Where are you from?

The barn at the center of my family's farm.

Genesis 1:26-27; 31a

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in [God’s] own image, in the image of God, [God] created them; male and female [God] created them.

³¹ God saw all that [God] had made, and it was very good.

John 1:35-46

³⁵ The next day John was standing again with two of his disciples. ³⁶ When he saw Jesus walking along he said, “Look! The Lamb of God!” ³⁷ The two disciples heard what he said, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸ When Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, “What are you looking for?”

They said, “Rabbi (which is translated Teacher), where are you staying?”

³⁹ He replied, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.

⁴⁰ One of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. ⁴¹ He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Christ ). ⁴² He led him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

⁴³ The next day Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and he found Philip.

Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” 

⁴⁴ Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter.

⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶ Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”

Philip said, “Come and see.”

When I was 19 I met a guy named Andrew. I was working in a robotics shop in Bessemer, AL that built robots for the Mercedes plant in nearby. It was my first real, 40-hour work-week job. The shop got hot during the summer, so my shift started at 5:00am, and          those early mornings were rough. The mix of early mornings, hot weather, and the competitive bravado in a shop full of men working on machines led to some pretty heated exchanges between the employees and the management. A month before my contract was set to expire and I was supposed to move back to Tuscaloosa for college, the managers brought in a couple of folks from our parent company in Michigan to help us catch up on a work order from Mercedes. One of them was Andrew

Andrew was a big guy, at least 6’4”, muscular, and covered in tattoos. He shaved his head to deal with the Alabama summer heat a few days after starting his contract at the shop, which made him look even tougher. But Andrew had a gentle soul. A week after he started working with us he approached me at lunch.

“You’re a believer aren’t you?” he asked.

The question took me a little off-guard. Religion was not something that got much discussion time in the shop. I was the only employee in the shop that didn’t work 60+ hours each week. Everyone else worked 7 days a week to keep up with the workload and get over-time pay. So it was obvious no one else had the opportunity to spend much time at church or with a spiritual community.

“Yeah, my dad’s a pastor and I help lead worship at church.” I told him.

“Nah, I don’t mean you go to church. I mean you BELIEVE and that forms who you are.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. I try to treat people well and don’t party too much for the most part.”

“Oh come on, it’s more than that. You live like people matter, like you love the people around you.”

I was floored. When most people asked me if I was a believer or a Christian they were asking if I went to church on Sundays. Andrew was asking me if the love of God was essential to who I was.

The interaction with Andrew that stuck with me the most over the years came on my last day of working at the shop. A foreman from our parent company had been brought in to oversee the work in the shop a couple of weeks earlier; another tough guy. Except this tough guy needed everyone to know he was tough. He was disrespectful, belittling, and often yelled obscene insults if he didn’t like something about your work. I had been fantasizing about just what I would say to this jerk on my last day. I was prepared to really let him have it. I would throw those insults and obscenities right back at him. He was going to feel small, like he tried to make us feel each day. But Andrew pulled me aside in the shop about halfway through the day.

“So you’re gonna talk to Bill at the end of the day, right?”

“Oh yeah. Finally I can tell him exactly what I think of him.”

“Man, you don’t want to do that.”

“I really, really do.” I laughed.

“I don’t think that’s going to make you feel any better. In fact, I think that’s going to make you feel terrible after you leave. I don’t think that’s who you are at all. I think you are someone who does things as if you are doing them for the Lord. I think if you go in there and chew him out it’s going to break your heart. You’ll carry that with you for a long time. You gotta remember who you are and whose you are.”

Dang it, Andrew was right.

So at the end of the day I shook Bill’s hand, gave the guys in the shop awkward handshakes and hugs, and left without a single cross word to anyone. I’m so thankful that Andrew pulled me aside that day and that he saw something in me I knew was there, but often overlooked. In the two conversations I described, Andrew reminded me who I was and whose I was. He reminded me that no matter the circumstance I was in, I was still the same person who recognizes the dignity of every human being as the child of God they are. He reminded me that one of the most essential parts of who I am is the love I have for God and neighbor. That is who I am, that is whose I am, that is where I’ve come from, and that is the journey I want to continue on; a journey of living with constant love and respect for others, or at least trying my best to live this way.

In our Gospel reading this morning, some of John’s disciples meet Jesus, as they can’t wait to tell their friends about him. One of those friends says “Wait a minute, are you talking about that guy from Nazareth? What good could come from Nazareth?”

To connect with Nathaneal’s feelings about Nazareth, pretend for a moment Jesus went to Auburn or grew up in Mississippi. I mean can anything good come from…ok, I’m joking…kinda…let’s get back on track.

Can anything good come from Nazareth?

For generations, certain modern and reformed theologians have come to the conclusion that humanity is inherently evil. You have almost certainly heard some version of the idea of original sin. Basically the idea is that Adam and Eve committed the first sin by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and all of humanity was cursed with a sinful nature after that act. Some folks might explain it a little differently, and many have written volumes explaining the intricacies and complexities of original sin, but I think summarizing by saying “Adam and Eve sinned and now all of humanity is born with the tendency to sin.”, is good enough for our discussion. Some theologians have gone as far as pushing original sin into a theory of the “total depravity” of humanity, essentially saying humans are so depraved that only a miraculous intervention through the grace of God can make an individual decent. Basically they become Nathaneals as they look at humanity, saying “what good can come from a human being?”

As you can probably tell by the way I have described these ideas about total depravity and original sin, I’m not a fan. I don’t find the arguments compelling in the slightest, and think they do far more harm than good in the hearts of individuals and in building the Kin-dom of God on earth (as if it weren’t already here, all around us and within us, reflected in the eyes of every one of our human siblings and ringing out from all creation; we’ll get to that in a minute). I think if we focus too much on these ideas we forget who we are, whose we are, and where we came from.

In today’s Old Testament reading we read about the creation of humanity.

Genesis 1:26-27; 31a

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in [God’s] own image,

in the image of God [God] created them;

male and female [God] created them.

³¹ God saw all that [God] had made, and it was very good.

Made in God’s image. Every single one of us. And God called this community of humanity “very good”.

                  This is who we are.

                  This is whose we are.

                  This is where we’re from.

So often we get wrapped up in labels and descriptors and characteristics that feel like identities. How could anything good come from where we’ve come from? How could anything good come from who we’ve been told we are by folks around us who seem all too eager to take us down a peg? But these labels and identifiers are not who we are. They are not where we are from, not ultimately. We are the Children of God, made in the image of God, beloved by God, who God has called “very good”, who God has chosen time and again to join in joy and suffering alike.

And so when people ask you Nathaneal’s question, “What good could come from THOSE people from THAT place, with THOSE labels.” Invite them to come and see.

Come and see that The Christ lives within each of us.

Come and see that the very being of God is reflected in the eyes of each of our neighbors.

Come and see that the Love of God has brought us into being and is the very air we breathe, breathed into our lungs by the Creator Godself.

My friend Andrew reminded me almost twenty years ago that the Love of God leads us to treat others with dignity, respect, and love, even when we think they deserve our anger and wrath. He reminded me this is the Life of Christ and the life of a Child of God.

Let us go and live in this way so that others will know who and whose we are; who and where we are from.

We are the children of God.

Amen.

This post was originally written as a sermon for Forest Lake UMC and St. Paul UMC in Tuscaloosa, AL. The sermon was part of a series inspired by series resources from sanctifiedart.org