The Families of the Earth Can Be Blessed Through You

Brad Sullivan

2 Epiphany, Year B

January 14, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

John 1:43-51

The Families of the Earth Can Be Blessed Through You

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  I love this question of Nathanael’s partly because it appeals to my snarky side, and also because the obvious answer is supposed to be “no.”  Nazareth was a Podunk little sparrow fart town.  The messiah was not supposed to come from there, and further, at least in Nathanael’s mind nothing good could come from such a crummy place.  Nathanael would have rather written off Jesus and anyone from Nazareth.  Let’s leave those people there, and go on and hope for the messiah to come from somewhere important.  God just wasn’t playing Nathanael’s little game of making sure things looked good enough on the outside to stroke his ego.  “Sorry Nate,” God said.  “I know you want to be associated with a Messiah from somewhere awesome, but I’m not here to inflate your sense of self importance.  I’m here to bring about my kingdom of love, grace, and truth, and that includes places like Nazareth, and other little sparrow fart town and countries.”

When we get tied up in the place, the location where greatness is supposed to be, where we think God is supposed to be, God just says, “Oh you silly humans; I’m not in any one place.  I’m in all places, and like the Psalm says, even and especially with those people and places whom you often deem too lowly to matter.”  So while the obvious answer is “no, nothing good can come from the proverbial Nazareth,” God’s response is “come and see.”

Nathanael reluctantly does, “Fine, we’ll go see your crummy Messiah,” and Jesus tells him something pretty huge.  First he convinces him that he is someone worth hanging around and listening to, and then he tells Nathanael, “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

This is of course alluding to Jacob’s ladder, the story in Genesis where Jacob (who would later be renamed Israel) was sleeping outside and he had a dream of the heaven’s opened up and the angels of God ascending and descending upon a ladder to heaven.  In the dream, God spoke to Jacob and told him,

all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.  Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’  Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’  And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’

This promise of God indeed came to pass.  Jacob was renamed Israel, and from him and his children came the people of Israel, the laws and ways of God, the prophets, and Jesus himself.  So, when Jesus told Nathanael “You will see heaven opened and the angles of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” he was telling Nathanael that families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring (children, disciples, people whom you will teach about me and my ways).  “You, Nathanael, can be like a new Jacob.  God’s mission of healing humanity, of reconciliation to each other and to God can be lived out through you, Nathanael, and not only that, families of the earth will be blessed through you and through those who come after you.  Through you, Nathanael,” Jesus was saying, “the salvation that I offer, the life of God’s love, grace, and truth, can be known and lived and passed on to others, and families of the earth will be blessed through you and through those who come after you.”

You may notice, however, that there aren’t too many St. Nate churches.  “Through you, Nathanael, families of the earth will be blessed,” and yet we hear very little about Nathanael after this.  Most of what he did was not recorded in the pages of history, and yet through this seemingly unimportant man, families of the earth were blessed.  Like Nathanael, most of our names will not be written in the stars or even in the pages of history, and yet, the families of the earth can be blessed through each of us.  We can all be like a new Jacob, people of the earth blessed through us and those who come after us, as we live out Jesus’ ways and share with them his kingdom of love, grace, and truth.

Further, the kingdom of God can indeed come from Nazareth, or any other sparrow fart nothing of a place because God does not dwell only in one place, like the place where Jacob was.  Indeed, the dwelling place of God was in Jesus himself, with the angels ascending and descending on him.  The dwelling place of God is within all of creation and within humanity itself:  you, me, the important people from great places, and the lowly schlebs from sparrow far places like Nazareth and flooded out shells of buildings. 

We are Emmanuel, and God is with us.  God dwells with us and within us.  We can live out God’s kingdom of love, grace, and truth anywhere, and through us God can bless the people of West Houston and beyond to truly the ends of the earth.  As far as we can go and as many come to know and follow Jesus through us, God can bless the people of the earth. 

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  Can anything good come out of this little flooded out gathering of Jesus’ friends?  Come and see.