Back in January - though it feels much more recent to me - a question was asked and a few remarks made that sparked international discussion.
Here is one high-profile response:
In the midst of this, I read the lessons for the upcoming Sunday morning, on which I was scheduled to do supply (that is, preach and celebrate the Eucharist as a substitute for the regular priest) at a parish in the area. Apparently I am not the only one who wondered whether the president had read the lectionary in advance just to be sure he was speaking to the gospel reading at hand.
It's still on my mind, now in Holy Week, during which we see that the Romans had a similar attitude towards the countries they were occupying and the citizens thereof. One need only consider that crucifixion was not a permitted form of death penalty for Roman citizens.
Although I generally hesitate to share my sermons, I will share this one, as old as the topic may now be by general standards. It's been pushed to the back burner because of more death in the news - too much death - but it seems to me that any form of attitude that makes someone "less than" is ultimately death dealing. Something to consider as Lent draws to a close, especially this week.
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Epiphany 2B: What good can come out of Nazareth?
sermon for 1-14-18
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20) – call of Samuel
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 –
glorify God with/in your body
John 1:43-51 – call of
Philip, Nathanael under the fig tree
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s good to be back - to begin to get to know you and to
feel comfortable here. I appreciate your welcome, and I look forward to talking
with you at coffee hour following the service.
Meeting and getting to know each other can be both a delight
and a challenge. Imagine for a moment that you’re being introduced to someone.
In the United States, one of the first things people ask is “what do you do?”
That has its issues – but that’s for another day. Another question we hear is
“Where are you from?” Now, the question “Where are you from”
has the potential to capture so much meaning, depending on how it is answered
and explored. A resulting conversation could show so much of who we are in so
very many directions. Such a question and response provides a window into the
other person. Where we’re from is very personal. Think of the related
expression, “She knows where I’m coming from.”. It’s a feeling of being
understood.
But we don’t always go
there. “Where are you from?” and other such introductory questions can give us
the sense that we know all about someone when in fact we have very little idea.
Hearing that someone is from Fort Wayne, Indiana, or from Manhattan could lead
you to very different ideas – which could be far from accurate. But you know
those New Yorkers… Yankees fans, the lot of them.
Too often we think we
know where someone is from, box them in, and fit them into our schema of The
Way Things Are, and that’s that. Even putting people in what we think are GOOD boxes can be
problematic because then we aren’t seeing or hearing the actual person, but
only what we expect.
Jesus had this
problem. He might have been born in Bethlehem and been a toddler in Egypt, but
he grew up in Nazareth in Galilee, a poor town in a poor region. On the night
he was arrested, Peter was identified as one of his disciples by his accent
alone.
Jesus got it from
home, too. When he preached in his hometown synagogue, people got offended. As
they put it,
“Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is
not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon
and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all
this?’ (Matthew 13:55-56)
Which is to say, “Who
do you think you are?” We know where you’re from, so we know who you are, and
we’ll judge you accordingly.
Now, really,
generalizations are one of the ways the brain makes sense of vast quantities of
information. It is when we regard them as hard and fast definitions that we run
into trouble. It’s when we decide we
know enough about people to determine who they are – and we stop listening.
And
that’s one of the issues we run into in today’s Gospel.
Listen again:
Philip found Nathanael and said to him,
“We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,
Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Does that sound… eerily familiar to anyone this morning?
Apparently derogatory remarks about poverty-stricken areas
and the people who come from them are nothing new. Hearing it from the White
House, now, that’s something else again. Worse than the profanity, to me, was
the press secretary’s follow-up, which reminds me of Nathanael’s initial
attitude. He spoke of (and I quote) “permanent solutions that make our country
stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy
and assimilate into our great nation.” Which, as the New Yorker pointed out, suggested “that immigrants from places like
El Salvador, Haiti, Liberia, and Sierra Leone couldn’t become productive and
assimilated American citizens,” which is more than a little racist.[i]
Can anything good come from Nazareth?
In the Jesuit America
Magazine, Fr James Martin explains, “Nazareth was a minuscule town of 200
to 400 people, where people lived in small stone houses, and, archaeologists
say, where garbage, and excrement, was dumped in the alleyways…in other words,
came from a …….. place [such as that][ii] Elsewhere in the magazine I read, “Crumbling infrastructure, inadequate
health care and crippling poverty do not make a life any less valuable.”[iii]
True in Jesus’ time. True now. Pragmatically speaking, these things also do not
make people less likely to work hard and contribute.
All this turmoil, mind you, was happening on the day before
the anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. Furthermore, Martin Luther King Day
is tomorrow. And if nothing else, the events of this past year show you that
racism is still one of the biggest problems we have in this country, and we
don’t seem to want to deal with it.
But we don’t need to be racist to consider this issue. Can
anything good come out of Nazareth/Haiti/Africa/the Midwest/the South/California//the
Middle East …. the other political party? It’s not always demonization. It can
even feel perfectly affable. We just KNOW who that person is. So we don’t
listen. We can’t see. We don’t try because our minds are made up.
But sometimes we know we have limited vision, and we’re
more like Nathanael. “Come and see,” said Philip. And Nathanael did. With a
mind sufficiently open to change. What he thought he knew was wrong and he,
being without guile/deceit, didn’t hesitate to say so. And thoroughly! “Rabbi,
you are the Son of God!” he exclaimed. “You are the King of Israel!”
I want you to notice something here. What made him change his mind is that HE had
been seen and known and understood when he hadn’t even noticed Jesus nearby.
“When
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an
Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get
to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called
you.”
Being seen and known and
understood can be life-changing.
Jesus may even have heard his remark about Nazareth – but it
didn’t matter. He didn’t dismiss Nathanael as an ignorant so-and-so. He didn’t
even wait to be introduced. And this is wonderful.
God doesn’t wait to be noticed. YHWH comes to Samuel before
Samuel knows him. In Psalm 139, the poet sings, “You have searched me out and
known me… when I was still in my mother’s womb…”
God knows us already –
understands us – calls us by name.
The good news is that we, too, are capable of responding to
the invitation to come and see. We can also extend the invitation like Philip.
We can work to see, hear, and understand others without waiting for them to do
the same, refusing to dismiss people as incorrigible. God did it for us, being
born among seemingly incorrigible humanity and in a poor, hick town to boot. We
can work for those who are constantly facing this kind of dismissal – or worse
– on a day to day basis.
And we, like Samuel, can learn to pray, over and over,
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
“Where are you from?” we ask.
It’s still a good question. Just depends on what we do with
it.
[i] John Cassidy, “A Racist in the Oval Office,” The New Yorker, January 12, 2018 https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trump-shithole-comment-racist-in-the-oval-office
[ii] James Martin SJ, “Father James Martin: Why we should
welcome people from countries Trump just insulted,” America Magazine, https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/01/12/father-james-martin-why-we-should-welcome-people-countries-trump-just
[iii] Wyatt Massey, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/01/12/why-president-trumps-comments-dont-reflect-haiti-i-have-come-know via @americamag
