From Vicar Linneman

November Newsletter
Vicar Tyler Linneman

Can Anything Good Come From Nazareth?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” asks Nathanael the apostle.  And this is a good question.  Nazareth was a tiny village for most of its history, likely not existing as such until three centuries before Christ’s birth.  It was a farming town, quite secluded from anything major but positioned well in the region to grow various fruits and flowers.  There was no great Jewish school from which a great teacher would come, no famed rabbis until, of course, Jesus, and it was positioned along no great trading routes, meaning there was likely no wealthy people living here.  It was merely a humble town of farmers and laborers.

Besides all of this, Nazareth was well north of the Jewish homeland around Jerusalem, within the ancestral territory of the tribe of Zebulun.  This would have been the extreme northern border of what we call the promised land, and thus the first among the tribes to fall to the invading Assyrians who carried off the 10 tribes of Israel who never returned from exile.  Anybody who was anybody in the Jewish religion would come from somewhere around Jerusalem or one of the great cities in the south, which survived the Assyrians and returned from their own exile to restore their nation.  This was the home of the rabbis and priests, the great religious leaders.  Nobody would expect someone from a farming town in the extreme north of the territory to be anything worthwhile.

And yet, it was in this same farming town that the angel Gabriel found the virgin Mary, and announced to her that she would be the mother of the very Son of Man promised long ago.  It was in this same farming town that Joseph would be betrothed to the virgin Mary, and where they would return some years later from Egypt.  It was in this small farming town that we find Jesus, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, quietly learning the Jewish faith from his teachers at the synagogue, and quietly learning the craft of carpentry from his father, Joseph.  This was the setting for the boyhood of the Almighty God who took on flesh where he grew in wisdom and stature. (Lk 2:52)

​In the grand scheme of things, Nazareth was nothing special.  It was not a town which anybody would expect to find anything noteworthy, and so Nathanael’s question is understandable.  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  Well, yes, as it turns out.  In fact, the only truly good man to ever live came from Nazareth, and now this small farming town is forever immortalized in the name of the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth.  This is how we should expect Jesus to work; we have seen him choose what is insignificant in the world time and time again, in order to make his name great.  He chooses a simple church in another farming town in Iowa to establish himself and proclaim his Gospel that hearts wounded by sin may be healed. In this little farming town of Hampton, Christ has taken up residence among his people, and through simple means, works amazing miracles in Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and through the Word preached for the forgiveness of sins to all who believe.