Sermon: The walls came a-tumblin down (Jan. 31, 2016)

Epiphany 4C

January 31, 2016

Luke 4:21-30

Grace in her playpen

            Every parent looks forward to the big milestones in their baby’s life – first words, first steps, first solid food... Last weekend, Grace met one of them: she can now roll over in either direction, belly to back, and back to belly! Of course, we are very proud parents, boasting about how amazing our child is (as if no other child had ever done this!). But I quickly realized the consequences of her new skill when I took her with me to a pastor continuing education event this past week. I tried to keep her wrangled and maintain some semblance of normal in a strange place, while she, with her curiosity, combined with her newfound mobility, was rolling and squirming all over the place, reaching for things on the table, not staying put on a blanket on the floor, even clawing her way out of her little bassinet. Thankfully I had brought a portable playpen, and could plop her in there when I didn’t want her to go anywhere. She may not have liked it much, but at least with the help of these four mesh walls, I was able to keep her contained while I went about doing what I needed to do.

            We like to be able to keep things contained, don’t we? Putting up walls – whether the mesh walls of a pack-n-play, or a wooden fence between properties, or a stone wall along a border – makes us feel like we have control, like we are safe. They keep what’s inside the wall safe from what is outside of it (a newly mobile infant away from any number of dangerous items in the home, for instance, or a dog from running out into the street). And, they keep what is undesired on the outside from coming in (the neighbor’s prying eyes from our yards, or deer from the rose garden, or strangers from our land). Walls serve a number of practical purposes, but when it comes down to it, walls

Great Wall of China

make us feel safe and in control, because we can choose what to allow to come in or go out.

But Jesus, it would seem, disagrees with this careful logic. Let’s do a little recap of what happened last week, because today’s Gospel reading is a part of that same story. Last week we heard of Jesus’ first public appearance of his ministry, in which he teaches in the synagogue using a reading from Isaiah that says, “The Spirit of God is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good new 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.” Then he tells the crowd that today, this reading has been fulfilled in their hearing, which is where today’s reading began.

Naaman the Syrian leper

Now, we get to see the crowd’s response to Jesus’ sermon. At first, they are very impressed! They feel some sense of honor and ownership over this young man, Jesus, who grew up right in their little town. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they say, with admiration. “Well hasn’t he grown up into a fine young man!” But Jesus tells them, “No, you’ve missed the point. What I’m telling you is that all the people you don’t want anything to do with – these are the people I’m telling you God is blessing: the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the indebted. These people you can’t stand, don’t want to be near, whom you think are your enemies – these are the people to receive God’s favor!” And then to prove the point, Jesus tells them a few stories from their own scripture, their own history, of times when God blessed the outsider, the enemies of Israel, instead of Israel: in a severe famine, it was the widow from Sidon to whom God sent Elijah – Sidon, against which prophets declared judgments, the one-time oppressors of Israel. And of all the lepers during the time of Elisha, it was Naaman the Syrian, another enemy of Israel, who was cleansed. You see, Jesus says, God has a track record of reaching out and blessing the despised and the enemy, and now Jesus was here to do the same.

And the walls came a-tumblin’ down. You see, the people in Jesus’ time felt the same way about walls that we do, and they had built a metaphorical wall around their understanding of God to keep it safe. They tried to domesticate God, to control God, to make God do what they thought was right. They tried to tame God and keep God contained, like I did by putting Grace in a playpen. But Jesus approaches their God-walls, and takes a sledgehammer of grace to their carefully stacked stones, tearing them down, saying, “This is not your God. Your God doesn’t build walls. Your God tears walls down and reaches out to the stranger, to the weak, to those in need.”

“When all in the synagogue heard this, they were filled with rage!” Rage, Luke tells us, that Jesus would dare mess with their safe, carefully kept understanding of God. Rage, that he would challenge them to think, to act differently. Rage, that he would take away their safety and chip so vigorously away at the walls they had put around God, that they had put around themselves. They were filled with rage!

Clench your fists. Feel their rage. When have you felt that sort of rage? When have you reacted in that sort of rage? How have you reacted? When I am filled with rage, I find I often do things rashly, and say things I don’t mean, and spit out vitriolic words and want to hit things. And that is what this crowd did, too. They got up, drove Jesus out of town, and brought him to a cliff where they planned to hurl him off to his death. My goodness, how upset we get when the walls we put up are threatened! How irrational we can be when we feel our control and safety are challenged!

But do you see how Jesus responds? This is perhaps the most shocking part of the whole story. When someone is enraged at me, I tend to push back, rising to meet the person in their anger. But Jesus does not respond with the same rage. He does not spit vitriol back at them. Standing there, on the edge of a cliff, before an enraged crowd who literally wants to kill him… he merely walks through them, passing through their midst, and goes on his way.

            How brave is his response! I think our human tendency to react to others’ anger with anger of our own is an act of self-preservation. We feel attacked, and so we put up our defenses – more walls – and start fighting back, perhaps defensively, perhaps offensively. It is a fearful response. But not Jesus. Jesus’ response, to meet their anger and fear with peace, is brave. If only we could be like Jesus.

            Pastor Chuck Schwarz tells about the bravest of his five children, the youngest, who has cerebral palsy. This son greets every day with a smile. He lives his life, difficult as it must be some days, with grace and joy. He has a shirt, Pastor Chuck says, that proves the point. “Fearless,” it says

on the front. But it isn’t all one line, “fearless.” It is two: “Fear Less.” Fear less. Maybe I can’t be as brave as Jesus, but this, perhaps, I could do. Fear less. Fear less. And on the flip side of that, not only fear less, but also trust more. Trust more that when Jesus starts chipping away at our walls with his sledgehammer of grace, that what he is doing is calling us out of our safe, fearful stone cells, and into the difficult life of discipleship.

            You see, Jesus does not call us to be nice. He does not call us to be agreeable, or satisfactory, or pleasant. As Christians, we’re not called to keep on going the way we always have, to stay the same, to keep safe and hidden behind the comfort of our walls. We don’t come to church each week to hear, “You’re just great and doing everything right. Don’t change a thing!” No, we are called to proclaim the good news about the one who came to defeat fear and death forever, the one who came to change, challenge, love, move and transform us. There is more than enough rage and fear in the world already. Jesus calls us toward something different from what the world gives. Jesus calls us to respond to fear and walls with grace and peace.

            Let us pray… Transforming God, so often we put safety as our highest good, but you call us toward the difficult life of discipleship: toward loving those difficult to love and blessing those we would rather keep out. Tear down our walls, and give us courage to respond to fear with grace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.