At one of his life’s worst intersections, when legs trembled and steps were mired in bogs of doubt, his companion looked into the man’s hollowing eyes and said, “I believe in you. I know you.” Have you ever needed such a word?

The list is painfully long that names all of the circumstances and places from which it is assumed nothing good can come. Perhaps you have compiled your own catalog of those who fall short, the irredeemable neighborhoods, or the situations beyond hope in the life of others. Perhaps you find yourself on someone else’s list, among those whose life and plight has been dismissed as “nothing good.” So it was thought of Jesus, whose life was rooted in the hillside soil of a sidetracked town—Nazareth—where nothing remarkable, not much at all, was expected to grow up. That town and its people were on the “unfavorable” list.

It is a riddle of scripture that the likes of Philip (or Peter, John, James, and Andrew—those gospel familiars) would, seemingly without discernment or a second thought, leave everything when Jesus interrupted his settled life and bid him, “Follow me.” For Nathanael, it was different. He took an honest and reasonable step back. He knew all the talk about nothing good coming from Nazareth.

So many of our stories wither and so much of who we are dies when we are confronted with the “I know about you” list of painful failures instead of a loving, hopeful invitation to “come and see” (John 1:46).

There is a mighty mercy, an opening of heaven itself before our very eyes, a retelling of each “Nazareth” in our lives if we dare to “come and see” Jesus. Then that painful, long, imposed or self-inflicted list is no longer our truth because we, in seeing Jesus, begin to see ourselves and others as Jesus does. An epiphany happens: “I believe in you.”

There are many questions today about facts. Who do we trust to give us the facts? What sources and individuals are reliable? Social media can be a great tool for sharing, but it has also become a means of spreading misinformation, false beliefs, and bad advice. Many people today are suspicious of what some claim to be the facts.

Even if we have the right facts, we might not have something more important: the truth. Facts can be a partial representation of the truth. Facts might tell us that it is sunny and warm this morning, but the weather forecast might say thunderstorms are coming in the afternoon. The latter statement is truth. Truth is the larger reality that smaller facts don’t capture, and sometimes contradict.

John tells us that Jesus is God’s Word, full of grace and truth. In Jesus we get the full truth of God, not merely the facts. What are the facts we might see? We are all sinful and have strayed from God’s just and loving ways. The world is a mess. Left to our own ways, we are surely lost. These are the facts, as if we woke up to a dangerous thunderstorm but don’t know what the weather forecast is after that. Jesus is the fuller truth that in spite of the stormy mess of the world and our individual lives, God’s grace is a gift to us in Christ. There is a blue sky and a safe calm that is ours through divine love.

Some of us live with messages that tell us we are not the right kind of person to receive God’s grace because of our past mistakes, or ethnicity, or gender identity, or level of education, or poverty. The truth of Jesus Christ tells us we are children of God. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). This is the truth that gives us life.

Mark’s gospel opens with fanfare: a herald announcing the good news that the Lord is on the way! It’s time to prepare for the Savior! The role model for this process of preparation is an unusual character. He lives in the wild, wears animal skins, and eats insects. Because of his extreme lifestyle, John the Baptist is often portrayed as a madman living on the fringes of society.

Yet, the text makes clear that John was a respected faith leader. People from all over the region were coming to him to be baptized. In John’s context, living in the desert and eating a foraged diet were signs of spiritual commitment, not lunacy. We might imagine John as a precursor to the Christian desert mothers and fathers who came after him, wise teachers who lived in voluntary isolation. People made a point to come hear what these teachers had to say.

John used his influence to point to Jesus. Although he had a popular ministry of his own, John understood that his call to prepare the way for Jesus involved humility and service. He told others he wasn’t even worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, a sentiment that was meant to elevate Jesus, not to demean John. He wanted to communicate how transformative Jesus’ ministry would be. “I have baptized with water,” John proclaimed, “but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:8).

As we declare in our baptismal rite, that same Holy Spirit calls us into baptism and seals us with the mark of Christ forever. We, like John, are called to humble service for the sake of God’s mission in the world, to use our unique gifts and vocations to point to Jesus. We become messengers proclaiming the good news: God has come to dwell with us.