Hebrews 2:17-18
Most families keep their family secrets a secret. Most don't talk about the swindling uncle or the streetwalking great-aunt. Such stories remain unmentioned at the family reunion and unrecorded in the family Bible.
That is unless you are the God-man. Jesus displays the bad apples of his family tree in the first chapter of the New Testament. You've barely dipped a toe into Matthew's gospel when you realize Jesus hails from the Tilted-Halo Society. Rahab was a Jericho harlot. Grandpa Jacob was slippery enough to warrant an electric ankle bracelet. David had a personality as irregular as a Picasso painting — one day writing psalms, another day seducing his captain's wife. But did Jesus erase his name from the list? Not at all.
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You'd think he would have. Entertainment Tonight could quarry a season of gossip out of these stories. Why did Jesus hang his family's dirty laundry on the neighborhood clothesline?
Because your family has some too. An uncle with a prison record. The dad who never came home. The grandparent who ran away with the coworker. If your family tree has bruised fruit, then Jesus wants you to know, "I've been there."
The phrase "I've been there" is in the chorus of Christ's theme song. To the lonely, Jesus whispers, "I've been there." To the discouraged, Christ nods his head and sighs, "I've been there."
Just look at his hometown. A sleepy, humble, forgotten hamlet.
To find its parallel in our world, where would we go? We'd leave the United States. We'd bypass Europe and most of Latin America. Israel wasn't a superpower or a commercial force or a vacation resort. The land Joshua settled and Jesus loved barely registered on the Roman Empire radar screen!
But it was there. Caesar's soldiers occupied it. Like Poland in the 1940s or Guatemala in the 1980s, the Judean hills knew the rumbles of a foreign army. Though you've got to wonder if Roman soldiers ever made it as far north as Nazareth.
Envision a dusty, quiet village. A place that would cause people to say, "Does anything good come out of ______?" In the case of Christ, the blank was filled with the name Nazareth. An unimpressive town in an unimpressive nation.
Where do we go to find such a place today? Iraq? Afghanistan? Burkina Faso? Cambodia? Take your pick. Find a semiarid, agriculturally based region orbiting on the fringe of any social epicenter. Climb into a jeep, and go there looking for a family like Jesus'.
Ignore the nicer homes of the village. Joseph and Mary celebrated the birth of Jesus with a temple offering of two turtledoves, the gift of the poor (Luke 2:22-24). Go to the poorer part of town. Not poverty stricken or destitute, just simple.