Net, sir. A root, not a throne. God grew it out
of nothing. It's quiet now. The angels have gone,
the sky is close back up, the road out of Bethlehem
is dark, and the Holy Family is moving by night.
No procession, no crowd, just the sound of hooves
on stone and a baby breathing against his mother's
chest. The wonder hasn't disappeared, but it
has changed. Glory has given way to movement,
to survival, to the long road home. This is the
part of the story we don't linger on very often,
the part after the miracle, when life resumes
and God keeps walking anyway. No halos, no choir,
just obedience, dust, and a future nobody can
see yet. And if that feels familiar, you're in
the right place. Because without really meaning
to, you stumble into a small town church in Oklahoma
on the first Sunday after Christmas. The pews
are real, the creaks and the coughs are real,
the coffee's already been poured, and it's strong
enough to tell the truth. People around you didn't
float in on clouds. They drove in on gravel roads
and grocery store parking lots, carrying ordinary
lives that kept going even after Christmas Eve
ended. So, if you showed up wondering now what?
You're not alone. You've just come to church
like the rest of us. Stay with us for a bit.
I'll see you on the other side. The church would
never do this. Ever. But you could call this
Boring Sunday. Because it's kind of situated
between these really dramatic events, right?
The birth, the nativity, the choir of angels,
all of that. We've got the star and the three
wise men coming up. And then we have this part
in between. This part in between, though, friends.
is anything but ordinary. Because by the time
we get to this part of the story, the cards have
already been mailed and received. Candles have
burned down low. The heavenly choir robes all
hung back up. The nativity scene has started
to lose pieces. A wise man is missing an arm.
A sheep knocked over by a cat. And this is the
Sunday. Nobody quite knows what to do with. Christmas
Eve had its angels. Next couple of weeks, we'll
get to Epiphany. We'll have the Magi, the mystery,
the gold, catching the light. But this week,
this week is about packing up. Joseph folds the
blankets. Mary gathers what they have. The baby,
still unknown by the world, rests against her
chest. No one is singing now. And if you've ever
sat in a house after the last guest has left,
after the dishes are done but you're too tired
to put them away, after the lights on the tree
are still blinking but nobody's watching, you
know this feeling. The event is over. Life resumes.
And the question becomes, now what? That's the
Sunday we're in, the day after the moment. The
road starts after wonder fades. And that's where
Matthew meets us. Friends, this morning, I'm
reading some portions from Matthew chapter 2.
Let us attune our ears to the reading of the
former tax collector turned evangelist Matthew,
second chapter beginning verse 13. Now after
they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared
to Joseph in a dream and said, get up, take the
child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Then
Joseph got up, took the child and his mother
by night, and went to Egypt. When Joseph heard
that Archelaus was ruling over Judea, he was
afraid to go there. And after being warned in
a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.
There he made his home, a town called Nazareth.
Sin's reading of God's word. Let's stay inside
the story just for a moment longer. No halos
yet, no gold, just a man waking from a dream
and his heart pounding. And Joseph doesn't argue,
doesn't ask for a sign, doesn't ask, how long
shall we be gone? He wakes Mary and they leave
by night. And that detail there matters. This
isn't some religious procession. This is an escape.
They don't leave because the party's over. They
leave because danger has arrived. I want you
to imagine it, the donkey's hooves on stone,
the baby stirring against Mary's chest, Joseph
looking back over his shoulder, scanning the
dark for soldiers. No one has time to say goodbye.
There's no forwarding address, just the road
south, stretching into blackness. You ever had
to leave somewhere fast? Maybe not with soldiers
at your back, but with urgency in your bones?
That moment when you realized you cannot stay,
even though... You don't know where you're going.
That's the holy family now. Refugees in the night
with nothing but a dream, a donkey, and a baby
who doesn't know yet that he is the reason that
the whole world is about to shake. And the strange,
uncomfortable truth about Christmas is this.
God doesn't protect Jesus from being hunted.
The child who will grow up and eventually one
day say blessed are the meek is born into a world
that is trying to kill him for it. Now that should
stop us. Because we want God to work differently.
We want faith to be some sort of insurance. Something
that keeps us. from the trouble, not something
that walks us through it. We want the manger
scene that doesn't have a sequel, but Matthew
won't let us stay with that story. Matthew says
the Messiah was a refugee before he was a rabbi.
He learned to walk in a foreign land. First geography
he knew outside Bethlehem wasn't Jerusalem or
Galilee. It was Egypt, the land of slavery, the
land of memory, the land where Israel learned
what it meant to cry out. And that means something,
or it should. It means the Savior knows what
it feels like to feel unwelcome. It means when
Jesus later says, I was a stranger and you took
me in, he's not speaking from theory. He's speaking
from memory. He knows what a closed door looks
like from the outside. And if you've ever been
the one on the outside, if you've ever had to
leave somewhere you thought was home, you, are
in the very same company as the Son of God. We
skip this part because it ruins the picture.
