January 31, 2010
 
Scripture:         Luke 4:21-30
 
Sermon:           “Elusive Savior”
 
            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the gospel of Luke, chapter 4, where we will read together verses 21 through 30.  You can find that easily on page 83 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.
            I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Jesus came from a place that folks liked to say was “backwards”.  You lived in a big, sophisticate city like Jerusalem, you know, and you’d look down your nose at people that came from the place Jesus grew up in.  Nazareth.  The region of Galilee.  Folks thought of that like you might be from, I don’t know, someplace way down South or something.  Mississippi.  Loooeyville.  You know what I mean?
            John’s gospel will give you a pretty good idea about all of this.
            Jesus had called a man named Philip to be his disciple, remember.  The story is there at the end of the first chapter of John.  Philip did follow Jesus.  But, then Philip went to tell Nathanael about Jesus, get him to follow as well.  And Philip said, “I’ve found the Messiah, Nathanael!  I’ve found the Messiah!  Jesus of Nazareth.”
            Nazareth?  Nazareth?  Nathanael kind of chuckled and said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  He was looking down his nose at that place where Jesus came from.
            And then at the end of chapter 7 there in John’s gospel a friend of Jesus was getting grilled by some folks up there in Jerusalem.  They said to Jesus’ friend, “What are you from out there in the Galilee also?  Backwards place that is.  Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.”
            Yeah, it wasn’t a great honor to be from that place.  Nazareth.  The region of Galilee.  People thought of you as backwards.  Uneducated.  Uncultured.  Rubes from out in the sticks.
            Now, here in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is there in his hometown.  Nazareth.  Nazareth where most folks didn’t think too highly of.  And he’s preaching in the synagogue there with all of these Galileans gathered together for worship.  And that’s where today’s scripture comes from.
            It’s good to know that these folks have something of a hometown hero in their midst.  The place that is the butt of everyone’s jokes is now the home of someone quite famous.  They are thinking that, maybe, good times are on the way.
            And the hometown boy made good, Jesus, he started preaching this sermon to them that just sounds like the most wonderful news in the world.  He picked up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read from it.  He said, “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.”
            You can read those words, too, if you like.  They come from Isaiah 61.  Jesus read the scripture lesson for the day, which came from Isaiah 61, and he wrapped up by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
            Now, if you were from Galilee, where nobody thought much of you, and life was pretty hard most of the time, that was some good news.  Jesus was preaching the kind of sermon that you long to hear when you’re down and out.  He was saying, “God is here.  And God is bringing about salvation!”
            Here is what happened next, though.  Read it with me.  This is the word of the Lord…
 
            All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.  They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”  He said to them, “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, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.  But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 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.”  When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might throw him off the cliff.  But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
 
