name of the town was “Area of Idiots.” I understand the desire for a name change. So the new name of the village is “Area of Plenty”- definitely an improvement.
The local emir announced the name change after residents complained that they had been mocked for years because of that name. Who could blame them – would you want to tell people you come from “Area of Idiots.” Of course not. The village had gotten this unfortunate name because there is a river that flows near town called the Idiotic River. It is not clear why the river has that name – but that’s where the name of the village originally came from.(1)
Being a naturally curious person, I did a little research on my google machine and found some other interesting, and unfortunate names for towns right here in the United States. How would like to come from Nothing, Arizona? Or Nowhere, Colorado? Or Hell for Certain, Kentucky? How would you like to tell people you are moving to Boogertown, North Carolina? Or Boring, Oregon? All real places.
But my favorite of these unusual town names is probably Uncertain, Texas. The rumor is that in the 1960’s, a public official filed the paperwork with the State of Texas to move from being a village to a town, and he wrote in “Uncertain” next to the name, because a vote hadn’t been taken yet on the new name. But the State official in charge of such things didn’t read the application very closely, so that became the official name – Uncertain, Texas. An unfortunate name – but it could have been worse. He could have written in “To Be Determined,” I guess. Not as catchy as Uncertain. Still people might wonder if anything good can come from Uncertain.
In our scripture lesson for today, a man named Philip has just encountered Jesus and has been bowled over by him. He, in turn, reaches out to a friend, Nathanael, and tells him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
“Nazareth?” Nathanael scoffs. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Obviously, Nathanael wasn’t very impressed with Nazareth. While it doesn’t have an embarrassing name like Boogertown or Boring, there was obviously nothing impressive about Nazareth. And yet, Nazareth was chosen by God as the village where God’s own Son would spend his childhood. That’s the kind of thing God loves to do – take an unimpressive village or an unimpressive person and do extraordinary things through them.
On some level, Nazareth deserved its poor reputation. Remember when Jesus preached his first sermon here? In Luke’s gospel, he tells us that it was in the synagogue, on the Sabbath. Jesus stood up to read and opened the scroll to the prophet Isaiah and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind. To set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll and sat down. At first, everyone was very impressed with Jesus. But then the sermon took a twist – Jesus said to them “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed – only Naaman the Syrian.”
We’re not sure why Jesus spoke in such an insulting way to his hometown synagogue – maybe there were lingering rumors about his birth, maybe he was teased or bullied as a child. But whatever the reason may have been, the people in the synagogue were aghast. They were furious at what Jesus had to say. They drove him out of town, right to the edge of a cliff, where they intended to throw him over the edge.
I’m sure there are a lot of churches that have been tempted to throw their pastor off a cliff, but fortunately, I’ve never heard of it happening. And I’m happy to say, it didn’t happen in Nazareth that day either. Jesus just walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Luke doesn’t include many details to explain why this confrontation occurred, but it’s hard to feel sorry for Nazareth. There were obviously some hot heads in town. Throwing someone off a cliff over an unpopular sermon is a bit extreme in any time and place. Still, there must have been some positive things about Nazareth for Mary and Joseph to settle down there – small town life does have its advantages.
One of our takeaways from that story is the fact that Jesus didn’t please everyone. Not everyone who heard Jesus or encountered him in the street was thrilled with everything he did and said. Just goes to show that if you think you can sail through life with no one criticizing you, no opposition, no one making catty remarks about you every once in awhile – well, eventually you are in for a rude awakening. Not even Jesus could please everyone.
The important thing was that he stayed true to his values. Do you think everyone in town agreed with him when he said turn the other cheek? Do you think people liked it when he used Samaritans – the very people his neighbors despised the most – as heroes in any of his stories? Do you think everybody liked his teachings on wealth? No they did not.
And that’s still true today. In many ways, Paul is easier to preach on, he’s far less controversial. Let the preacher stay in the Epistles or the Old Testament. Let’s not struggle with Jesus’s teachings. They clash too much with our culture’s views on life.
But Jesus stayed true to his values – even when people got upset. Even when they threatened to throw him off a cliff or nailed him to cross. Now you expect that of Jesus, don’t you? He is the Son of God – you expect him to practice what he preaches, right. But the question this text asks – do you expect it from yourself as well?
There is a classic story told of a Baptist church that was seeking to hire a new pastor. In Baptist churches a search committee visits several churches to listen to prospective pastors preach, and then invites the pastor that best meets their needs to come preach for the whole congregation. Then the congregation votes on whether to hire the pastor – very similar to our call process in the Presbyterian Church in a lot of ways.
This particular church invited a pastor so chosen to come preach for them. Afterwards, a vote was taken and the committee informed the pastor that he was hired. Later, one of the members said to the pastor the vote was “almost unanimous.” This alarmed the newly hired pastor, and he asked, “What was the vote?” and he was told 230 “yes” and 2 votes “no”.
Well, this so disturbed the new pastor that he spent the first six months trying to find out who the two no votes were. When he finally figured it out, he spent the next six month trying to please those two people. At the end of the year, the church voted again and fired the new pastor. This time the vote was 230 to fire him and to votes to keep him. You can probably guess who wanted to keep that pastor – the two he worked so hard to please – which, of course upset everyone else in the congregation.(2)
That pastor was not called to make two people happy. He was called to minister to everyone in that congregation. If he had stayed true to his values and treated the two dissenters like he treated everyone else, then his ministry would have been more productive.
Jesus stayed true to his values. He was sent by God to demonstrate a new way of living which he termed the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ goal was plant the seeds of that Kingdom in every heart. He never wandered from that path. And because Jesus stayed true, one third of the world calls him Lord.
It’s interesting how this story ends. Nathanael discovers just what can come out of Nazareth.
Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one that Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
“Nazareth?! Can anything good come from there.”
“Come and see,” said Philip.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
That’s interesting. With just a glance, Jesus sizes up Nathanael and recognizes that here is a person who is true to his values. Jesus appreciates people of character and integrity.
“How do you know me?” asks Nathanael.
“I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
And this is enough for Nathanael to take a step beyond simple integrity. He commits to a purpose. He declares, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are king of Israel.”
And with that, Nathanael becomes a follower of Jesus. He discovered who Jesus really was and he wanted to follow him. Jesus already knew everything about Nathanael. He knew he wanted Nathanael on his team. All Nathanael had to do was “Yes.”
Apparently something good CAN from Nazareth.
And for that, may God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, p15.
2. Ibid… p17