We want Christmas to be soft, contained, safe,
something you hang on the wall, something that
wraps up clean. But Matthew refuses to let us
sentimentalize it. The first place Jesus goes
after Bethlehem is Egypt. The place of exile,
the land of memory, the territory of slavery,
and that, my dearest of friends, is not by accident.
Because Matthew is playing the long game of scripture.
He is weaving Jesus into the whole story. He's
saying this child is retracing Israel's steps
out of Egypt, I called my son. The pattern is
repeating, but this time something new is being
written. God is reclaiming the old roads. The
exodus is happening again, but in reverse. The
one who will set captives free was himself, a
fugitive child. And when it's finally safe to
return, they don't go back to Bethlehem. They
don't go to Jerusalem. They don't go anywhere
important. They go home. Not Jesus' home. Joseph's
home. Nazareth. A town so forgettable it barely
shows up in the record. A town that later earns
the line. Can anything good come from Nazareth?
This is the geography of grace. Because God does
not choose the impressive next step. God chooses
the survivable one. Let us sit with that for
a moment. Because. Some of us know what it's
like to have a plan that didn't survive. We had
a trajectory mapped out. We knew where this was
supposed to end up. And then something, something
happened. A divorce, a diagnosis, a door that
closed and wouldn't open again. And you ended
up somewhere you never expected. Maybe. You ended
up back home. Maybe you ended up in the last
place you thought grace could ever find you.
Nazareth wasn't the dream. But Nazareth is where
Jesus grew up. And that matters more than we
think. Matthew almost says it casually. There
he made his home in a town called Nazareth. And
this line should stop as cold. This is, friends,
the Messiah. The long -awaited king. This is
God with us. And he grows up in a town no one
expects anything from. Nazareth isn't sinful.
It isn't notorious. It's not wicked. It's worse.
It's insignificant. Nazareth is where you go
when your life doesn't turn out the way prophecies
made it sound. Nazareth is where people settle.
Where dreams quiet down. Where kids grew up without
knowing that they're supposed to be special.
And that's where Jesus learned to walk. I've
lived in small towns my whole life. Cushing,
Oklahoma isn't on anybody's map of important
places. We've got an oil tank farm and a Sonic.
That's about it. And we've all had people. Well
-meaning people, bless them, ask us why we stayed.
Why we didn't go somewhere bigger, somewhere
that mattered. And every time I think of Nazareth,
I think of... how God looked at all of the options,
Jerusalem and its temple, Bethlehem and its prophecy,
Alexandria with its libraries, and said, no,
let's go to a town nobody talks about. There's
a word for what God is doing here. It's called
solidarity. God doesn't just visit the overlooked.
He moves in next door. He hangs his coat. He
learns the neighbors' names. He becomes one of
them. Matthew reaches for prophecy here, and
he does something subtle. He doesn't quote a
clean, famous verse. He gestures towards a theme.
He shall be called a Nazarene. Now, if you were
looking for that verse in the Old Testament,
you won't find it. There's no word for word for
that in the Old Testament. Scholars have chased
their tails on this for centuries. But here's
what I think Matthew's actually doing. The word
Nazarene sounds a lot like a Hebrew word, netzer.
And netzer means branch. Or stick. Isaiah 11
says, A shoot shall come out from the stump of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots.
A branch. A netzer. A Nazarene. Matthew is saying
the Messiah will be marked by being dismissed.
He will come from the place nobody watches. He
will be the branch that grows where nobody planted
anything on purpose. And we all know what a branch
coming up from a stump looks like. It's not impressive.
It's not the whole tree. In fact, I think we
miss the old thing so much, we can't see the
new thing growing. It's just a small green shoot
pushing up through dead wood, easy to miss, easy
to step on, easy to overlook. That's the Messiah.
Jesus doesn't just save the suffering. He enters
into the kind of life that never looks impressive
from the outside. This is Christmas extended
into ordinary time. Not angels, not kings, not
miracles. Years, wood shavings, calloused hands,
and waiting. And if you want to know how God
values the slow work of becoming, look at Nazareth.
If you want to know how God feels about the years
that don't make a highlight reel, look at Nazareth.
If you want to know whether God is present in
the seasons where nothing seems to be happening,
Nazareth is your answer. Imagine Jesus as a child
in Nazareth. Nobody bows, nobody kneels, nobody
whispers, that's him. He scrapes his knees, learns
to read, learns to wait his turn. He has chores.
He has neighbors who think they know him because
they knew his daddy. Here's the same stories
at synagogue that the other children hear. Mary
knows, I'm convinced, but she can't say much.
How do you explain to the other mothers at the
well that your son was born of the Holy Spirit?
That angels announced him. That kings bring gifts
to them. She carried it, pondered it, probably
stayed quiet most days. Joseph knows, but he
can't explain it. He teaches the boy to shape
wood, to measure twice, to be patient with the
grain. And somewhere in the back of Joseph's
mind, he wonders, when will it start? When will
the world see what he saw in that dream? And
the strangest part of the incarnation is this.
God is patient enough to grow up slowly. 30 years
pass before anyone hears a sermon. 30 years before
a miracle. 30 years before the world notices.
30 years. That's a lot longer than my ministry.
