“Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee."
John

St. Mother Teresa was born in Albania while St. John XXIII”s peasant farm family lived near Bergamo, Italy, not Florence or Rome.  Civil rights icon John Lewis grew up in rural Alabama and Mexican-American farmworker advocate Caesar Chavez lived in Delano, California, not San Francisco or Los Angeles.

They’re all examples of the message of today’s gospel of John. Prophets and saints often originate in seemingly unlikely places. If we seek to identify God’s messengers in our time, we had better look beyond billionaires in venture capital firms and the alumni clubs of Ivy League universities. You’re more likely to find a modern prophet such as Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. of Homeboy Industries working in a barrio than a board room. 

So what was the problem with Galilee that led the Pharisees to reject Jesus because  “no prophet arises from Galilee”?           

A couple of sources I checked noted that Galilee is located in the Biblical version of our “flyover country” where Jerusalem’s establishment types would find little worthy of exploring.  In addition, Judea’s strict followers of Jewish law disdained the tendency of Galileans to be more casual in observing the rules because the area had a significant non-Jewish population. They probably attributed  Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath or socializing with people they considered sinners  to his Galilean roots. What else would you expect? Could anyone from such a culture be a prophet? How could anyone that you wouldn’t take to  the first century equivalent of a country club  have a message worth hearing?

And what about us? Most of us would have to admit that we tend to make assumptions about people on the other side of the national divide that allow us to tune them out without listening. I’ve had to explain to friends in blue states why I live happily in my red state even though I’m a bleeding heart with four degrees. But I’m also guilty of making such assumptions and refusing to listen to people with whom I disagree.            

Jesus was an outsider as most prophets and revolutionaries are.  By definition they are willing to risk  confronting  conventional thinking and challenge the powerful.  If much of what Jesus demands doesn’t make us uncomfortable, we’re not taking him seriously. We don’t hold Galilee against him but how seriously do we consider potentially prophetic messages from people living in the wrong areas or  on the wrong side of the tracks in our own nations and communities?