Lying half way between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee is Nazareth, a large and significant town in Lower Galilee. It is both the largest Muslim and largest Christian city in Israel being home to 65,500 people, mostly Palestinians – many of whom are Christians.

Because of Nazareth’s significance in the New Testament, where the city is described as the childhood home of Jesus, it is today a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical associations and an amazing number of craft shops dealing with olive wood carving.

Upper Nazareth, inhabited since the 1957 Six Day War, is now occupied by 43,100 people, of whom 91% are Jewish. Nazareth has an auto assembly plant, many secondary industries and an enormous tourist business. Between it and the Sea of Galilee lie major agricultural areas.

The Franciscans became guardians of the holy place in 1620, and built a church on this spot in 1730. The town was recaptured from the Turks by the British in 1918. The modern Catholic church building started in 1955 by the Franciscans and opened in 1967, is the largest church building in the whole Middle East. This church, The Church of the Annunciation, is built on a historic site. Here is the grotto and site of the house where Mary first heard the message from the angel that she would conceive and bear a son, and call him Jesus.

Mary was promised in marriage to Joseph the carpenter who was a descendent of King David. In this grotto, Mary heard the angel announce, “Peace be with you. The Lord is with you…” (Luke 1:28 33).

Mary said she was a virgin but was assured that the Spirit of God would rest upon her, and the power of God would be known to her. The Church of the Annunciation commemorates this event.

This modern church stands on the foundations of a crusader-built church built under the direction of Tancred, Norman leader of the First Crusade – who later became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch. It was later destroyed by the Turks in 1291 A.D.

The Crusader church built about 1100 A.D., was built upon the foundations of a large church built by the Empress Helena, the mother of the Christian Emperor of Rome, Constantine. Her church in Nazareth was built in 334 A.D. and destroyed by the Persians in 614 A.D.

This church of Helena was built on the site of an even earlier church marking the place of Mary’s visitation. The village well, known as Mary’s Well, was in use for hundreds of years before Christ. It was the only source of water in the days of Jesus, and today is beneath the altar of the Greek Orthodox Church while outside is the fountain where townspeople and tourists still drink.

Archaeologists in 1969 discovered the remains of two synagogues from the first century. Jesus probably preached and read the scroll from Isaiah in one, and the other became the centre of worship for Christian Jews in the first century.

After fleeing Bethlehem to escape the murderous Herod, Joseph took his young family to Egypt for two years. They returned, not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth. For the next thirty years, this would be the ordinary home of the most extraordinary life ever lived.

The remains of twelve towns from the time of Jesus round the Western shore of the lake indicate that more people lived in the area in the time of Jesus than do today. There were fishermen who caught and salted fish for export; farmers; gatherers of figs, dates, grapes, pomegranates and olives; carpenters; bakers; potters; and weavers.

Yet Nazareth was an insignificant town. Nathaniel expressed a common view when he heard that Jesus came from Nazareth: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46)

The locals knew Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and His younger brothers and sisters (Matt.13:53 59). They had lived there for more than 30 years. Their rejection of His claims to be the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1 2 can be easily understood. Jesus claimed here to be the embodiment of the Spirit of God. (Luke 4:18 19)

The people rejected His claim and forced Him out of town to the nearby cliff where they intended to throw Him down the Mount of Precipitation, but exercising a newfound mastery, Jesus passed through them on His way. “Because they did not have faith, He did not perform many miracles there,” except to heal a few people. Jesus declared, “a prophet is respected everywhere except in His home town and by His own family.” (Luke 4:24)

What do we learn from the life of Jesus spent in Nazareth for those thirty years that can guide our successful living in our city? What is “The Nazareth Principle”?

1. Jesus identified with ordinary people.

“What was he doing all that time from boyhood then to early prime?

Was he then idle, or the less about his Father’s business?”

He was about His father’s business in the ordinary affairs of a workaday world. He was a normal boy, youth and young man. There was nothing extraordinary in any way worth recounting of His life in Nazareth. In the mediaeval period however, some legends were invented to fill in the silent years.

But His silent years were utterly indistinguishable from every other young man in the village. He learnt the language of the people, of the Bible, and of the travelers who came through His village speaking the koine Greek.

In Nazareth Jesus learnt the carpenter’s trade, went to school, played with the other boys in the village. When He was nine years old, men from nearby villages led by a man named Judas revolted against the Romans and refused to pay taxes to Caesar. They were all crucified. Jesus would have seen the one thousand crosses that lined the roads bearing their bodies. That was why Jesus was later asked about rendering taxes to Caesar. He knew the consequences of urging people not to pay their taxes.

When He was aged twelve years, He went up to Jerusalem for the second time to perform His Bar Mitzvah. How the wonders of the Temple in Jerusalem must have awed Him.

Little wonder He was found missing on the return journey, and Mary and Joseph anxiously returned to search for Him, and found Him in the Temple talking with the religious leaders. He used of God a term He used of Joseph: for the first time someone called God, “my Father”.

Jesus grew as a normal young man, obedient to his parents. He was an observant young man learning the details that were later to feature in His parables.

He participated in weddings and funerals, went to the synagogue each Sabbath, talked with the unemployed in the market place, saw the widow putting patches on garments and sweeping out her house looking for a lost coin, laughed about the impatient judge and the neighbours who knocked on the door after midnight wanting some food for late night visitors.

