“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Thus begins Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poem “God’s Grandeur.” Those who know the poem know that Hopkins is not going stay at these grand heights for long. A few lines later, he complicates the picture. This God-charged world is also “seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil.” It is a world that “wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell.”
In a few sentences, Hopkins has taken us from the glorious potentiality of life in a world God called “very good,” to the painful breakdown of relationship (with God, others, ourselves and creation) that accompanies sin. The world as we experience it is still the world God declared good, but it is just as truly a place smudged with the dirt and grime we all (and we each) have brought to it. Like the dirty hands of a toddler on a clean glass door, we have left our mark on the things we touch.
Fortunately, it’s not just our fingerprints that mark the world. Our Maker’s fingerprints also remain. We may not be able to escape the effects of sin, but neither can we totally blot out the fingerprints of God. The heavens still “declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1) as do the creatures God made in his image (Gen. 1:27). To use Kierkegaard’s analogy from Works of Love, we humans are like sheets of fine paper. No matter what we choose to write on the page, the watermark of our creator remains.
Most Christians would affirm these truths. Living in light of them is harder. We may know that all humans have inherent dignity, but we still find ourselves tempted to treat people like some are more worthy of love or are of greater value than others. Similarly, we may give lip service to the fact that God is present everywhere, while largely avoiding the “bleared, smeared” places where his presence may be harder to see. When faced with the complexity and brokenness of the world, looking (or moving) away can seem easier than actually attending to the places and people around us.
Can Anything Good Come from Nazareth?
Perhaps that is why Christians living and serving in small places or places deemed less desirable have a special appreciation for the first chapter of John’s Gospel. Near the beginning of John’s account, we learn that the eternal Word of God “became flesh and dwelt among us,” or, as Eugene Peterson put it in The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” Talk about downward mobility.
But this is not all the first chapter of John reports about where the incarnate Son of God chooses to put down roots. By the end of the chapter, we learn that Jesus is from a town some in the region looked down on. Nathanael doesn’t mince words: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (v. 46).
How does Philip respond to Nathanael’s doubt?
He doesn’t start listing reasons why Nazareth is a great place to live, work and raise a family, or reference an obscure survey that lists Nazareth as one of the top 25 villages in Israel. He simply invites his friend to “come and see” someone whom Philip knows will forever change the way Nathanael thinks about not only Nazareth but all of life.
There is something powerful about the sentiment behind Philip’s three-word invitation. Philip is offering Nathanael an opportunity to look deeper than his initial reaction or inherited assumptions. This is an invitation to take a second look, to attend with new clarity. What Nathanael finds when he takes Philip up on his advice is, to put it in his own words, “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel.”
Come and See—The Power of Attentiveness
As much as this passage is loved by folks like me who call small and looked-down-upon places home, at its heart, this passage is about more than scoring a win for small places. Philip’s invitation is a call to attentiveness to Jesus, not Nazareth. At no point in the exchange do the two men go back to Nazareth. It’s not a reworked view of Nazareth but an encounter with Jesus himself that helps Nathanael see things differently.
I think there is something here for pastors and Christian leaders who serve places that might be perceived in a way similar to how Nathanael perceived Nazareth. As much as many of us value the places we call home and want to highlight them, as pastors our first calling is not to be regional boosters or to change the narrative about our town. We are, first and foremost, people who introduce others to the King.
But here’s the thing: The King’s presence bestows value. If the Spirit of the Living God is present in our villages and neighborhoods, then the reality of this presence bestows value regardless of what the prevailing narrative might be in the wider culture.
Yes, our primary task as pastors and leaders in Christ’s church—no matter where we find ourselves—is to be folks who can winsomely and compellingly extend Philip’s invitation to “come and see” the God who is good, beautiful and true; the God who loves the world and gave himself for it; the God who is the resurrection and the life. But as folks encounter this God, present and still active in the everyday places we call home, this experience has the potential to expand their estimation for what people and places matter and for what the God who is present might do right here, right now.
Helping Others See
As leaders in the church, our role is to help people attend to the God who offers his caring presence to all places and people. This responsibility came home to me in a new way this past Lent as I prepared a sermon on Jesus’ healing of Bartimaeus from Mark 10. As Jesus journeys through Jericho toward Jerusalem, the crowd around Jesus swells. A blind man named Bartimaeus hears the commotion and calls out, hoping against hope that Jesus will heal him. Eventually, the crowd goes beyond simply ignoring Bartimaeus and actually tries to silence him. Other than (blind) Bartimaeus, only Jesus seems to see clearly. As his eyes turn to the blind man, so do those of everyone else. They see what they had failed to see moments before. Jesus’ attentiveness has allowed everyone present to see with new clarity.
If you are serving in an out-of-the-way place or a place that seems “bleared, smeared” and potentially broken beyond repair, you may not be able to reverse your town’s infrastructural collapse, brain drain or reputation, but you can help people see the reality and beauty of the God who is present, the God who stops to truly attend to the needs of those the crowd wants to forget. There is a magnetic winsomeness to God’s beauty that pastors can help others see no matter where they find themselves. It is easy for the crowd to pass by without seeing, without perceiving, but when one person looks with Spirit-inspired attentiveness, he or she makes it easier for others to do the same. As they do, they might see for the first time that everywhere is truly charged with the grandeur of God.
