Surprise! Either people love them or they hate them, but everyone feels some way about surprises.  Some enjoy the feeling of being shocked and surprised, the feeling of the heart skipping a beat or jumping up. Others hate the feeling, hate the shock, hate the fuss.  Same event, two very different feelings about it.

This dynamic is similar to what we encounter when Philip and Nathaniel respectively see and hear of Jesus for the first time. Through His only Son, God revealed His greatest surprise for a world in darkness: Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, has come from above to dispel the darkness. Yet we have two entirely different reactions to this news.

After calling Andrew and his brother, Simon Peter, Jesus found Philip and called him to be His disciple too. “Follow me!” After spending time with Jesus, Philip learned the basics about this man from Galilee and shared the good news about Him with Nathanael. We sense excitement in Philip’s words: “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph!” Philip speaks as if he had found an invaluable treasure and he must tell everyone about it. He receives the news with a joyful heart. Philip sees Jesus through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the eyes of faith. He has literally seen the Light!

What about Nathanael? Through the mouth of Philip, Nathanael hears of Jesus for the first time. But his reaction is entirely different from Philip’s. We see no excitement upon Nathanael’s hearing of the good news, but rather a sense of suspicion about the Galilean Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael’s is not a joyful attitude, but a guarded posture. He receives the news with a cautious disposition at best, and a doubtful one at worst. Unlike Philip, Nathanael sees Jesus through the eyes of the flesh, somewhere in that spectrum between disbelief and unbelief. He is literally in the dark! The Light has yet to overcome it.

The question remains: Can anything good come out of Nazareth in Galilee? The odds seem to be against Galilee. The northern province of Galilee is a land too close to unclean Gentiles and too far from holy Jerusalem in the southern province of Judea. No self-respecting Judean Israelite would look for the Son of God, the King of Israel, in such an unexpected place as Galilee of the Gentiles. Unlike their counterparts in Judea, Galilean Jews speak with strange accents and are known for a less than clean record on following prescribed Jewish laws. Why look for God’s power and wisdom in Galilee? It makes no sense! Is not the great city of Jerusalem the real center of kingly power and rabbinic wisdom? Are not God’s holy temple and priests in the holy city? Are not the learned Pharisees and scribes there, too? In short, are not the clean, pure, and righteous Israelites to be found in Jerusalem? Can God truly work out His salvation from an unlikely place such as Nazareth in Galilee, and among such unlikely folks as Galileans?

God surprises us. We often look for power and wisdom in the wrong place, in the best we humans have to offer, in our holiness, purity, and righteousness. Yet it is in Jesus of Nazareth, the unassuming man from Galilee, that we are called to see the power and the wisdom of God at work in our lives. We are called to fix our eyes not on ourselves, but on Jesus. Not on our holiness, but on Jesus’ holiness. We are reminded that we are not the light. Jesus is the Light of the World.

To the surprised and perplexed, to the cautious and guarded, to those in disbelief or doubt and seeking answers, Jesus appears and invites them to Himself: “Come and see.” God surprises us again and again, inviting us to see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit what mighty deeds He can do in the most unlikely places and among the most unlikely characters. He calls us once again to see the Light, wherever He shines, even in Galilee and among Galileans! When we ask ourselves, like Nathanael, “Can anything good come out of here?” Jesus gently sends us a Philip who invites us on His behalf to “come and see” that the Lord can do great things in and out of lowly Galilee. Through Philip, we are called anew to “come and see” that the love of God in Christ Jesus knows no ethnic, racial, linguistic, tribal, or geographic boundaries.  And by the grace of God, He even uses people just like you to invite others to come and see the Lord.

What would our church look like if we did this?  What would happen if all of you here today were to invite just one person this week to come and see what the Lord is doing?  You believe that Jesus is the Christ and that is good.  Don’t keep it to yourself.

What is the church but a beautiful fellowship of Galileans? A marginal people called out of darkness into the light of the Son. A people once dead raised to new life through faith in God’s Son. Through strangers in our midst, God reminds us that the Church is a bunch of strangers in a foreign land. We are in the world, but not of the world. To the world, we are complete strangers, speaking with a strange accent and walking to a strange beat. We speak the ancient language of Holy Scripture. We initiate people into the Church by sprinkling them with water at our fonts. We eat the body and drink the blood of God’s Son at our altars. Our pastors forgive us our sins. We even love our enemies. And we sing the tunes of strange-sounding hymns, canticles, and songs to worship our Galilean Lord and God. How odd! How surprising! We, too, are strange Galileans.

On this LWML Sunday, we rejoice in Jesus’ calling and invitation to come and see once again what He has graciously done in our lives, His great deeds of salvation on behalf of Galileans like us. Today, we also receive with great thanksgiving and awesome wonder Jesus’ surprising invitation to come and see what He can do and is indeed doing even among strange Galilean neighbors in our midst to extend His kingdom throughout the world. We also ask the Lord Jesus to open our eyes to His surprising opportunities for partnership with brothers and sisters in Christ from different ethnic and language groups in the United State s and abroad, so that together we might invite even more neighbors to meet Jesus, the man from Galilee, our Light and Life.

Can anything good really come out of Nazareth in Galilee? Yes indeed. Jesus, God’s greatest gift to us, has surprisingly come out of lowly Galilee for us and for our salvation. Can God work out His salvation in lowly places and among strangers today? Yes indeed. “Come and see!” Amen.