1.14.24       John 1:43-51     

            Can anything good come out of the little village of Nazareth? Apparently so.  A Messiah we call Jesus.

Can anything good come out of rural Hardin County, Kentucky? Apparently so.  A president–Abraham Lincoln.

Can anything good come out of tiny Oakville, Alabama?  Apparently so.  A multiple Olympic gold medal winner–Jesse Owens.

Let’s be truthful.  Stereotypes, positive and negative, exist in our heads and in our hearts.  They can be hard to get rid of.  Where do they come from? Often we grow up with them, unconsciously patterning our perceptions of others after those around us who use harmful labels for people—thug, white trash, the “N” word, geek, red neck, queer. We can adopt stereotypes through personal experiences, making assumptions about one person and then lumping together people like him by categories like well-educated or those with little schooling, poor, rich, brown, Black, white, politician, doctor, lawyer, minister. I notice that   when we start to refer to people we think are not like us as THEY, we have put them in a box, lumped a group of people together and separated ourselves from them.  Consciously or unconsciously, us and them becomes us vs. them on many levels.

In this account in the gospel of John, we learn some things about the first disciples. We learn that Philip, one of the first to follow Jesus,  is clearly an evangelist, bringing his neighbor friend, Nathanael from Cana, to meet Jesus. Philip is sure that Jesus is the Messiah that Moses and the prophets spoke of.  When Nathanael is skeptical, he insists that Nathanael not just take his word for it, but that he come and see for himself.  We learn that Nathanael clearly has a strong opinion about people from Nazareth. He clearly looks down at the small village in a way that someone from the big city still may perceive someone from a small town today. He has labeled Nazareth as a nothing place that would obviously not be the home of the One they have been waiting for, the one spoken of by Moses and the prophets. Obviously not. He (and others) have expected the Messiah to come from someplace like Jerusalem, the seat of economic and political power, the Washington, DC or the New York of his day.  So he is both scornful and skeptical about this guy Jesus, who is from Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Stereotypes cause harm to individuals and damage to a community. What kind of a box did people put Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in?  In the North, some scorned him as a Southerner—immediately a strike against him.  Whites in the North, South, East and West openly discriminated against him and any other Black face, viewed any Black person with distaste, and dismissed King’s words and actions as fruitless, feeling threatened.  The civil rights movement put the racial divide in our country front and center. And discrimination, distaste, dismissal led to violence. The powers that be in too many places could not see King as worth paying attention to, and certainly not as someone good. Too much of these stereotypes exist today, even in the church.

Can anything (or anyone) good, benevolent, useful, worth paying attention to come from Nazareth?  I like the phrase that Jan Schnell Rippentrop, a homiletics professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, uses in her commentary on this passage:  she says something snapped into focus for Nathanael in his encounter with Jesus.  He basically does a 180 from his negative stereotype of people from Nazareth to proclaiming Jesus as Rabbi (a teacher), the Son of God (someone with a divine task) and the King of Israel (a political leader)!

What happened?  When he came to see Jesus at Philip’s invitation, Jesus praises him and compliments him as an Israelite through and through, with no deceit, no trickery.  Jesus identifies Nathanael as a genuine Israelite, a true follower of God even though they had never met! His words call up the story found in the book of Genesis about Jacob, who was known as a deceitful man, tricking his brother Esau into giving away his birthright and stealing Esau’s blessing from their dad, Isaac.  You are not like Jacob, Jesus is saying. And Nathanael’s response of amazement is reminiscent of the response of Jacob after his vivid dream about angels ascending and descending on a ladder into heaven: “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it!” Nathanael must have been thinking the same thing.

It is an epiphany.  One of those light bulb experiences. A blasting apart of the stereotype Nathanael had carried deep within. Something snapped into focus. He got it because Jesus got him.

     The heavy burden of his public ministry weighed on Martin Luther King. Perhaps you have heard about the time when he sat late at night at his kitchen table, tired, despairing and losing hope in the fight for civil rights.    In his book, Stride Toward Freedom, King writes:                                   “I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.
            The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
            At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.”                                                                         It is an epiphany. A sudden about face, a renewed determination not to give up, for he was not going to be doing any of this without God at his side. Something snapped into focus for King that night.

            Both Nathanael and Martin Luther King, and Jacob, for that matter, found themselves transformed, changed by a direct encounter with God. In Kint’s case, he received strength and certainty to move forward. Nathanael’s stereotypes no longer worked.  The labels he had previously used for people from small towns had to be thrown out the window.

            How would it be if God confronted us directly about our stereotypes, our assumptions, our judgements?  If we suddenly could see that the labels we use for people still exist? What would Jesus have to say to you for that to happen?  What would Jesus have to say to me? 

“I already know you”, Jesus said to Nathanael.  Surprised, Nathanael did not see how that could be.  “I already know you”, God said to Martin Luther King in the middle of the night.  Shaken, King could not get the message out of his mind.  “I already know you”, the Spirit says to each of us.  Truly, this is the basic message of the sacrament of baptism. When we baptize Ocean Matute a little later this morning, we are proclaiming that she already belongs to God, that Jesus already knows her, that the Holy Spirit is in her.  It is this message of belonging to the body of Christ which has the power to transform us, to change us, maybe to snap something into focus.

It is hard to erase stereotypes.  It is hard not to label people.  Maybe you just can’t do it. But you certainly can catch yourself the next time you pass a person who appears to be without stable housing– instead of thinking, “Why doesn’t that homeless guy just get a job?”, remember that labeling people “homeless” is equal to calling them a name, using their housing status as a way to describe them as if that is all they are, “the homeless”.  You certainly can catch yourself the next time you work or volunteer with a person of another racial or cultural background—instead of making an assumption about him or her, find a way to get to know the person.  You certainly can catch yourself when you start to laugh at a joke which puts down and stereotypes people who live in the holler or people who live in the penthouse or young people whose pants are sagging or persons who love someone of the same gender.

Jesus told Nathanael—you are surprised that I already know you so well?  You will see greater things. You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (referring to himself).  “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder…. Every rung goes higher, higher…”  Way back in Genesis, Jacob had his own epiphany.  Now we understand the ladder in the old, Negro spiritual as Christ himself, saying, “Come closer, follow me.”  Apparently, Nathanael did, for he is mentioned again at the very end of this gospel as being among the seven disciples who met Jesus at the seashore after the resurrection.  Interestingly, he is mentioned nowhere else in the scriptures.  

Don’t be surprised.  Jesus knows you well. Jesus makes transformation possible.  For each of us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.