A Hometown Prophet

Scripture Lessons: Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke 4: 14-30 Sermon Title: A Hometown Prophet Preached on January 20, 2019 While completely inadvisable and completely ridiculous, there are times when congregations draw faint comparisons between their preacher and Jesus. And that happened to me before I began to serve a church back in my hometown. Just weeks before we arrived in Columbia, Tennessee, where I would serve the First Presbyterian Church there, a woman named Wanda Turner found out my age. She called her friend Mrs. Cotham and asked her if she’d heard that their new pastor was only 29 years old. Mrs. Cotham paused, then thoughtfully responded to her friend: “Well, Jesus was only 30 when he began his ministry. And Wanda, let’s just hope we don’t crucify the poor boy before he turns 32.” They didn’t. Because I’m not Jesus. Jesus was absolutely remarkable. That great preacher, William Sloan Coffin, once wrote: “Deserted by his disciples, in agony on the cross, barely thirty years old, Christ said, “It is finished.” And thus ended the most complete life ever lived.” Jesus and I, we may both have been called to preach in the community we grew up in, but the comparison ends right there. For one thing – rather than try to throw me off a cliff, you have been far more kind to me than I deserve. Ya’ll are too good to me. But the point I want to make here is that Jesus is different. And you can’t compare any preacher to Jesus, especially not the one standing before you now, because He offends us preachers as much as anyone. It’s true. Jesus is too honest to be polite all the time. He can be so blunt and plain spoken as to cause offence. Not everyone talks about that, but it’s clear from Scripture that Jesus was not all the time petting sheep and holding little children in his lap. Jesus was tough. He kicked over the tables set up in the Temple. He called the religious authorities of the time a bunch of “whitewashed tombs.” And once he even said to his friend Peter, “Get behind me Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” There’s a great story from the writer Anne Lamont. She tells this story of a women’s Bible study, and they go around the circle prompted by the leader to answer the question: “Who has been like Jesus to you?” One told about her grandmother who lived next door to her growing up, and whenever she had a bad day at school she’d go over there, and it must have been that somehow her grandmother could feel her coming, because on those really bad days she’d walk in and her grandmother would be taking freshly baked chocolate cookies right out of the oven. “She was like Jesus to me,” the woman said. Then another talked about her dedicated and faithful golden retriever, who lay by her side through her divorce. But then the last woman in the group had to speak, and she had been thinking about the question deeply. As though this incident that took place when Jesus went back to his hometown were on her mind she said, “This is a hard one to answer, because I have to think about a person who has been so honest with me that I wanted to kill him.” Jesus can be, not just comforting, but offensive, because there are things that we do that he just won’t tolerate. He stands, not just beside us, but so genuinely wants what’s best for us, that he pushes us towards justice and righteousness and challenges us when we’re only paying lip service to the Gospel. If he’s the Word of God incarnate, then facing him demands that we face our sin and all the ways we fail to embody the Love of God. And that’s not just true of Jesus. That’s true of Scripture in general. The event I read about from the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah, where the Word of God was read, and it caused all the people to weep – it sounds strange, but if the Word of God is the truth, then it ought to cause us to wonder about how much truth we’re really living. So, Jesus, that Word of God Incarnate, tells us as he did his hometown that regardless of whether we’re his mother, his brother, or the guys he used to play ball with – he gets down to the heart of things and says not what’s polite, not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. There he was back home. They had heard about him. They knew who he was and what he could do. They were probably hoping for what any of us would be hoping for – that this hometown boy would lift them up and out of their hardship. That he would heal their wounds and save them from affliction. That he would bring a little prosperity to the regions, and free them all from oppression. That he would make the changes that would benefit them and make their life easier. “Will you save us, Jesus? Surely you are here to save us.” Jesus answers: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To let the oppressed go free, To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. This is a remarkable response, and in case what he was saying wasn’t clear enough he tells them exactly what he means: The truth is, there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah, but who did God send him to? An out of town widow. And there were plenty of lepers among his own people at the time of the prophet Elisha, but who did God tell him to heal? Their enemy’s general, Naaman the Syrian. They want him to help out his own, and he says he’s been sent out to serve someone else’s widows and their enemy’s general. How could that possibly go over well? Maybe, now you’re starting to understand why they wanted to throw him off that cliff. It’s as though you brought a pastor back to his hometown and he walks in one Sunday morning and says, “It sure is good to be home, but I think I’ll just go over to the Methodist church to preach today.” Wouldn’t that be something? But it’s more than that even. What Jesus is saying is far more than that, because he wasn’t saying that God was sending him to the folks on the other side of town. He was saying that, “The Lord has sent me to serve the people on the other side of the wall you’ve been trying to build.” In Jesus Christ it becomes so obvious – that where we see difference – hometown and out of town, native and foreign, legal and illegal, us and them – God just sees His Children. But there’s more – he’s calling us to see the same way. So, this Sunday morning, as we do one of the most amazing things that Presbyterians do – as we ordain and install the new leaders of our church – who are all of them called to be elders and deacons in their own hometown, we must remember that while they were elected by you – they are called to serve in a way that honors our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We might all think that they’ve been called to do what we want them to do and to follow our orders – but no. It’s God who calls them and it’s God who they must serve. And this God of ours, incarnate in Jesus Christ, calls them, not only to serve this church, but beyond these walls. Not only to nurture the members of this church who have been here for years, but to welcome those who are walking in for the very first time, for all those who walk in these doors, whether they look like us or not, all of them are God’s children. Officers of the church – your call is to bring honor, not only to those who you know and love, but to those who God loves. You must be dedicated, not only to the survival of this church, but that the Gospel be proclaimed here, and to the ends of the earth. Set your hearts on justice, that your ears be tuned to hear the cries of the poor and the oppressed. May your lives be lived, not only for us, but for the least and the lost, that you serve the Lord who served them all. Amen.