“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”[1] Nathanael asks. The Gospel exposes his bias which was probably more widespread: The Messiah can’t surely come from Nazareth. Nazareth was a “tiny, off-the-beaten-path hamlet” in first century Palestine.[2]

Nathanael’s prejudice was against the people who lived there, the people who lived on the outskirts of the bigger cities around it. If you lived in Nazareth, you lived on the margins of society.

Therefore, those people couldn’t be that special as to warrant everyone else’s attention. What have those people accomplished, anyway? What worth or value, if any, did they bring to the table?

We are like Nathanael. And like him, we need to confess our own biases which contribute to a spiritual blindness. We are like young Samuel, when we find God or hear God’s voice in the places and people we didn’t initially expect.[3]

So, we must turn our attention elsewhere, in the least expected places, the small, seemingly insignificant, the taken-for-granted, forgotten places in our lives. We have to get off the beaten track of our prejudice. To do that, we need first to open our hearts to God’s love.

Last week I said the Incarnation—the coming together of the divine and physical—means, from our human perspective at least, that God loves physicality. And, in Jesus, God embraced our humanity and the fullness thereof.

But what about when our humanity is not perfect—When we’re small in the eyes of the world, when it is wounded, when we are hurt, when our physical bodies break down, become weak, and succumb to the normal ageing process with more and more limitations?

Is God still revealed in the seeming insignificance of our lives? Can we believe that to be true? Can we believe, like Samuel did after he got over his initial misconception, that God’s voice would be heard within himself—within his own youth, his inexperience, his naivety?

In the deserts of Arizona, there’s a cactus that grows there—the saguaro cactus. Apparently, only one saguaro cactus seed out of a quarter million seeds ever makes it even to early maturity, and few reach full growth. It is truly a miracle plant. At the same time, the saguaro seed is a good example that most of nature seems to accept loss, inefficiency, and short life spans as simply the cost of living.[4]

“How can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Have we forgotten to look there, in the wilderness places of our lives and the world, to find Jesus? Have we forgotten to value the places of our own vulnerability, pain, grief and suffering as seeding and breeding grounds for the birth and growth of God’s love and faithfulness?

I read last week about a seed bank that’s buried deep in a mountain in Norway. The Seed Vault safeguards duplicates of over one million seed samples from almost every country in the world, with room for millions more. It contains varieties of seeds from plants to trees, to fruits and vegetables. The purpose is to have backup collections to secure the foundation of humanity’s future food supply. “It’s the world’s reserve in case of mass destruction.”[5]

Almost every country in the world has made a deposit. But only one has ever made a withdrawal, and that only recently: Syria. The war that started over a decade ago now has so devastated the land that they needed to ask the world’s reserve for some seeds to start over again.

It’s fascinating and horrific at the same time, to even consider that a seed bank is needed, that we need a back-up plan to safeguard ourselves against what we’ve forgotten— “how dependent we are on each other, and the planet.”[6]

But imagine also, walking through row after row of all those seeds—the magnitude of all that potential. That mountain vault might as well be holding bars of gold. “Seeds are the precursor to currency. They are the original coin.”[7] So, I feel inescapable hope despite the Vault’s grim justification.

The humanity God chose to enter, embrace and be immersed in fully is not perfect, is not efficient, is not attractive. And yet, it is by facing the grim realities of our lives that we find hope. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Absolutely, yes!

American writer and theologian Brian McLaren describes one who does the will of God, as “somebody who [first] goes deep into themselves to hear the message that’s being birthed in the midst of their pain and their burdens and their frustrations and their sufferings and their questions and their perplexity and their disillusionments. In the foment and ferment of that inner journey, something begins to emerge …”[8]

Meister Eckhart is claimed to have said: “You can only spend in good works that what you have earned in contemplation.”[9] Right action emerges from spending time listening to the still, small voice of God echoing in the chambers of our hearts.

One of the signs of Spring, still months away, is the sound of the squawking Canadian Geese making their return to the North. You may or may not find the prospect of squawking Canadian Geese appearing again in your neighbourhood park particularly hopeful.

But think of the reverse, when they get in their ‘V’ formation in the late Fall of each year to begin their long journey South. What trust they demonstrate by all their efforts to fly thousands of kilometres!

Look at the geese of the sky in the Fall time of year: “They neither worry nor are anxious about the winter warning of their life. For they know within their deepest selves that their journey will take them to a place of shelter, of comfort, of nourishment, a place where winter harshness cannot reach them. See how they fly, winging homeward with sureness, with trust in their hearts’ instinct.”

Joyce Rupp so profoundly paraphrased one of Jesus’ well-known sermons to his disciples; she continues—

“If these geese, who have not the faith and grace of human hearts, can follow the mystery and secrets of their deepest selves, cannot you, my loved and chosen ones, you whom I care for as my very own, cannot you be in touch with the mystery of your hearts? Cannot you trust in me to guide you on your journey of life? For I have promised to give you rest in seasons of tiredness, comfort in seasons of sorrow, peace in seasons of distress, strength in seasons of great weakness. Trust in me. Do not be afraid. I am with you. I will be your peace.”[10]

So, at the beginning of our New Year’s journey let’s commit to a path that will seek God in the unexpected, small places within. And let’s trust that doing so will eventually lead us home to a place of hope, healing and new beginnings.

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[1] John 1:46

[2] “It was just a tiny, little hamlet” – British-Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre explains

[3] 1 Samuel 3:1-10

[4] Richard Rohr, “A Free ‘Yes’ in Adversity”, Radical Resilience (Center for Action and Contemplation: Daily Meditations), January 2, 2024.

[5] Svalbard Global Seed Vault; Meggan Watterson, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet, 2^nd Edition (New York: Hay House, Inc., 2021), p.6

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Brian McLaren, “Jesus as Prophet” The Prophetic Path – Summary (Center for Action and Contemplation: Daily Meditations), December 27, 2023. Emphasis mine.

[9] Cited in Douglas V. Steere, “Don’t Forget Those Leather Gloves,” in Common Ground: Essays in Honor of Howard Thurman on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday […], ed. Samuel Lucius Gandy (Washington, DC: Hoffman Press, 1976), iii.

[10] Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes: A Spiritual Companion Through Life’s Losses and Sorrows (Notre Dame Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2009), p.134. She paraphrases Matthew 6:25-34.