God with Them

Luke 4: 14-30, page 727

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.
The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor,
The Lord has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
“I tell you the truth,” he continued, “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.
And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed – only Naaman the Syrian.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Sermon
A good many of you are participating in a 12-week study called “Experiencing God” that meets on Wednesday nights and Thursday mornings.
I feel fortunate to be participating in this study as a group leader, as this study hammers home an important truth – that God is at work in our world, and that we are invited to participate in what God is doing.
The concept may seem obvious, that God is at work, but this concept assumes that God is already at work, not waiting for us to get started or give instructions.
The hard part here is that we are called to watch for God to be at work, aware that God may well choose to work in ways that we are surprised by, and through people whom we would not expect.
Such is the case in our scripture lesson for today – and while this hometown crowd is initially proud of their homegrown Jesus, the lesson ends with them leading him off to the brow of the hill to throw him off the cliff.
I assume that before Jesus walked into Nazareth he rehearsed this scene in his head and I bet this is not what he expected to happen – he had been baptized by John, then refused to fall to temptation in the desert, and following the bout with the devil he is praised throughout the countryside – a parade then does not sound inappropriate for his return home.
While maybe a parade wasn’t part of what Jesus was expecting, it would what I would have hoped for. All those people who thought I’d never amount to much – my baseball coach who didn’t let me play as much as I thought I deserved to, the Sunday School teachers who were rightly convinced that I was more interested in making people laugh than learning anything, the parents who looked at me suspiciously because of my long hear, patchy beard, and black and white checkered car.
I’ve never been invited to preach back where I grew up, and I guess I’m not surprised – it’s hard for people who know you at 15 to separate who you have become from who you were.
So the crowd knows Jesus, not as the fulfillment of prophecy, but primarily as Joseph’s son.
And while, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son” is not quiet “who do you think you are,” I think the crowd is getting pretty close to, “well that sounds great, you’re the fulfillment of our scripture lesson, so surely, now that you’re home you must be here to help us.”
But Jesus goes on with his lesson – “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard you did in Capernaum.’” I tell you the truth; no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I know there are widows here, but like Elijah, I’ve been sent to serve the widows somewhere else. And I know that there are lepers here, but I have been sent to serve the leapers of your enemies.
With these sayings it becomes clear to the crowd that this boy has not only grown too big for his britches and forgotten where he came from – he’s clamed that God sent him, not to us, but to them.
Often the greatest stumbling block to knowing and doing the will of God is thinking that you already know and are already doing the will of God.
There’s a word for that – idolatry – and no matter the shape, a golden calf or a lion headed queen, thinking that you know who God would love, who God would serve, and what God came to earth to do puts God in a box.
Here Christ was saying, “Surely there were lepers in Israel in that time – but Elisha was sent out to Naaman, the general of a foreign army poised to invade Israel,” but how could God possibly be more interested in healing our enemies than us?
While Jesus is most certainly “God with us”, what made him unrecognizable to his own people was that Jesus was saying I am also “God with them.”
While I am your God, I am also God to your enemies.
While I came to ensure you of God’s love, I also came as a sign of God’s love for all people.
While I came to save you from your sins, I also came for the salvation of those whom you have judged undeserving of such grace.
And with these words they took him to the brow of the hill in order to throw him off the cliff.
In Christ there is much less room for judgment, vengeance, or wrath than we could have expected – as we cannot expect for God to take our side, but in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, we can only hope and pray that we are on God’s.
While, in our anger, we would rather sacrifice the messenger than entertain a grace so radical that her acceptance can encompass so many, what seems so true today is that Christ calls us not to sacrifice his word, but to sacrifice that which defies it.
That if we are so bold as to claim to be one country under God, our patriotism stands in the way of faith should we believe that we are the one and only country under God.
That if we are so bold as to call for justice - that our righteousness demands some reward, while others deserve punishment, we must not stand in the way of forgiveness, or we will risk losing it ourselves.
The bad news is that forgiveness is for our enemies, that miracles happen for those who do not deserve them, that Christ came to save sinners.
The good news then is that forgiveness, if for our enemies, is most certainly for us, that miracles happen for those who do not deserve them, and who can claim to deserve a miracle, and that if Christ came to save sinners, Christ most certainly came to save you and me.
Let us not be so quick to be offended by a grace that most certainly is greater than all our sins.
-Amen.