There is a Tennessee town called Nameless.  When our son was a freshman at the U of O, he roomed with a boy from Boring, Oregon.  There is actually a town in Texas named Ugly.  I grew up in North Dakota near a tiny place called Zap  — which we zipped by on the Interstate.

In this Sunday’s gospel lesson Jesus travels among towns like Nameless, Boring, Ugly, Zap:  the small town outposts of Palestine.   Yet in these outback towns Jesus shares his most profound wisdom.  The sayings and parables of these places are the most riveting and universal of Jesus’s teachings.

Jesus is rejected by his home of Galilee and headed toward danger in Jerusalem.  Yet it is here, in-between Galilee and Jerusalem, that his power and wisdom can best emerge.

Is there something blessed in being unsettled, exiled from old certainties, assumptions and security?

Do you feel “in between” – not in the right place, or suspended, waiting?   This Sunday, as we continue our Lent sermon series, “Followship,” we’ll follow Jesus “in-between.”