If you were to tell me that you were going to Chicago, that’s all you’d need to say. Everyone knows about Chicago.
You don’t need to clarify that Chicago is a city in Illinois. You don’t need to say, “I’m going to a city in Illinois called Chicago.” Everyone knows that Chicago is a city in Illinois. You just say, “Chicago,” and that’s enough. It’s even on the freeway signs.
On the other hand, if you were going to Dieterich…
Some of you know that Walter Scott Camp and Learning Center—the camp that we at First Christian Church, along with the other congregations of our region, own and operate—is located in Dieterich, at least according to its official mailing address.
But if you told someone you were going to Dieterich, they might wonder: “Dieterich? Where is Dieterich? I’ve never heard of Dieterich.”
Because Dieterich is a very small town. It has less than 1,000 people. So, instead of just saying “Dieterich,” it would be helpful if you gave that a little context. For example, instead of just saying, “I’m going to Dieterich,” It might be better to say, “I’m going to a small town in southern Illinois called Dieterich.”
And that helps the person you’re talking to have a little better idea of just where Dieterich is.
That’s how Luke introduces the town of Nazareth. Luke doesn’t expect anyone to have heard of Nazareth, or know where it is.
So, Luke says that the angel Gabriel was sent to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.
Luke doesn’t just say Nazareth, because that would lead to blank stares and a shrugging of shoulders. Nazareth was not a place many had heard of.
Luke doesn’t do this for Jerusalem; when Luke mentions Jerusalem, he just says, Jerusalem. Everybody knows about Jerusalem. Luke doesn’t need to say “a city in Judea called Jerusalem.”
But Nazareth? Not many people knew about Nazareth.
And for those who were waiting for the arrival of God’s messiah, few would have looked to Nazareth as the place from which he would come.
For the people who lived in Jerusalem and the area around Jerusalem, even if they had heard of Nazareth, there’s no way they would have expected Nazareth to be the hometown of the messiah.
Jews in Judea, the region where Jerusalem is located, thought of Jews in Galilee as not quite as good. Galilean Jews were lower-class, 2nd rate Jews.
Those Galilean Jews—they didn’t follow all the right customs that Jews were supposed to follow. They intermarried with non-Jews. Some of them weren’t even circumcised, for cryin’ out loud!
And they were always stirring up trouble. Like those zealots in Sepphoris, a city just a few miles away from Nazareth. They started a little rebellion a few years before Jesus was born, but Roman troops not only destroyed that resistance movement; those troops destroyed the city itself. Just leveled it to the ground.
Which may actually be why Joseph was living in Nazareth. Joseph was a carpenter, and I can only assume that carpenters were in demand as Sepphoris began rebuilding itself after its destruction.
Had Joseph always lived in Nazareth? I don’t know. We know from today’s Bible story that his family’s roots were in Bethlehem, so at some point, Joseph, or one of his ancestors, made the move from Bethlehem to Nazareth.
Which isn’t a move that many people would want to make, because, well, it’s Nazareth.
My guess is that the opportunity for employment is what caused Joseph or someone in a previous generation of Joseph’s family to make that move.
But, you know, in this season of Hallmark Christmas specials, I do sometimes imagine that maybe it happened a little differently. Maybe Joseph is still living in Bethlehem when, one day, he goes to the temple in Jerusalem during a festival. There, he bumps into this beautiful girl from Nazareth, and their coins spill on the ground, and as they both bend down to pick them up, their eyes meet…
And the next day, Joseph says to his friends and family, “I’m moving to Nazareth!”
And his friends say, “Where?”
And Joseph says, “Nazareth… it’s a town in Galilee.”
And they say: “Why?”
And Joseph says: “I know… Galilee… but what can I say? Love makes you do crazy things…”
And off he goes.
OK. That’s probably not how it happened. I don’t know how or why or when Joseph’s family made the move to Nazareth. (It could have been many generations before Joseph.) I just know that Nazareth was a town that few people took notice of, and if they did take notice of it, it was neither positive nor favorable.
The same could be said about Joseph and Mary. Few people took notice of them. They were a poor couple, insignificant in so many ways. Outside of Nazareth, no one knew who they were, and if they did, they wouldn’t think much of them.
They were Galileans, after all. Poor Galieans. Even if there was plenty of work for a carpenter like Joseph, carpenters made miniscule wages.
And if Mary’s family agreed to let her marry him, she must have been just as low, if not lower. Maybe she was “damaged goods,” as some would say; as some scholars I’ve read have suggested. Maybe she was victimized by Roman soldiers, as so many young women were in those days. Maybe, among the people at least, there was some question as to her “virtue.” Why else would she—or her family—choose a low-life like Joseph for her future husband, no matter how good or decent a man he was?
