"Nothing Good Comes From Nazareth"

Mk 6: 1-6
Jn 1: 23-26

I can't stop thinking about that little line, in the apostles recruting exchange in John 1 (and yes, I had to search up where it occurs).  "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" as a reason not to bother going to see the new hotshot potential Messiah your brother is enthralled by.

This reflection also owes a great deal to the new Queer Eye update put on by Netflix.  I'm usually decidedly blase about make-over shows and I confess to being worried about stereotyping when I started watching on a friend's recommendation.  But what I wasn't expecting was a string of thoroughly loving affirmations being thrown from a crew of lifestyle specialists who seem to genuinely and sincerely want to figure out why the men featured in each episode don't love themselves and how to make little changes to their lives to make them feel like they deserve good things.  While not shying away from conversations that arise out of devout religious clients or cops who wear "Make America Great Again" caps and think a funny opening to the relationship is pulling over the black driver of the car on trumped up offense before the reveal.

But aside from gimmicks and outward transformations and a few really healing, if mostly surface-level, conversations across cultural lines, what struck me again and again was that the consultants were each determined to say over and over again to people, "No, you do deserve good things.  You are love-able.  In fact, we love you and want these good things for you."

And how ingrained it was in some of the clients that they didn't and weren't.  That what they did wasn't all that important even when they were doing objectively awesome things with their lives.

How easy it is to get stuck into this little story of "You can't fix ugly" or "I'll lose everything if I act too gay" or "My life will never get better and that's fine."

And when I remembered that Nazareth has the reputation that even an apostle could barely get over, I wondered how much that played into their befuddled confusion that a hometown boy could possibly be the Son of God or even a more run of the mill prophet.

How many people in Nazareth consciously and deep in their subconscious where they couldn't touch it had accepted the idea that their town and therefore they and all their fellows were trash from which no good would ever come.  And how impossible it can feel to break out of that.  Especially when it's presented as someone remarkable coming out of their "shit town" after all.  Because that's a challenge, not just to your way of seeing yourself, but now suddenly it's your fault again that everything is terrible.

How much easier it is to accept that you are not terrible after all -- and even then, it doesn't come easy.  To see that someone else came out of the same situation wonderful?

But Jesus came, amongst so many other things, to tell us that our stories are never done.  Mary Magdalene's seven demons weren't the end or even the defining moment of her life's story, however easy it would be to get trapped in something like that.  Peter himself tells Jesus to leave him, a sinner and ordinary fisherman, to tend his boat and his family and his unremarkable life.  James and John and their father can't believe they're asked to step away from the family business.

It's the kindest and the hardest thing you can say to someone.  "No, something good can come out of Nazareth.  And it can be you, if you want."  They won't always thank you for it either.  That's the reality show deception. 

But it's good anyway.  It's needed anyway.  Even if they drive you out of town, like Ezekiel and Jesus himself.  Because not everyone is ready to listen, but even those who don't have ears to hear might well remember someday.  Sometimes we plant the seeds others will harvest.