Hometown

Matthew 2:19-23

Like many people I run into difficulty when people ask me, "Where are you from?" Do I tell them which city I live in? The city I was born in? The city I spent the most time in? The city I liked the most? I have lived too many places to have a hometown. So what I love about Jesus is that he had a hometown. He was Jesus of Nazareth--not Jesus, of Jerusalem, or Jesus of the Decapolis--but Jesus OF Nazareth.

God chose a specific place, a specific time, and a specific city to send his son to. It's one of those hard-to-wrap-my-mind-around concepts--the omnipresent God chose a location. Eternity chose time.

Specificity is not something we expect of God. We reason that God is big, so he must do big things. He must work in trends, populations, statistics. For example, we feel reasonably happy if church conference had several thousand in attendance (that's awe-inspiring), but rarely get goosebumps over a conversation between friends that ends with prayer.

So God's act of saving the world comes as a jolt. He doesn't start with a large crowd. He starts with a baby. This might be the mustard seed that Matthew talked about that becomes a great tree. God starts small. He says, "I've given you my Son in this child"--A child who will skin his knee, a child who will have nightmares, a child who will get sick, a child who will be vulnerable to life's frailties.

Yes, God could have come with a large bang. He could have had an angel air show. He could have put on some heavenly fireworks. But instead he sent the one who had "no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2). There was "nothing in his appearance that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2). "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3).

This baby turned obedient son turned a faithful young man turned teacher turned a dying "criminal"--"took our infirmities and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4).

I'm so grateful that God knew his Son would need a hometown. That his Son would teach
his followers and they would teach others and those others still others. I sometimes shiver with awe to think that the story of my own walk with God comes from a disciple who sat at Jesus feet then taught another disciple and that disciple yet another disciple. Every Christian today can trace (if they had the records) the story of Christ in their lives back to those first twelve.

From outside appearances Jesus's life was just one human life--just another name to be recorded in a census, just another male to pay taxes to the Romans. But the incarnation reverberates all the way down to today.

Thank you Father for sending your son. Thank you Jesus for coming. Thank you Holy Spirit for fanning this story and letting the fire never die out.