Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

We all have been called to offer the invitation and also be the one to receive it. 

"Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 

During the daily prayer we offer at our church, this was the reading and the question we set out to ponder. It comes from the podcast: pray-as-you-go.org which was created by the Jesuits of Britain.

The morning's passage is from John 1:45-51 which I invite you to read. It is here that Jesus is gathering his disciples. They are walking through Galilee when they find Philip, who then runs to tell his friend Nathaniel who'd been asleep under a tree.

Having been awoken by the shear joy beaming from his friend, Nathaniel ask a great, albeit funny, question. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth”? 

Because Jesus comes from the wrong town Nathanael is tempted to dismiss him as a nobody.  And so the narrator asks us to ponder, "Do I fail to recognize God in people because of where they come from, how they speak, what they look like?"

Take a moment to think about those people who seem invisible to our eye because they are not like you or me. Think about what it might feel like if you knew that they too thought that way about you.

Now think about this phrase: "Come and see." This is a powerful invitation to hospitality, love, forgiveness and grace. Not only have we all been called to offer the invitation, but to also be the one to receive it. 

When we forget to see Jesus in the all the people we pass in the busyness of life, do we also forget to hear the invitation as well?