That's longer than some of our marriages. That's
the length of a career. And Jesus spent it in
obscurity in a town that would never be famous
for anything except producing someone everyone
doubted. So let me ask you this question, and
I would gently ask you to sit with this for a
second. What if the hidden years are the point?
What if God is doing something in you right now
that won't become visible for another decade?
What if the faithfulness you are now practicing
in secret, the kindness nobody thanks you for,
the prayers nobody hears, the getting up again
when nobody else is watching, what if it's training
ground for something you can't see yet? What
if the season you're calling stuck is the season
God is calling formation? Think about all of
the sermons Jesus didn't preach in those 30 years.
All the miracles he didn't perform. All the people
he could have healed but didn't. Because it wasn't
time yet. Because even God, wrapped in human
skin, submitted to the slow clock of becoming.
And that tells me something about how heaven
counts time. It tells me that heaven and that
God is not in a hurry even if I am. It tells
me. The work that's happening in secret might
be the most important work of all. Nazareth says
the waiting isn't a waste. The waiting is the
work. Here's the word this Sunday gives us. Christmas
doesn't end with glory. It continues with faithfulness.
Most of us don't go. From Bethlehem to crowns,
we go back to routines, to jobs, to families
that know our flaws too well to be impressed
with us. To towns that never make the news. And
that is not a failure of faith. That is where
Jesus lived. And if God trusted Nazareth with
his son, he trusts your ordinary days too. The
years you think were wasted, the seasons that
felt quiet, the life that didn't become what
you imagined, that's not where God left your
story. That is where God stayed. You see, we've
got this thing backwards. We think significance
comes from being somewhere important. But the
gospel says significance comes from whose you
are, not where you are. And if Jesus could be
from Nazareth, if the word could become flesh
in a town no one respected, then there is no
place too small for grace to do its work. None.
Not your kitchen, not your cubicle, not your
one -bedroom apartment, not the town everyone
leaves as soon as they graduate. Your disappointment
that life didn't look the way you planned. Not
escapable. Your fear that you ended up somewhere
that just doesn't count. Your secret belief that
you are too far from action for God to actually
use you. My friend Nazareth says otherwise. And
listen. I know some of us came to church this
morning feeling like our life did not go the
direction we planned. Maybe you thought you'd
be further along by now. Maybe you thought you'd
have more of it figured out. Maybe you're back
in a place you swore you'd never be again. This
is the word I have for you today. Nazareth isn't
punishment, it's preparation. The God who could
have arranged any childhood he wanted for his
son chose obscurity, chose patience. Chose the
long way home. And if that's how God works, if
that's how kingdom comes, maybe the season you're
in isn't about God forgetting you at all. Maybe
it's God trusting you with the hidden years.
The years where nobody claps. The years where
faithfulness looks like simply showing up again.
Miracle of Christmas is not that God showed up
once. It's that he stayed. Stayed when it wasn't
interesting. Stayed when nobody was watching.
Stayed when obedience looked like obscurity.
It could have come in glory. Could have appeared
full grown with a sword in his hand and a crown.
on his head could have skipped the whole childhood
part the chores the waiting could have started
with power but he didn't he came as a baby he
grew as a child he learned what sawdust smells
like what if what it might feel like to miss
your father's hand on your shoulder he became
fully human in a place that didn't expect anything
from him So when you go home after Christmas,
when the lights come down, when the music stops,
when life looks like the same as it did before,
you're not leaving holy ground. You're standing
right where Jesus grew up. That ground was good
enough for him. Brand, it should be good enough
for us. Maybe you know this season. that the
God who came to Bethlehem also sanctified Nazareth.
May you trust that the years that feel small
are not unseen. May you believe deep in your
bones, where it still becomes flesh and still
makes us home among us. And may you go in peace,
knowing that wherever you're headed, you carry
Nazareth with you. That's no small thing. Amen.
Hey, before you go, take a breath. If this sermon
met you somewhere tender, somewhere quiet and
ordinary, you're not strange for feeling that.
That's usually where God does his best work,
not in the rush, not in the spotlight, but in
the places where life keeps going after the music
fades. If your days feel small now, if you're
back in routine she thought you'd outgrown, if
you're wondering whether faith still counts when
nothing dramatic is happening, hear this. Nazareth
was holy ground long before anyone ever noticed.
And the same God who trusted obscurity to form
his son is not finished with you either. You
didn't miss the miracle. You're living inside
of it. Before you head back into your week, one
small invitation. If what you heard today rang
true, if it felt like church met you where you
actually live, you're welcome to throw that like
in the offering plate, not as a transaction,
just as a quiet way of saying, I'm still listening
and this mattered. And if you'd like to keep
meeting with us as we move into the new year,
consider tithing your subscribe. That's how folks
find their way back here on Sunday mornings.
Same place, same table, same ordinary grace.
No pressure, no pitch, just an open door and
a standing invitation. Wherever this finds you,
on the road, in the kitchen, or sitting with
a cup of coffee that's finally cooled down, may
you know Christ has already gone home ahead of
you. And until next time, friend. Be blessed.