4th Sunday after
the Epiphany - Year C
February 3, 2013
Luke 4:21-30
Then he began to say to them, "Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 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 hurl him off the cliff. But he passed
through the midst of them and went on his way.
Last summer was my wife’s 25th high school class
reunion; and in a little over two years my class is planning on gathering to
recall the stories of high school and share what has happened in the 25 years
since we graduated. Reunions can be a
lot of fun. All of us have had the
opportunity of getting together with someone we haven’t seen in a while. The years almost seem to melt away. Whether it was 2 years or 20, we start over
where we had left off. My brother and I
are like that. We may go for months
without actually talking to each other, and the moment we are together, it’s
like we were never apart.
I enjoy being able to catch up with the lives and events that
have happened in my friends lives. But
there is also something bittersweet in how the years melt away. In the years we have been apart we have grown
and changed, yet there is a tendency to remember the person who was rather than
to see the person who is. It’s sort of
like when you see nieces and nephews or grandchildren after a long break, they
have grown and changed in so many ways; yet, you still think of the way you
bounced them on your knee, and are shocked to hear they are now riding a bike
or have been to their first ‘big kid’ dance.
Then there are our classmates who have done well. I have a classmate from Wartburg who has been
on the forefront of creating drugs to fight cancer since she was on college. I have another classmate who is hoping to
find a publisher for his first novel.
Another classmate is the pastor of one of the biggest churches in
Minnesota. To the best of my knowledge,
none of my classmates have struck it rich, and given lots of money back to the
schools they went to. I heard last week
that Michael Bloomberg the mayor of New York City has committed to giving
another $350 million to his alma-mater John Hopkins; that brings his gifts to
that school to over a billion dollars!
I find it funny how schools tend to advertise their famous
graduates. Even towns will do their best
to get something out of their famous former residents. Here in Iowa, West Branch advertises itself
as the birthplace of President Herbert Hoover.
John Wayne was born in Winterset.
The artist Grant Wood was born just outside of Anamosa. Wrestling legend Dan Gable was born just down
the road in Waterloo. And, who can
forget that Capt. James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise is going to be born
in Riverside in the year 2233!
We take pride in the children that have grown up around
us. We think of them as part of who we
are (even if we never met them). When we
get the opportunity, we want to celebrate their achievements, claim their being
one of us, make them Grand Marshall of the Fourth of July parade. As long as they don’t do anything to embarrass
us, as long as they still say they grew up around us, as long as they come home
and let us bask a little bit in their notoriety it all works out.
But what if that person we are so proud of having graduated
from our school, gives a huge gift to the school down the road and ignores
us? What if that politician who grew up
next door stops caring about his hometown and is more concerned with the
capital? What if our hometown boy who
ends up playing in the Super Bowl doesn’t even mention his hometown, or his
high school coach in interviews? What if
a member of our church dies and leaves a huge endowment to the church in the
next town, and not to us?
Our text is really a story about the hometown boy returning
in the midst of his growing notoriety.
The town is proud; this is one of their own. But, things don’t turn out all that great for
Jesus, or the crowd gathered at the synagogue. I’ve heard some people say that Jesus was
rejected and unable to do miracles in his hometown because the people couldn’t
accept him for who he was, they all remembered too strongly the youth that had
grown up in their midst, had play dates and sleep-overs with their kids. But I don’t think that’s really what’s going
on here.
If we look back just a few verses, the people were thrilled
to have Jesus home. They were eager to
have him around, they gathered to hear what he might say, they wanted to see
some of the miracles they were hearing rumors of. So things started out well enough, then
something changed. Jesus explained in a
bit more detail the full impact of what he had read, of what his coming meant,
of how the Kingdom he was inaugurating was going to work.
Suddenly, the people weren’t so thrilled. Jesus placed himself among the prophets of
the Old Testament. Prophets are
interesting people, because pretty much all prophets are independent contractors;
they work for God alone. It doesn’t
matter where they grew up, where they went to school, who their relatives are;
they cannot be influenced by those connections.
They follow the guidance of God alone.
Jesus puts himself in that place, and suddenly the folks in Nazareth
realized they weren’t going to get anything by riding on the coattails of their
hometown boy. His focus in ministry will
not be on them but others; not on insiders but on those that have been excluded
and pushed aside. That’s not what they
wanted to hear. They thought that the
Messiah, their hometown boy, was there to serve their needs, not the needs of
others.
All of us want to have a gracious God. We want to be able to proclaim that God is
good, that God is a source of blessing.
But, what we really want to be able to say is that God is good to
us. That God has blessed us. That we are special in God’s eye, at least
more special than those people over there that are so messed up. After all, the Messiah, he’s our home town
boy, he’s our Messiah. Of course he’s
going to do special things in our midst.
Why wouldn’t he?
The
people in Nazareth recognize and marvel at Jesus' "gracious words"
(v. 22); but when illustrations of how God's grace has been given to outsiders
are shared; their feelings turn to rage. They are hearing that God does not act the way
they want God to act. They may claim God
as theirs, but God claims a lot more than just them. Do we really want a gracious God? Certainly we do -- for ourselves; but can we
have a gracious God if we don't believe that the same grace is given to those
sinners outside our church doors, outside our faith traditions, outside our
boundaries of acceptability?
It’s
not a comfortable question. The folks in
Nazareth certainly didn’t like it. But it’s
a question we must be willing to challenge ourselves with, unless we want Jesus
to do what he did on that day in Nazareth and pass through our midst and go on
his way. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment