There is an interesting dialog happening between two people in the Bible. One by the name of Phillip who was a follower of Christ and one by the name of Nathanael. Phillip seems to have come in contact with Christ and is a believer. Phillip does what all good friends do, he tells his friend about the Messiah called Jesus of Nazareth. I have heard about Nazareth and from the viticrat language used, we say, “Can anything good come from Nazareth” . It is our way of justifying living like a sewer rat. I have always hated talk like that. People who sit and romance about food stamps and government cheese like that stuff was “the bomb”. I have even heard people say, that they would rather live in the ghetto than in the suburbs because the people are more real. I go home and laugh about that. Nazareth was not comely because of its location. The Bible states that it is despised because of its goodness. It just was not a good place to be from. There was a lot of wickedness in Nazareth. This is the place where Jesus was almost thrown from a cliff. It is the place where he had become so common as a carpenter’s son, that he lost relevance as a Messiah. He says that a prophet is without honor in his own home. Take your briefcase and go twenty miles out of town and you will be a hero. I remember my sojourn away from my “so called “ home. I realize, thoroughly that it was the leaving that made me special. I earned awards and degrees and ordinations and titles all to come back home and be belittled because I was not married. There is really no place like home. Can anything good come from Nazareth? That is a question that came not to deceive for Christ told him, that in him was no guile. Guile is deception. What you see is what you get. There was no reason to fake the funk. Nathanael was not a “yes man” grinning like a Cheshire cat and then slinking off to corners to finish his conversation. What he felt about Nazareth was a plain as the tag on your shirt. There was no pretense. What I like about Christ is that he answers Nathanael who wanted to know how he knew him. Christ said, that he saw him under the fig tree before Phillip called him. Christ saw him. Christ was looking for him on the horizon out of all the people he could have seen, he saw Nathanael. The gift given him for his candor was an open heaven. An open heaven is free access to things in the heavenly realm. Nathanael received the gift of sight to see the angels ascending and descending. He got a chance to see what no one else would see. All this for daring to be honest about the way he felt.
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