Acts 2:7, John 1:46

Ali Johnson comments on the need to break away from stereotypes.

Alistair Johnson

It was in East St Louis when I realised we live in a world of "haves" and "have-nots." East St Louis was ranked inside the top 25 most dangerous places to live in America. It is a struggling community, filled with streets with multiple empty properties and many broken windows. As we found ourselves driving through East St Louis I was struck by how many labels and stereotypes had been placed on this area. People have labelled East St Louis as a place with no hope; a place where nothing good can come from; a place that needs to be bull dozed. This sounds similar to how people have labelled Stoke-on-Trent. It was in 2001 that Stoke was labelled the worst place to live in England and Wales in an Experian report. It has been continually labelled a place that has no hope. This label is hard to remove.

Labels are damaging and oppressive. Labels cause hurt and pain. Labels can be difficult to remove and hard to distance ourselves from. These labels can hover over us for a long time. I wonder how many of us have been labelled with a name or an untrue story from our past and it has haunted us for a long time after.

Location factors heavily into our assumptions and judgments about people. Imagine you are told about a group of people: one person grew up in Liverpool, another in Brixton in London, another in Wilmslow in Cheshire, and another from rural Suffolk. In all likelihood you have already come up with some concept of who these people are, based on their location.

Yes, there will be times when those assumptions will be proven false, yet how much more often are they proven to be true?

This tendency is nothing new; it went on in first century Israel as well. People would be judged based upon whether they grew up in Judea, Samaria, or Galilee (Acts 2:7) and whether they came from more urbanised areas or more rural areas. Then as now, the more remote and less urban the location, the more likely people were to look down on those who came from there. So it was with Nazareth in Galilee.

Galilee itself was seen as remote, away from the epicentre of Judaism in Jerusalem; not known for culture or much civilisation. Within Galilee itself, Nazareth barely registers, receiving no mention from Jewish sources before the third century of our era. This insignificance led some sceptics to doubt whether Nazareth existed at all in the first century CE, but archaeological evidence does indicate the place was inhabited. It is now believed that Nazareth was a village of no more than 500 in the days when Jesus grew up there. Nazareth is about 16 miles southwest of the Sea of Galilee; it is not near the Mediterranean Sea and would not be on a lot of travel routes. It is evident why Nazareth would easily be despised in the eyes of others: it is in the backwoods or "out in the sticks" - a small village. In the eyes of more educated and urban Jews, the Nazarenes would have been judged as ignorant at best and perhaps as simple-minded sinners at worst. The labels of Nazareth are clear and obvious.

In John's Gospel we see Jesus gathering up disciples and calling them to follow him. Phillip is telling Nathanael about Jesus and Nathanael asks, "Can anything good come from there?" (John 1:46). We see the labels affected Jesus too.

It is important that as followers of Jesus we pursue a world that breaks away from stereotypes and that shatters boundaries that are set by the world. We need to be a community that doesn't allow people to be defined by location, race, gender and education. We need to be a redeemed community that inspires people to imagine a world that is more than we could ever ask or imagine. The Kingdom of God is about community re-imagined, hope restored and love winning.