            In the span of just a few minutes of preaching, Jesus went from dazzling the people in his home congregation to getting chased to the edge of a cliff where people wanted to throw him down to his death.  Now, that is some kind of sermon, isn’t it?  These folks were some kind of angry there in Nazareth.
            You’ve got two ways to stone a person to death, you know.  You can surround him, pick up rocks in your hands, and throw them until he falls to the ground.  And I imagine that takes quite a bit of anger to go through with something like that.  You’ve really got to be filled with rage and hatred to throw rocks right at someone.  But, that’s one way to do it.
            The other way is to throw the man at the rocks.  That, to me, seems just as cruel.  And you’ve got to be some kind of angry to do that to another person.
            Kind of makes you wonder what happened.  What exactly did he say to cause such an uproar?  I mean at one moment Jesus is preaching this wonderful and soothing sermon to these folks at home.  Remember?  The time has come.  God is now giving good news to the poor, releasing the captives, recovery of sigh to the blind, setting free the oppressed.  And they were eating it up.
            These were some folks that could have used some good news.  They were living under the thumb of the Roman occupation.  Troops were stationed throughout the land.  The taxes were grueling.  It had been a long, long time since they had been able to determine their own future.  On top of that, these people were in Galilee.  And worse, Nazareth.  Poorest of the poor to be getting good news.  Despised and humiliated people.
            So, Jesus is preaching about redemption.  And they’re eating it up.  Just what they wanted to hear.  Just what they needed to hear.  And they’re whispering to one another in the pews.  “I thought that this was Joseph’s boy.  Isn’t that the carpenter’s son?  Where’d he learn to speak like that?”
            This was very early on in the ministry of Jesus, you see.  It wasn’t very long after he’d been baptized by John in the Jordan River.  We’re only in the 4th chapter, you know.  Jesus hadn’t been at this for very long.  The folks there in Nazareth weren’t quite ready for this.  Not from Jesus.  Not from the young man they’d known since he was only yea tall.
            And when they started trying to name Jesus as one of their very own, they didn’t realize that they were actually trying to contain him within their own expectations.  “He’s Joseph’s son.  He grew up right down the street from us.  I used to change his diapers.”
            They didn’t realize that they were trying to contain him within their own expectations!
            Do you know how that works?  Someone says, “I know who you are.  Oh, I know who you are.  You come from that family that lives down that way.  Why, you’re so and so’s daughter.”  And what they’re really telling you is that they don’t believe the apple ever falls very far from the tree.  They are trying to contain you within their expectations.
            And that may be innocent enough sometimes.  But, when it comes to Jesus, he can’t be contained by anyone’s definitions.  He can’t be fully owned by anyone.  Not even the people who know him best.  He can’t be controlled.  He’s an elusive savior.
            Now, something had happened before he arrived in Nazareth that day.  Something had happened over in the town of Capernaum.  In case you didn’t know, Capernaum was also in Galilee.  But it was off in the north where there were a bunch of Gentiles living.  Gentiles.  Something happened where Jesus cast out a spirit from a man right there in the synagogue.  And people started to talk.  People started to take notice.  And even though there wasn’t anything but Gentile-lovers up there in Capernaum, those folks started to say things about Jesus.  He might just be the one they’d been waiting for all these years.
            The folks in Nazareth had heard about all this before Jesus arrived on that day.  And when he’s preaching these comforting and powerful words to them, and the news of his great healing down the road was fresh in their minds, those people were right in the palm of his hand.  Everybody spoke well of him and they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.  They were waiting to see if he would do the same things there in Nazareth that he had done over in Capernaum.  I mean, if he did it up there with all of those Gentiles, surely he’d do it for them.
            So, what happened?  Why did they all the sudden want to kill him?  They were in the palm of his hands…and then he was in their hands and they wanted to throw him off a cliff.  What happened?
            The story starts out with Jesus picking up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  These wonderful words come from his mouth.  Words that they all knew.  “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.”  It’s right there in Isaiah 61.  Verses 1 and 2.
            But, then there’s another few words that Jesus did not read.  I don’t know if the folks there in Nazareth realized it.  Jesus stopped reading.  If you look back there in Isaiah 61 it says, “He has sent me…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”  Jesus didn’t mention that part about God’s vengeance.  He proclaimed that God’s time of redemption from hard times had arrived.  But, he did not say that the enemies of his people would be defeated.
            I don’t think they picked up on that there in Nazareth.  Not at first.  They heard some good news that they wanted to hear and then they quite listening, quit paying attention.  Jesus had fit their expectations at this point.  He said what they wanted to hear.
            It turns out, though, that Jesus wasn’t there to put on a good show.  He wasn’t there to dazzle them with miracles.  He wasn’t there to make them feel good about themselves.  He was there to save them.
            Oh, they needed saving, alright.  They needed to be saved.  They just didn’t know it.  They didn’t want to admit it.  But, they needed to be saved.  And Jesus knew these people pretty well.  This is his hometown.  So, he knows what makes these people beautiful.  And he knows what makes these people ugly.
            He said, “You remember the stories we’ve all learned about the old prophet Elijah.  God sent him up to a little village outside of Sidon where he provided water and food to a widow.  You remember those stories.  Back there in First and Second Kings.  God sent Elijah to care for a hungry widow and her family in the middle of a famine.  People were suffering and starving.  And God sent the prophet of Israel to give relief to this one woman and her son.”
            What you might not realize is that the town where this widow lived, Sidon, was across the border in Lebanon.  She was one of those Gentiles.  Folks had a hard time seeing Gentiles as real, live human beings, you know.  And Jesus told them this story and pointed out, “Elijah did not feed a single widow in all of Israel.  Didn’t feed our people.  Elijah went up there to Lebanon and fed one of theirs!”
            Ah, now.  That’ll step on some toes.  It’s not a very patriotic thing to be talking about, you know.  And people are starting to squirm in the pews.  They’re thinking, “well, he just quit preaching.  Now, he’s gone to meddling.”
            But, just in case they missed the point, he went on.
            Elijah’s successor those many years ago was Elisha.  And Jesus said, “Now, we all remember that story in Second Kings about Elisha, right?  He cured the commander of the Syrian army of a dreadful skin disease.”
            That man Jesus was talking about, Naaman, wasn’t just a Syrian.  That would have been bad enough, you know.  Syrians.  This guy was the commander of the army that fought against Israel.  That’s who Jesus reminded them of.  And he said, “Elisha was quite pleased to rid this Naaman of his leprosy.  But, all the while there were countless folks in our own country with that very same disease.  And they were left to suffer.”
            Yes, sir.  They were ready to kill Jesus right there in his hometown.
            They didn’t want to be saved.  They didn’t want to be saved if it meant that they had to come to terms with some dark places in their own souls.  They didn’t want to be saved if they had to imagine that God’s grace wasn’t just for them.
            Jesus wasn’t there to defeat their enemies.  Jesus was there to minister to their enemies.  And he was there to minister to them.
            Here’s the thing.  And I’ll close with this.  If Jesus is able to save any of us, if he is able to transform our hearts and minds into what God desires for us, then he cannot be held captive to our expectations, our desires, or our prejudices.  In order to save us, Jesus has to be what God wants him to be, and not what we want him to be.  And in order to be truly saved, we have to be willing to let Jesus challenge us as well as comfort us.
 
Rev. David James Brown
Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)