In the Gospels, Philip was an early disciple called by Jesus. “Certain Greeks” who sought contact with Jesus had singled him out as an intermediary.
He was from Bethsaida and was honorably mentioned in the account of the feeding of the five thousand followers of Christ in Luke 9:10-17. Those followers of Jesus came unseasonably. He gave them what they sought. He told them of the kingdom of God; healed those with needs. Christ fed five thousand folks with only five loaves of bread and two fish. The blessing of Christ makes a little go a great way.
Nathanael (i.e. Bartholomew) was from Cana of Galilee, a chap who had been brought to Jesus by Phillip because Jesus knew how dedicated, committed and sincere he was.
“Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’
“Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’
“Nathanael said to Him, ‘How do you know me?’
“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’
“Nathanael answered Him, ‘Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.’” John 1:45-49
Today, modern Nazareth in northern Israel is home to over 60,000 people. It is over an hour and a half drive north of Jerusalem. It is the capital of the northern region of the country. The majority of Nazarenes are Israeli Arabs, about 35 to 40 percent of whom are Christians; the rest are Muslims. It is the largest Arab city in Israel and is situated among the southern ridges of the Lebanon Mountains, on the steep slope of a hill, about 14 miles from the Sea of Galilee and about six miles west of Mount Tabor. The modern city is downhill from the biblical site.
Our Lord grew up in there with his mother Mary, making the city one of several popular Christian pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.
Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, or for that matter in any other ancient Jewish sources. In 1961, however, an early Hebrew inscription was found in Caesarea that mentions Nazareth.
In Jesus’ time, Nazareth would have had a population of around 500, about the population of Irvington today. Indeed the New Testament depicts Nazareth as an obscure remote, unpopular village.
That said, the New Testament does report that Nazareth was the home of Mary and Joseph (Luke 1:26), the site of the Annunciation (the announcement to Mary that she would give birth to our Savior). It is the town in which Jesus grew up. Matthew 2:23, 13:54; Luke 2:4, 2:51, 4:16. Nazareth is mentioned 17 times in the New Testament. Eventually Jesus left there to mature his ministry. He was always known to some as a “prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Matthew 21:11.
Christians inhabited Nazareth by the fourth century, if not earlier, but pilgrims were not much interested in the site initially. It was not until the sixth century, when legends about Mary’s life in Nazareth began to circulate, that Nazareth became a Christian pilgrim destination.
The first papal encyclicals of the Roman Church were the perpetual virginity of Mary and following that, acceptance of papal infallibility, also called ultramontanism. Both would have fostered renewed interest in Nazareth.
When Hazel and I visited Greece and Turkey last spring we toured the alleged site of the home to which John the Apostle had taken Mary to live out her days. You know how when something larger than life takes hold of you, you get goose bumps, and a chill? Something super natural landed upon us. One best believe that any place, anything associated with his mother would be such a special place, a special moment in time. Though I have never been there, I suspect that the home place of Mary, when visited by the angel, would be a tender, most emotional environment. I believe many good things; many good people come from everywhere.
How many ways do we give in to our prejudices? Do we ever exercise our prejudices by questioning the birthplace or birthright of others?
Please remember that the New Testament offers that in Christ there is an absolute unity of persons or ethnicities. Read Galatians 3:28 again: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Another moment in the life of Jesus speaks of how we see Jesus in our contemporary days. He put it simply enough when he displayed his countenance as the poor, downtrodden, and imprisoned. These are not people or environments to which we are normally drawn.
God has already proved to us that he likes rainbows.
Let’s go about this week asking “When did we see you like that, Lord?”
As with the implied shame of Nazareth, we need to cleanse our eyes of the prejudice of place, our hearts of “not like me,” and finally our calendars of “why now Lord?”
