John 1:43-46: 43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee . He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida , the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth .” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth ?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

Two things in our story for today: Who found whom? And God in all the wrong places.

OK. How well were you listening? Who found Jesus in this story? What's his name? Well . . . Philip says to Nathanael that “we found the one.” That's Philip's point of view. Yet, if we listened closely we know that it was Jesus who found Philip. Listen again: “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee . He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.'”

Who gets the credit? Who found whom? That's the question that comes to my mind when I listen to how this story is told. The storyteller makes it clear that Jesus found Philip. Philip, however, is heard taking credit for the find. What's the big deal?

Christianity is about God finding us, chasing after us, from the beginning, with dogged determination, stubbornly unwilling to give up the chase. In 1 John we read: “We love God because God first loved us.” Or again later in John's gospel: Jesus says to his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you . . .” This is the unique claim of Christianity. God finds us. If we think we have found God, or religion, or faith it is only because God has first found us. That's the big deal.

Like Philip in our story we often would like to take credit for our faith, for “finding Jesus.” We would like to think of our faith as something of our own making. In terms of light, the light in us, my friends, is not from us. We are not the light. It is given to us. It remains God's, in us, for us to walk in. God does the finding. We do the following. Faith, it is all gift. We call this grace.

One last note. Did you hear Nathanael's reply to Philip when he was told that God's Savior was from Nazareth : “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” For whatever reason, Nathaniel did not think Nazareth a place to look for God's Messiah, God's Savior. Certainly Jerusalem, the holy city, would be a more likely, more appropriate location for God to be at work.

Like Nathanael, we all have our ideas about where God is most likely to be at work. Godly places, of course. This is the surprise of the Christian God. God shows up in all the wrong places, that is, in places we think not very . . . godly: in the womb of a peasant girl, as a refugee (Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt) or going back to the Old Testament, in the belly of a large fish. God at work in all the wrong places: on a criminal's cross, bloodied and dying. This is the habit of the Christian God and God's Son, Jesus Christ. Showing up in unlikely places: a manger stall, a fleeing refugee, talking with prostitutes, hanging out with fisherfolk, hanging on a cross.

God at work in some of the most ungodly places . . . places like your heart and mine. Oh God, work away, work away. AMEN

-Rev. Dr. Philip Johnson