He would speak of the lilies of the field, the sparrows of the air, flocks, herds and crops, of the mustard seed, the different kinds of soils in which farmers sowed, of sun and rain, of bread and fish, clothing and water. His parables were all illustrated from his hometown.

He spoke to ordinary people of ordinary events in ordinary language and “the common people heard Him gladly.”

From all that happened in Nazareth we are expected to live the ordinary life well, among our neighbours, and our religious faith must be expressed through our everyday work and activities. We witness to the change Jesus Christ makes in our lives in ordinary language and by ordinary means.

Not for us is the monastic life cut off from the rest of the world. In the city we are to follow the example of Jesus and be identified as ordinary people, working at ordinary jobs, relating in the most ordinary of ways.

2. Jesus identified with workers.

In the second century Justin Martyr wrote, “Jesus, when among men, worked as a carpenter, making ploughs and yokes, thus teaching the marks of righteousness and making an active life.”

His teachings spoke of putting your hand to the plough, working with green timber and dry wood, a beam in the eye, and a house built upon rock. I think a sign hung over the carpenter’s shop: “My Yokes are Easy”.

The townspeople had it right: “Is this not the carpenter, whose mother and sisters we know?” Jesus was a village workman and other ordinary workmen related to Him who put religious faith in a way they could understand. He stood on the side of the workingman.

Whenever the church has related well to the ordinary workingman it has grown in power and significance. Whenever it has become a captive of the upper class and respectability it has lost its power.

The young church grew in the Roman Empire among the slaves and workers. It had regard for the poor, the slaves, and the uneducated. It then infiltrated Roman society and reached even the throne of the Emperor. But when Christianity became official and socially acceptable it lost its power to the Dark Ages.

In the Middle Ages, the church was captive to the rulers and the upper class. The Portuguese, Spanish and British Empires were officially Christian, but they traded in slaves and oppressed the poor. Only the ministry of monks like St Francis took the faith to the workingman. In Britain the church grew wealthy and fat, living upon the tithes of the poor and caring little for their suffering.

When John Wesley realised the vitality of the converted life he wanted to share the message of Jesus immediately with the working class. He preached outside the churches of the stuffy conventional gentry. He preached at the mine heads, in the new industrial areas, and in the open air. The working people also heard him gladly.

The Methodist church grew in the North of England among the mines and factories. It never held the upper social strata south in London, even though some notable people associated themselves with Wesley.

Over the years, the Methodist working class improved their lot by faithfulness, education, and the leadership skills acquired in class meetings, and soon the Methodist church became a captive of the Victorian middle class and it immediately lost power.
The new rich provided money and status but the larger it built its chapels, the further it drifted from the workingman.

The early 19th century Tolpuddle Martyrs, now lauded in Methodist history as the first trade unionists, were thrown out of the Methodist Conference. Collections for the support of their families were not allowed in Methodist churches. The Luddites and Chartists, usually Methodist trade unionists, were banned from meetings on Church property. That kept Methodism respectable, but took it far from the workingman.

Wesley Mission Sydney started among the poor, the unemployed and the workingman. Yet they have kept contact with the working class. While Superintendent for twenty-seven years, I attended and opened in prayer the Trade Union Conference in Sydney each year – as a form of recognition of the workingmen of Sydney and to show that we are at least still in touch with them.

That is why Wesley Mission’s principal place of worship is not a cathedral where workingmen feel out of place, but a theatre where everyone can feel at home.

The Nazareth Principle says the church will grow so long as it identifies with the workingman. We must never be ashamed that the founder of our church was a carpenter who worked with His hands. We must use our education, social benefits, income, authority, and social status for the work of Christ, and always in relationship with the poor, the uneducated, the unemployed and the workers of our cities.

The highest praise is that our ordinary lives so identify us with the working people of this city that we are utterly indistinguishable except in the quality of our service.

3. Jesus identified with living faith.

For Jesus, true religion was a way of life. He worshipped God by living His faith. Religion was not kept with Sabbath clothes, lots of prohibitions on how to live and rituals to be performed in a special temple. It is a way of life, lived in practise, effecting what we think, say and do; how we relate to people, and of the influence we allow God to have in our everyday experience.

For too many people religious experience is a separate way of living apart from everything else we do. The Mafia Godfather could attend family worship services and at the same time plot to extend his crime kingdom, but a real Christian could not. Some people can go to church on Sunday and act immorally on Monday but that is the ultimate hypocrisy.

Jesus identified with living faith. He learnt patience, cared for others and practised an inner peace among everyday life.

At Stanford University in California I visited the beautiful Chapel, given by the famous Philips family who made their fortune in oil. The stained glass windows reflect various aspects in the life of Jesus. In the carpenter’s shop Jesus is working at a bench surrounded by wood, shavings, and tools. Underneath are these words, “The highest service may be prepared for in the humblest surroundings. In silence, in waiting, in years of uneventful, unrecorded duties, the Son of God grew and waxed strong.”

In our churches we need ordinary people, workmen, people who will live out their Christian faith in an atmosphere of relating to others, who witness to what God has done in their lives in ordinary language to the rest of society about them. That will cause us to grow. That is the Nazareth Principle.

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

Thursday, 7th May, 2009, 2:57 pm | Bible Studies