Can Anything Good Come Out Of Nazareth?

Welcome to Making Waves! This blog will be used as a resource for any of you that wish to continue diving into the Word after the sermon on Sunday morning, or for those unable to attend Pelham UMC that wish to still read the sermon given on the previous Sunday. 

My name is Nathan Webb, and as many of you know, I’m the new pastor at Pelham. I understand that the last year has been of a whirlwind, and I assure you, I totally understand. We are likely to ALL have had a whirlwind year, but I want to invite you during this time to just… relax. Just let go and take a deep breath, because right now we are in the presence of an incredible God. Now, I’d like to tell y’all a little bit about the last whirlwind year of my life, and maybe a bit of what lead up to it. But, before we get into that, let’s dive into the Word. The passage below is selected from the NSRV, and it should be on your bulletins for you to follow along. We’re picking up in the Gospel of John, just at the start of Jesus’ ministry, as he is gathering his disciples. We’ll start with verse 43.

            “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.  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.” 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.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

                                                                                                            - John 1:43-51

Philip encouraging Nathanael (Bartholomew) to "Come and see!"

Will you pray with me?

Lord, I ask that these words and the meditations of our hearts together be glorified in Your presence, for You are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

As I said earlier, I really could not be more excited to be joining in with the ministry here at Pelham. I’m coming to Pelham from a little town over on the other side of Winston-Salem known as Advance. It sits in the bounds of Davie County where there is only one high school, which both my fiancée and myself graduated from back in 2012. Like I said, only one high school, so I’m very familiar with the small town feel of Pelham, and I’m loving it already. If I haven’t mentioned it already, I am engaged, my fiancée Logan and I met in middle school and started dating at the end of our time in high school. We started dating at perhaps the worst possible time, because we only had a few months under our belt before we parted ways for college, beginning our future four years of long-distance dating. She attended Wingate University and I attended High Point University, which adds up to about 2 hours one way, and would explain the 250,000 miles on my odometer. I graduated last December with a degree in Communications with a focus in Electronic Communication. This means that I barely passed Calculus but I know every nook and cranny of how to use Facebook, making me about on the level of a modern day 8^th grader. Logan graduated just a few weeks ago with a degree in elementary education meaning that, if we hadn’t been two hours apart, I could have done better in Calculus. Not saying that it’s her fault, just saying she is way smarter than I am.

As far as work goes, I most recently had the opportunity to meet some incredible youth at Clemmons UMC. I worked there for a couple years and really enjoyed getting to be silly with them for a while, but don’t worry, I won’t make you guys get up and play any youth games. No pushing bananas through panty hose for you all. True story. Before working at Clemmons, I was the contemporary worship leader at New Story Church for a couple years.

If you were to ask Logan, she would tell you that I have double the amount of hobbies I have time for; if you were to ask me, I would tell you that I have half the amount of time for the amount of hobbies I want to pursue. I’ve always been the guy that has to have something in his hands. As soon as I put down one thing, I have to pick up another. After discovering that I was hopeless in all things sporty, I turned to the arts in middle school. I loved acting and that eventually led to an interest in choir and eventually musical theatre. That led into high school, where I got the comedic secondary role in every production – musical and straight- that the school put on. Amidst my weekly acting rehearsals, I took up an interest in stand up comedy, yes that’s right, your pastor is an ex-stand up comic. That eventually led to a love in improvisation, just like the show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Then, in addition to my acting rehearsals and stand up comedy performances, I decided I should take on rock music. I learned to play the bass guitar, and formed a Christian rock band in my hometown, which was incredibly fun, despite that we never attracted more than our families to our concerts. In addition to all of those things, I still had school, and don’t forget my nearly every day youth obligations as the president of the church youth council. And that’s just high school, folks. Don’t even get me started on the hobbies of college, if you think high school was busy, Logan will tell you that between my improvisation troupe, a cappella group, my independent music endeavors, media fellows program, two jobs and my incredibly time-consuming degree, my body was stretched twenty different directions.

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, first off, like many of us, I love to talk about myself. But secondly, I want to tell you guys that we are all different and we all have different interests and passions. We all wear a lot of hats. Some of us watch the Super Bowl for the game; others of us love the commercials. But regardless of the many factors of this, God calls ALL of us to be ministers. Not just me. I may be a pastor who is appointed to serve the sacraments, and preserve the order of the church, but I am not the only one called to minister the people.

There is one more reason that I tell you all this, it’s because of this passage from the Bible posted above. I love this passage. Not just because the focus character is named Nathanael, though that is an added bonus, but because of the message that it gives to those of us who are called, -cough cough- meaning all of us.

Now, when we read scripture, we can interpret it several different ways. Since I have a background in theatre and the arts, I like to break it down like play, with setting and characters. This instance, in particular, we have three major characters: Nathanael, Philip, and Jesus. But I think there is also an important abstract character in this passage: Nazareth. The two characters we’re going to be talking about this morning are Nathanael and Nazareth. In some instances, I think of myself as Nazareth. Now I know what you’re thinking…. Nathan, it’s the first Sunday at a new church and you’re already getting metaphysical by comparing yourself to a city. Well, hear me out, in this story, what is Nazareth? Nazareth is the package that Jesus is delivered in. Just like the irony of being born in a stable, the Savior came in the strangest form. He came from the womb of a carpenters wife, he came from a broken people, he came in the shell of a sinful human, though he himself was not broken, nor sinful. Well, in the same way, I am the package that is delivering the holy Word. I am the twisted, mangled, sinful form through which Christ has His story told.

I think that this is the way that God wants us to view this story. He wants us to see ourselves as the thing that can bring Christ into the world. But, it’s never that easy, is it? We have a temptation to want to compare ourselves to some of the other characters. Now, during the time where I’m not comparing myself to a city, I take the place of Nathanael. 

I love Nathanael in this passage. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Eugene Peterson, who wrote a modernized translation of the Bible known as, “The Message,” changes Nathanael words to say, “Are you kidding me? Nazareth?” We can all feel cynical when it comes to this call. Are you kidding me? Are you joking God? What GOOD can come out of a 22 year old kid? What good can possibly come out of some kid from Advance? Much like Moses in the Old Testament in Exodus 4:10-12, I cry out to God, NO! I’m not good enough for His work. I don’t speak well. I’m painfully introverted. Were it not for Logan, I’d never leave my home watching YouTube videos and playing video games. God can’t possibly want to use me.

We can all put ourselves in those shoes, can’t we? Some of you may have read for the first time today that God is calling YOU to be a minister. He may not be calling you to a life in the pulpit, but He IS moving through you as a form of ministry. Maybe it’s your philanthropy, maybe it’s your kindness to others, your love for the homeless, I may not even know you personally, but I know that God is working through you.

We are all different. I know that not everyone in here is a singer, or plays guitar, or was in a Christian rock band. We all have our own call and passions, but there is one thing that unites us in our faith: the love and grace of Jesus Christ. It is in the community of Christ that we find our foundation and our roots of our ministry together.

Please feel free to post any comments for discussion, I will try my best to respond. If you have any private needs or prayers concerns, feel free to contact me personally at nathan@makingwaves.cc.

Blessings!