Mama Was Right About Him

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 1: 4-10 and Luke 4: 21-20 Sermon Title: Mama Was Right About Him Preached on January 30, 2022 Have you ever read the book, Great Expectations? I haven’t. I was supposed to, but I didn’t. It was required reading in 9th grade English class at Marietta High School. Because I hadn’t read it, I had to frantically read through the cliff notes the night before my paper on it was due. That book is just so long! And there are too many details. If the author, Charles Dickens would have left out all the adjectives and adverbs it would have been about 30 pages. Maybe then I would have read it. Isn’t that a shame? Plus, it seemed like every one of my classmates hated it. In fact, one of my classmates, I just remembered this, threw her copy of Great Expectations out the second story classroom widow while the teacher wasn’t looking, so I’m sure that if my teacher had great expectations for us, how much we would be enriched by the book, and what all we would learn as we read it, she was sorely disappointed. Has anything like that ever happened to you? Have you expected something great to come from a group of people only to have them throw the book you gave them out the window, or worse, attempt to throw you off a cliff? Our Second Scripture Lesson is just the first time a crowd tries to kill Jesus. It won’t be the last, for this event described in our Second Scripture Lesson from the Gospel of Luke describes a habit of humanity which must be closely examined. It’s not enough just to ask why a village of people would try to throw the Savior off a cliff, or why, later, did the crowd call for his crucifixion; we must start by asking: Why high school students resist beautiful literature? Why do patients ignore what their doctors tell them? Or why don’t husbands listen to their spouses? A couple weeks ago I was at the church more than I should have been. I had several evening meetings in a row, and Sara’s always talking to me about this. All kinds of people are talking to me about this, but what was more a couple weeks ago was that when I was finally home for dinner our daughter Lily asked, “Have I grown any since you saw me last?” Then, Cece comes down with her right hand extended, “Hi Dad, I’m your daughter Cece. You might not remember me.” I could have just listened to Sara. Why didn’t I? Why don’t I just listen to people who love me enough to tell me the truth? I am convinced it’s because we all resist change. We are naturally programed to try and stay the same. I want to eat what I want. Namely, chili dogs from Brandi’s. I want to do what I want. Namely, work hard and then sleep late. And I want to listen to the kind of music that I like, so I’d struggle to tell you the name of a single song that’s come out in the last 10 years. Could you do it? If not, if you can’t name a single song that’s come out in the last 10 years, then you are also a little stuck in your ways, resisting new things, and have a lot more in common with the villagers of Nazareth than you’d care to admit. A truth about humanity is that we don’t like new things all that much. We don’t like change. Which probably means we’re not all that excited to hear what whomever God sends has to say, because God is all the time interrupting our routines and calling us to think about our actions. Remember that John the Baptist didn’t come proclaiming a message of: “Ya’ll are doing great, don’t change a thing,” but “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Did people listen. Yes, but not everybody did. Herod killed him. So, what about you: do you listen to the prophets or try to throw them off cliffs? Think about it for a minute. Consider the prophets we’ve known. The change makers. The speakers of inconvenient truths. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted to change some things, and what happened to him? One cold winter when we were running short on natural gas, President Jimmy Carter told us to put on a sweater and he nearly got impeached. And maybe someone here remembers being a teenage girl who brought a boy home. He was a little bit older, had some money because he dropped out of high school and got a job, rode a motorcycle, had a leather jacket, seemed so mature at the time. Or maybe he seemed so smart, smarter than all the professors who didn’t know what they were talking about, yet he seemed to understand you and what you were saying. Maybe he lost his temper sometimes, but you said it was just because he’s so passionate. And maybe Mama sat you down and said, “Honey, he’s an idiot,” and maybe you stormed out and told her that she just didn’t understand true love, yet one day you work up and you said, “Mama was right about him.” Consider the prophets we’ve known. The speakers of truths we didn’t want to hear. Just think about them. Some people have voodoo dolls made in the image of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Why? I believe that this is just how we are, and if there’s anything we need to understand about ourselves it’s that we would rather continue in our way of life than listen to truth tellers and change our ways. For generations, who have we been but those who ignore the prophets? Later, Jesus will say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” We’re not any different. We don’t like prophets either. You know who we do like? People who tell us what we want to hear. It must be in our DNA. But it’s strange because it doesn’t always do us any good. If Dr. Phil were here, he’d ask, “Ignoring the prophets, how’s that working for you?” In this time of COVID-19, I think it’s especially important not just to argue but to understand why anyone would fiercely deny the reality of the virus. I believe it is because we are all programmed to defend our way of life, even if our way of life is killing us, and the truth would set us free. And so, I’m grateful to Dr. Nelson Price who was bold enough to write down some sobering statistics in the paper last week. He was quoting the well-respected study conducted by the Pew Research Center, that: 30% of adults Americans are not affiliated with any religion. That’s 10% higher than a decade ago. 29% of adult Americans consider themselves atheists, agnostics, or nothing. That’s up 6% from 5 years ago. Americans are praying less. 45% say they pray daily, which is down from 58% five years ago. And only 4 in 10 adults in this country consider religion very important in their lives. “Not one of those statistics is positive,” he wrote, “Alone they are cause for concern. Together compounded they are highly disturbing.” I believe he’s right about all of that, but I want to issue one corrective to Brother Price’s article, which ends with how afraid he is that when the trumpet blows too many will face the fires of hell. It is not fear that will change the world. It’s love. That’s the missing ingredient an awful lot of the time. Love. An old preacher once said, “Jesus love you just as you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay as you are.” That’s the truth, and so there are many people out in the world who want to change some things, but without love they’re just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. You can’t change someone who doesn’t know he’s loved. Do you know how many children don’t know they’re loved? Do you know how many are stuck in isolation, feeling lost and alone? You don’t have to look hard to find someone in your neighborhood who is convinced that no one really cares about them. The joke I shared last Sunday that Ray Fountain shared with me about the man so lonely he enjoyed visiting with the telemarketer, that’s real life for someone you know, but we don’t always see it. That’s why Jesus, the greatest of all truthtellers says to the people of Nazareth: Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” In other words, Jesus was saying, “I know you want me to help you, but I’m here to help you by telling you to love the world.” This saying does two things at once: For one thing, it points us toward the world. A world of war and disease. A world where people are being priced out of their neighborhoods. There’s a lady up the road whose kids never call. We get tiered of going to the doctor while so many can’t afford to go. Think about the world, Jesus says, but this is the other thing: when we start to think about the world, when we start to think outside ourselves, we may find the healing that we’re looking for. Sometimes we become so consumed with our own pain, that the only way to heal is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes the only way to find comfort from our grief is to comfort others. Sometimes the only way to find a miracle is to be one to someone else. And so, the saying, “Doctor, heal yourself,” what it means is that sometimes the doctor is healed of his own wounds when he stops looking at them and instead, reaches out to care for someone else. Jesus loves us enough to tell us that. Just like your mother, who maybe loved you enough to tell you the truth about your boyfriend. Maybe she loved you enough to tell you to get off the couch and go play outside. Maybe she told you to say your prayers, to go to church, to study your Bible, and to trust in Jesus. Well, Mama was right about him too. Because like her, he loves us enough to tell us the truth, even when it’s hard. Amen.