As many of you know, Linda and I just got back from a trip to the Holy Land. One of the questions this trip brought to mind was the following – Why was it important that Jesus lived where and when he did? In the religious literature, this question is part of a larger topic called the “scandal of particularity” – that is, isn’t it scandalous that the Lord of Heaven and Earth lived and died as a Jewish peasant in a backwater of the Roman Empire thousands of years ago? This is not a bad question to think about as we enter the reflective period we call Lent.

First, a little background. It may surprise you that we aren’t certain of the locations of many of the very important events of the New Testament. We don’t really know where the Sermon on the Mount was preached, or where the Transfiguration occurred, or where Jesus fed the 5,000. We don’t really know where Cana was – there are two probable locations for the town and even though there is a “Wedding Miracle Wine Store” in one of them, the store’s name has more to do with smart marketing than history.

Why is there so much uncertainty about the location of these important events? Partly, it is because the early Christians didn’t care very much about where these events occurred. For example, they didn’t do a very good job marking the tomb of Jesus because they knew it was empty! That was the news – not the location where their Lord had briefly lain but rather that the stone was rolled back and that he was on the loose and in the world and nothing would ever be the same again!

This leaves Christians with a slightly strange attitude about the Holy Land. While the other two Abrahamic faiths – Islam and Judaism – care very much about the Holy Land and who controls it, Christians are less rooted in the control of the Land and more in the person of their Lord. Nonetheless, it is important that God’s decisive action in history occurred in that place and at that time and through that historical person Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, the fact that Jesus lived two millennia ago in Nazareth, 80 miles north of Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem was the capital of a land and a people that called itself Israel is historically important and, indeed, very fortunate, if you believe in luck. Israel was strategically located on the pathway between the great empires of Egypt and the ancient Near East (Assyria, Babylonia, Persia). When these empires went to war, the battles would be fought not on their home turf but rather in the buffer area between them, usually in Palestine (although that name came later). Israel was used to both heavy trade and heavy traffic. With the rise of the Roman Empire, ideas that began in Israel could quickly travel all around the Mediterranean Sea and beyond into Spain, Gaul and Britain. There was a nearly universal language (Greek) that allowed new ways of thinking about God.

Does this mean that the conditions were ripe for the spread of Christianity around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea two millennia ago? Yes, but that’s not an accident. Instead, what it says is that God is very much at home in the world, that God used and still uses people for His Good News and his divine purposes.

As Paul says in Romans, “at the right time” and in the right place, Christ died for us so that the world might be changed. The right time is God’s time, the right place is God’s place and all times and all places belong to God. As Christians we know that God is as powerfully at work today in Calvert County as He was two thousand years ago and half a world away. God loves the world and is changing it for the better. So, after a couple of weeks in the land where Christ walked, Linda and I found ourselves anxious to get back to see Christ at work today, at home in our church family. As we enter the blessed period of Lent, let us look to see God at work not there and then, but here and now at Saint Nicholas.

Pastor Greg