The Outsiders | It Wouldn't Happen There

When some in the crowd heard these words, they said, "This man is truly the prophet." Others said, "He's the Christ." But others said, "The Christ can't come from Galilee, can he? Didn't the scripture say that the Christ comes from David's family and from Bethlehem, David's village?" So the crowd was divided over Jesus. Some wanted to arrest him, but no one grabbed him.

The guards returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked, "Why didn't you bring him?"

The guards answered, "No one has ever spoken the way he does."

The Pharisees replied, "Have you too been deceived? Have any of the leaders believed in him? Has any Pharisee? No, only this crowd, which doesn't know the Law. And they are under God's curse!"

Nicodemus, who was one of them and had come to Jesus earlier, said, "Our Law doesn't judge someone without first hearing him and learning what he is doing, does it?"

They answered him, "You are not from Galilee too, are you? Look it up and you will see that the prophet doesn't come from Galilee." 

John 7:40-52 (Common English Bible)

"You are not from Galilee too, are you?" That question drips with contempt. It's not really a question. It's an insult wrapped in mockery. The Pharisees are essentially saying, "Surely you're not stupid enough to believe something good could come from a place like Galilee."

This passage reveals just how much Galilee was looked down on. When people in Jerusalem thought about Galilee, they didn't think "charming rural area" or "quaint countryside." They thought "backward," "ignorant," "religiously compromised."

Galilee was about 70 miles from Jerusalem. That doesn't sound like much to us today, but in the first century, it was a three or four-day journey on foot. So Galilee was far from the Temple, far from the center of Jewish life, far from where God's presence was supposed to dwell.

But distance wasn't the only problem. Galilee had a reputation problem. It was called "Galilee of the Gentiles" because Jews and Gentiles lived side by side there. That meant Jewish people in Galilee were constantly interacting with people who didn't follow the Law of Moses, who worshiped other gods, who were ritually unclean. And all of that made Galilee religiously suspect in the eyes of people in Jerusalem.

Galilee was also rural and working-class. Most people there were farmers or fishermen. They weren't educated like the religious elite in Jerusalem. They didn't have access to the same resources or opportunities. And apparently, they even had an accent that marked them as outsiders. When Peter denied knowing Jesus, someone in the crowd said, "Your accent gives you away."

So when people heard that Jesus was from Galilee, they dismissed him. They assumed nothing good could come from a place like that. They assumed someone from Galilee couldn't possibly be the Messiah. They assumed that if God were going to do something important, it wouldn't happen there.

And we do the same thing today. We have our own Galilees, places and people we've written off, places and people we assume God wouldn't work through, places and people we dismiss without really paying attention.

We assume God wouldn't work through small rural churches struggling to keep their doors open. We assume God wouldn't work through people who don't have seminary degrees or theological training. We assume God wouldn't work through communities that don't look like the successful, thriving places we admire.

We look at struggling neighborhoods and think, "Nothing good is happening there." We look at small-town churches and think, "God's not doing anything significant there." We look at people without platforms or credentials and think, "God couldn't possibly be using them."

But that's exactly the kind of thinking that would’ve made someone dismiss Jesus because he was from Galilee. That's exactly the kind of thinking that would’ve missed what God was doing because it wasn't happening in Jerusalem.

And here's what makes this even more challenging: sometimes we are the ones from Galilee. Sometimes we're the ones being dismissed because we're not from the right place or we don't have the right background. Sometimes we're the ones being overlooked because we don't fit people's expectations of what God's work should look like.

If you're in a small church wondering if God can really use you, remember that Jesus started his ministry in Galilee, not Jerusalem. If you're in a place that others look down on, remember that's exactly where God chose to begin the most important movement in human history. If you've been dismissed because you're not from the center, remember that God has always preferred the margins.

Because Galilee was wrong by every human standard. But it was exactly right for what God wanted to do. And the places and people we dismiss today might be exactly where God is working most powerfully.

Prayer:

God, we're quick to dismiss places and people because they don't match our expectations. We assume you wouldn't work through people without credentials, through places without resources, through communities at the margins. Forgive us for having the same attitude the Pharisees had toward Galilee. Help us pay attention to the places we've been dismissing. Help us see you at work in people and places we've been overlooking. And if we're the ones being dismissed, help us trust that being from Galilee doesn't disqualify us from your work. Amen.