Are you tired of the “10 Best” or “10 Worst” lists yet?
For some reason, January is the month for every “10 Best” and “10 Worst” list imaginable. January editions of every magazine, plot lines on tabloid TV, even articles in “serious” news coverage finds it mandatory to include a feature on some “Ten Worst” or the “Ten Best.”
The ten best movies,
the ten worst videos,
the ten best books,
the ten worst dressed,
the ten best trends,
the ten worst investments,
the ten best colleges,
the ten worst places to live.
The list goes on and on.
These “Best” and “Worst” distinctions are often only separated by the thinnest lines of discernment. These “best” and “worst” lists are a bit like the child who finally announced that the Emperor was not wearing a beautifully tailored suit of clothes, but that he was naked! Until someone decrees something is the “best” or the “worst,” we really don’t see it that way.
In today’s gospel text, Nazareth is on the “Worst” list. The newly summoned disciple Nathanael responds to the information about Jesus’ pedigree with a snooty sounding “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael’s nasty knock of Nazareth has led generation after generation to assume that Nazareth was famous for being infamous.
Here’s a surprise. Historically that just isn’t so. Before Nathanael’s nay-saying there was nary a word recorded one way or the other about the town of Nazareth. It was what it was, a small, dusty, insignificant village of stone homes struggling to stay solvent. Nazareth was unremarkable, undistinguished, unconsidered. It wasn’t remarkable for being unremarkable. It was what it was.
That is, until John’s gospel recorded Nathanael’s dismissal of a “no-good Nazareth.” From the viewpoint of the twenty-first century we can never properly see Nazareth. Our vision will forever be squeezed and squinted through Nathanael’s dismissal.
So why did John feel it was so important to preserve this rotten reputation for poor old Nazareth? What does a bad rep for Jesus’ “hometown” offer us?
Think of this as the gospel writer’s offer of verbal intensive care to a world that needs a Savior who is accessible to all.
Verbal intensive care offers believable, accessible words to people when they are in the midst of a terrible crisis. Instead of denying the situation, verbal intensive care addresses the immediate needs of the person.
If you are the first on the scene of a hit-and-run accident, hovering over the injured while screeching “Don’t die, don’t die?” isn’t going to offer much reassurance.
If you are the first to come upon someone injured in a car wreck, promising that “everything is fine” or “you’re okay” is not going to ring true either.
Verbal intensive care deals with the real. Verbal intensive care tells the truth: “I know you’re in pain. An ambulance is on the way. You’re not alone.” (For more on “verbal first aid” see Judith Acosta and Judith Simon Prager, “The Worst is Over: What to Say When Every Moment Counts” (Jodere Group 2002).
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is the verbal intensive care we all need to hear. It tells the truth to all of us, because we all feel like we are from Nazareth. The best evidence that proves America is not yet quite a cleanly classless society is our across-the-board conviction that we are all born “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
For some of us those “tracks” are made of money. We were born genuinely poor.
For some of us those “tracks” are made of social ties. We are not socially “acceptable” somehow — too slow, too sad, too different, too wimpy, too moody.
For some of us those “tracks” are physical – we are too fat, too skinny, too ugly, too smart, too handicapped.
In our souls we are all coming out of our own “Nazareth.”
Nathanael’s question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth” can be phrased another way in 2009.
“Can anything good come out of my depleted pension?”
“Can anything good come out of my pink slip?”
“Can anything good come out of my spouse’s death?”
“Can anything good come out of my child’s addiction?”
“Can anything good come out of the Gaza mess?”
It is in these “worst times” in the “worst places” of our life, that God’s presence pours in. When you are at your lowest ebb, whenyou are at your worst point, when you are most destroyed, destitute, disinherited, and bankrupt, when you are most damned and damaged, then and there . . . God wants to do God’s greatest work in your life. That is why just when you think everything is coming to an end, everything is really just beginning. That is why what Paul called “the word of the cross” (I Corinthians 1:18) is really the wisdom of God. What the world called “the worst of the cross,” the ultimate tragedy, this is where God did God’s greatest work.
E. Stanley Jones was one of the greatest missionaries in Christian history. He was born January 3rd, 1884, and at 21 became a missionary to India, where he lived and loved almost until he died in 1973. Jones was offered the episcopacy, but declined it in favor of his mission work. E. Stanley Jones wrote his last book, The Divine Yes, at the age of 83. The age of 83 is not what makes the book so remarkable. E. Stanley Jones wrote The Divine Yes after suffering a severe stroke that paralyzed him.
But in the last fourteen months of his life Jones was convinced that God wanted him to produce still another book, this “Yes” book. He was unable to write and hardly able to see or speak. But with the help of his daughter he dictated the book as best he could into a cassette recorder. The book stands as a summary of all this world renowned Methodist missionary-evangelist did and said . . . a “last will and testament” Jones called it. The book begins as strong as a book can: “Jesus is The Yes, the divine Yes.” The Divine Yes became his best-selling book, the book E. Stanley Jones is most known for.
And this book was written from “Nazareth.”
Working “out of Nazareth” is always a hazardous commute. When God “is up to something” in your life, there are two things you can count on. Martin Luther described one perfectly — “Where God builds a church, the Devil builds a chapel.” Evil is active and will gladly move in to add more chaos to our crisis.
But the second certainty we can cling to is that God will do God’s greatest work in the worst of places. God does God’s greatest work in the worst of times, in the worst of people. God does God’s greatest work in the worst part of you. In that deepest, darkest hole in your soul, that is where God will send the deepest roots of redemption and forgiveness. That is where Jesus hangs on the cross for you.
When you are at your lowest ebb . . .
When you are at your worst point . . .
When you are most destroyed, destitute, disinherited and bankrupt;
When you are most damned and damaged.
Then and there. . . God wants to do God’s greatest work in your life.
When you think everything is coming to an end, everything is really just beginning.
We all come “out of Nazareth.”
But “out of Nazareth” comes God’s best to bless others and this world.