Text: Luke 4:21-30
Theme: "Giving Jesus the Boot!"
4th
Sunday after the Epiphany
February
3, 2013
FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton,
Texas
Rev.
Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
21 He began by
saying to them, “Today
this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
22 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.
23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will
quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do
here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is
accepted in his hometown.
25 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. 26 Yet
Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region
of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel
with leprosy[g] in the time of
Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
28 All the people in the synagogue
were furious when they heard this.
29 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
off the cliff. 30 But he walked right
through the crowd and went on his way.
If
my study is accurate, there have been 204 ticker-tape parades in New York City
since the tradition began in 1886. First
ticker-tape was the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Fast-forward to today, and the most recent
ticker-tape was last year, February 7th, as the New York Giants were honored
for winning the Super Bowl. They'll likely
hold the 205th ticker-tape this year for an NFL team coached by Harbaugh. (That's a sure bet.)
The
second tickertape, in 1899, had nothing to do with football. American Admiral Dewey had returned home from
Manila, and the parade honored him.
Folks waited another eleven years for the next ticker-tape: former President
Theodore Roosevelt returned home from a post-presidential African safari.
This
is one of the sub-plots to the entire story of the ticker-tape parade: Americans go out there and even leave the
country; they do great and noteworthy things; they come back home to the good
old U.S. of A, and they are recognized as heroes.
There
was no ticker-tape parade for Jesus.
However, He did return home to Nazareth after doing some noteworthy
things. You can go to Google Earth and
spot that town on a map today! That's
where he grew up -- with Mary and Joseph.
Word had gotten around that Jesus was something special. There were reports of healings and miracles
and such. "Did you hear? Jesus is coming home. Let's get to synagogue early so we get a good
seat."
Not
content to let Him hang around and chat in the narthex, they let the home town
boy be the worship leader that day. Jesus
read the Old Testament lesson from Isaiah, chapter 61: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He 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,
in a rather shocking move, Jesus sat down.
Only rabbis did that -- and that when they were about to teach (or, as
we might say, proclaim the Word after reading the text of the Word). The main point of the sermon was stated
immediately: "Today," says
Jesus, "this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Scripture is not ultimately fulfilled unless
its heard. "Faith comes by
hearing," the Bible says, "and what is heard is the preaching of
Christ."
They
started whispering to one another in worship. "Isn't this Joseph's
son?" they asked. They were amazed
at the gracious -- even lovely -- things Jesus said. It was a nice service -- a pleasant service
made even better since that favorite son, whom they had known since He was
"knee high to a grasshopper", had come home and even led them in
worship. How nice!
It
was at this point, though, amid all this
niceness, that things took a decidedly different turn. Jesus wasn't finished with the sermon. Perish the thought! The service might have
went on past 12 o'clock noon!
Jesus
said: "Truly I tell you, 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."
The reaction of
the folks in worship to these comments is the proverbial 180 degree turn. They went from admiring the gracious words of
Jesus to actually trying to throw him over a cliff. What -- in the interest of all things good,
right, and salutary -- irked them so much about what Jesus said? How, in just a few short minutes, did the
hometown boy turn into public enemy #1?
Why did they go from giving him affection to wanting to give Him the
boot?
All Jesus did
was give them a little history lesson.
There was a famine long ago, and many widows suffered. There was a
scourge of leprosy, too -- and many, likewise, suffered from that hideous,
socially-ostracizing skin disease. God
sends His prophets, Elijah and Elisha, to help with, respectively, the famine
relief and the cure for the leprosy.
Elijah goes to a widow in Sidon. Elisha is led to as an official in the
Syrian army.
The widow and
the army official have nothing in common -- except for two things: one, they are in desperate need; two, they
are NOT Israelites. This second point,
that they were not Israelites, was the point Jesus made that eventually put the
boot in his backside.
The sermon
Jesus delivered that day, quite simply,
did not fit their narrative. It was
like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Stated differently, the kingdom of Jesus was
inclusive -- inclusive even to non-Israelite WOMEN and officials from enemy
armies! Apparently, the kingdom of God,
to these rank and file folks from Nazareth, was EXclusive. If you didn't believe like us, act like us,
behave like us, look like us, hold the same political views as we do, and
support our cherished causes, then you're an outsider; God doesn't love you,
and we wish you would just go away. God
might love you if you first learn to be like us!
Jesus burst
that bubble in short order -- and they were having nothing of it.
For the life of
me, I can't picture it in my mind. More
than just give him the boot, the childhood neighbors of Jesus tried to kill Him
that day! They took Him to the edge of
town and tried to throw Him over a cliff.
And Jesus just walked right through it and went on His way.
Have you ever
heard of "exaggeration for effect"?
Maybe that's what is happening here.
I'm just wrestling with the text.
One thing, though, is quite certain:
people still do with Jesus what their own beliefs dictate. We'll line up with Jesus; we'll even cheer
Him on and claim deeper allegiance INSOFAR AS He baptizes and blesses OUR points
of view!
But the minute
Jesus comes along and challenges them (and even demands change), well, then we
back up and do the whole "Whoa, wait a minute" thing. The minute He gets "off message" --
our message, He gets the boot. When
Jesus starts to spout off things we don't like, we might not be as dramatic as
the folks from Nazareth but we have our ways of dealing with that. We water down His teachings to make them more
appropriate to modern sensibilities. We
effectively turn Jesus into a glob of Silly Putty -- molding and shaping Him
into our individual and even collective "opinion". Depending on the point of view, for
instance, we can come up with a
"2nd Amendment" Jesus or a "gun control" Jesus. We can come up with the Jesus who supports
the salutary effects of the "military/industrial complex" on the
economy, or the Jesus who really socks it to the greedy 1%. Pick your choicest narrative, and you can
come up with a Jesus who really deserves a ticker-tape parade.
It
is not as though we haven't been warned about this sort of thing. The apostle Paul wrote to his young protege',
Timothy, ago: "For the time will come when men will
not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will
gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears
want to hear."
Meanwhile, back
in Nazareth, Jesus walked through it all and went on His way. The question, now, is whether we are going to
stay back with the folks in Nazareth with the itching ears, or walk along with Jesus?
Where will such
walking, such following of Jesus, take us?
To a cross -- where the sacrifice for our sins, our self-centered
narratives, was made. To an empty
tomb--where that sacrifice was accepted. To a new day -- today! -- when we come
to His supper and not run Him off a cliff.
To a moment -- even now -- when we are reassured that we are loved by
God.
Amen.
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