Epiphany 4C
February 3, 2019
Luke 4:21-30 (plus vss. 16-21)
INTRODUCTION
Today’s
readings give us a little glimpse into the life of a prophet, or at least
Jeremiah and Luke do that. In Jeremiah we will hear the story of Jeremiah’s
call, which came to him when he was only a little boy. Jeremiah suggests that
maybe God did not have the right idea calling him, since he was just a boy and
didn’t really know how to speak the word of the Lord! God offers him some words
that I’m sure brought young Jeremiah very little comfort, about the difficult
life Jeremiah had ahead of him as a prophet of the Lord.
The story from
Luke shows us that not much has changed for prophets in the several centuries
that have gone by: in today’s story, Jesus is nearly killed for offering God’s
people a difficult, prophetic word! But that is sort of par for the course for
prophets, whose job is not so much to tell the future, as I think many of us
assume, but rather, to call people out on the ways they have strayed from God’s
will. Often this comes in the form of, “If you don’t change your ways, there’s
gonna be trouble for you,” which is where the reputation as future-tellers
comes in. But really, a prophet’s purpose is to call us back toward God’s will,
God’s way, and that call is seldom one that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy
inside… as we shall see today in our Gospel lesson.
As you listen
to today’s texts, notice what path it is that God is calling us toward, and
consider how well we, as people of faith, are following it, and how we might
better live into it. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I’m at a point
in my life where I want to start purging a bunch of stuff I no longer need. One
thing that I consider getting rid of every time I see it in the attic is our
collection of baby gates. These were of course invaluable when we had rug rats
whom we wanted to contain to one part of the house, but as soon as our kids
learned to climb, they were rendered useless. There are certainly some moments
when I long for the days when our children could be so easily contained!
We do like to
be able to keep things contained, don’t we? Putting up walls – whether a baby
gate, or a wooden fence between properties, or fencing 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 (an infant away from the stairs, 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 dangerous strangers from our land).
Walls serve a number of practical purposes, but when it comes down to it, walls
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. Look at today’s Gospel reading. This is the first
public appearance of Jesus’ 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 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.” Then he tells the
crowd that today, this reading has been fulfilled in their hearing.
At first, the crowd is very
impressed! I suspect 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 the prophet Elijah – Sidon, against which prophets
declared judgments, the one-time oppressors of Israel. And of all the lepers
during the time of the prophet Elisha, it was Naaman from Syria, 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 used to do by putting up baby gates, but instead of keeping God from
climbing the stairs, the Israelites tried to keep God from loving anyone with
whom they were not comfortable. But Jesus does more than simply climb over the
gate – 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 than they were used to. Rage, that
he would take away their sense of 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? Maybe you are feeling it right now, in
respone to how many times I have used the word “wall” in this sermon. The great
American wall debate is certainly a hot topic in our country right now – and
you may feel rage by my even mentioning it, whether you believe it is needed,
or a waste of resources, or symbolically problematic, or whether funding it is
worth shutting down the government over. We have seen a lot of rage on both
sides of this issue, from our president and congress, from government workers, from
the media, and certainly from our own friends and family. Even in this respite
from the government shut-down, the country, it seems, is filled with rage!
What else has caused you to react with
rage? A person in your life? A situation? A particular incident? When you feel
that 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, my natural inclination is to push back, rising to meet the
person in their anger – all justified, of course, all done with good intentions.
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 may look like anger, but really, 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 – a life that doesn’t always
make logical sense, but that commits to the call of the Christian, to love one
another as God has loved us, even if that sort of love is risky to our
reputation, our livelihood, or our sensibilities.
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 love,
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.
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