Or maybe Mary didn’t even have a family. They aren’t mentioned, other than her distant relative Elizabeth.
This is all speculation. However it came about, it’s clear that Joseph and Mary were poor nobodies living in a poor town no one cared about or had ever heard of or expected anything good from.
When I moved here to Bloomington a year ago, a lot of people here in Illinois said to me things like: “Why would you move here from California, especially at the start of winter?”
But I think also implied in that question was the idea that California is an important place, a place where things happen. Especially southern California.
Celebrities live in southern California, and yes, I’ve seen a few, at restaurants, at amusement parks, even in the pews of my church.
Such encounters are less likely, now that I live here in central Illinois.
Maybe that’s why some of the people I’ve met, who live here in Bloomington, rank this area as less important, less desirable, than a place like southern California.
Maybe they even think that God pays more attention to a place like Los Angeles than to a place like Bloomington; or that God pays more attention to a place like Washington, or a place like Rome, than to a place like Bloomington.
I think if you were to ask people where Jesus would be born if he were to be born today, I think a lot of people would choose someplace more important. Someplace like Washington. Or Rome. Or Jerusalem.
“Jesus would appear where the powerful are located. If he’s going to change the world, he’s got to be where the powerful people are.”
But if that’s true, then why wasn’t he just born in Jerusalem to begin with? Why Bethlehem as the place of his birth? Why Nazareth as his hometown?
Of all the places God could have picked for Jesus to grow up… God picked Nazareth. Maybe God saw something in Nazareth no one else saw. What, I don’t know. Maybe a combination of goodness and humility. Maybe God liked the diversity of people there, a unique blend of Jewish, Greek, and Roman. Maybe it was something else, something God alone could see.
It makes me wonder how much better we’d feel about the places we come from, if we could see those places through God’s eyes.
It makes me wonder how much better we’d feel about ourselves, if we could see ourselves through God’s eyes.
We tend to be hard on ourselves. We doubt our own abilities. We think of ourselves, and wonder: “what good could I do?”
Not too long ago a congregation that I think very highly of called a friend of mine who I think very highly of to be their new pastor, and I thought: what a perfect match!
I was so happy, both for him and the church. This friend of mine, who I admire, who inspires me, who makes me want to be a better pastor myself.
But as he was about to begin his ministry there, he told me that he was dealing with imposter syndrome. He was doubting whether he was really up to the task, or whether he was the right person.
And I was shocked, because I couldn’t think of anyone who was better suited for that congregation than him!
How often do we doubt ourselves and our abilities… even when others see what we’re capable of, and see the beauty in us, and tell us… Even then, we still have doubts.
I wonder if Mary felt that same sense of self-doubt. It seems she did at first. The scripture says she was perplexed, and that she then asked, “How can this be?” As in, “I think you might have the wrong person.”
It’s so hard to imagine that God would take notice of us. God, who created the earth and the heavens, who set the stars in place… takes notice of a girl from a town in Galilee called—what was it again?---oh, Nazareth.
God, ruler of the nations, takes notice of us, the people of First Christian Church in Bloomington, Illinois… a long way from more places like Washington, or Rome, or Jerusalem.
Can that possibly be true?
God, the one who was and is and is to come, takes notice of you.
Yes, you.
God has given you unique talents and gifts and abilities in a combination that doesn’t exist in any other human.
In Isaiah 43, God says: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name…” Whether you are well-known, like Jerusalem or Chicago, or mostly unknown, like Dieterich or Nazareth, God knows your name. “I have called you by name [God says]; you are mine…you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
That’s why God came to be with us, at Christmas, in the form of Jesus: to let us know how much God loves us.
And maybe the reason Jesus was born in Bethlehem, to a couple from Nazareth, is to show that no place—and no person—is too insignificant for God to notice.
In scripture, so many of those called by God to do big, important things, come from the most humble of beginnings. Many of them doubt their own abilities, and some even insist that God chose the wrong person. And none of them is perfect; they all have flaws.
Yet God called them anyway.
And God calls you.
This world needs you. This world needs what you and only you have to offer. There are holes in this world only you can fill. There is sadness in this world that only you can comfort. There is joy in this world that only you can celebrate.
In fact, when it comes to Christmas gifts, YOU are the best gift that you can give. Give of yourself, give love, give kindness—even a small act of kindness can make a big impact in someone’s life.
It may seem unlikely to you, that God would notice you, choose you; but if God looked with favor on Mary and Joseph, a poor, young, not-yet-married couple from an obscure town in Galilee called Nazareth, then surely God can, and does, look with favor upon you. God has blessed you, and God has made you a blessing to others.
