I thought of that long-ago association on hearing Sunday's gospel. "What good can come out of Nazareth?" asked the skeptical Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree when Philip approached him to meet the one "about whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." In the northern district of Galilee, Nazareth was known for insurrection, poverty and not very good wine.

The water of baptism of course dries off (if it isn't blotted), and the oil of chrism doesn't survive the next bath or shower. How then to tell whether a person has been baptized; has renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil; and has promised to follow Christ as his Savior and Lord? No external markings, no contemporaneous professions, perhaps no sealed document to attest to the new Christian's faith.

The tenant is a legal immigrant, single mother of two young children, including an infant brought to the apartment from the hospital where he was born. The absentee father has his own problems and can no longer provide support or maintenance. It is getting colder and I have a real estate tax bill due

The minister pastoring this Lutheran congregation is actually the retired bishop of New York. You will search the street maps of New York in vain for a Lutheran cathedral, which may be just as well since it is one less building to have to put into mothballs waiting for a buyer to convert it into condos or a recreation center or some other use that profanes Christ's sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.