January 30, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 4:21-30[1]
Jesus had been
baptized. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he had been in the wilderness forty
days, tempted by the devil. He began to preach in the synagogues around Galilee
and his fame began to spread. When he came to Nazareth, word of his activities
had come ahead of him. In the local synagogue that Sabbath day, he was given
the scroll of Isaiah to read.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the
oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.[2]
The people were
amazed at how eloquent he was. The hometown boy here to make us proud. Who knew
Joseph’s son was so wise? Yes, such a nice boy. As their eyes turned toward
him, he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Suddenly,
they were troubled. Bold words. Presumptive. Who does he think he is? Isn’t
this Joseph’s son?
What would it
be like if Jesus was from Union, and came here to preach that first sermon?
Imagine, his pants loose from 6 weeks without eating, his face thin, but
bright. He stands strong, confident, ready to take on the world. He speaks in a
way that is common yet melodic. A voice that is familiar yet draws us out into
a larger world. He begins to talk about that passage from Isaiah. Maybe he
would say:[3]
The Spirit of
the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to bring good, fresh
food to those who exist only on fast food, because the grocery store is a thirty-minute
drive both ways.
The Spirit of
the Lord has anointed me to forgive all your student loans; to bring living
water to the people of Flint, Michigan, and Syria, and Haiti; to tell the janitors
that the Board of Directors is giving all the stock options to them; to
dismantle our system of profits at the expense of people; because the Spirit of
the Lord had sent me to bring good news to the poor.
I imagine Jesus
standing here and saying:
The Spirit of
the Lord has sent me to release the captives, to free the addicts from the
needle and the bottle and the laptop, to remove the feeling of worthlessness
from the depressed, to bring rest to the sleep-deprived parents of babies, to free
those wrongly imprisoned by a justice system so often lacking in actual justice,
to bring an end to the slave-labor of the prison system, to welcome the alienated,
to forgive the sinner, to break us from the bonds of a troubled past, because
the Spirit of the Lord has sent me to bring release to the captives.
Imagine him
saying:
I have come to
bring recovery of sight to the blind, to forever change the way we see those
whose abilities differ from our own, to illuminate the ways that human sin
tears at the fabric of our common humanity, to allow us to see who we really
are–beloved children of God, to show us that the Kingdom of God is at hand, to allow
us to see ourselves as God see us, to help us understand that there really is
no longer a “them,” there is only an “us,” because the Spirit of the Lord has
sent me to bring recovery of sight to the blind.
The Spirit of
the Lord has sent me to bring freedom to the oppressed, the overworked, the
under-appreciated, the last chosen, the unlovely, the despised, the unseen, the
overly-proud, the parts of ourselves that are so small. “Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[4]
If the sermon
ends there, we’re all good. Wow, what a good sermon. But Jesus knew that if he
hadn’t made them uncomfortable yet, he soon would. Because his message wasn’t
only for them. The truth is, they were no different than their ancestors who mistreated
the prophets God sent to them. Even if they hadn’t demanded signs yet, they soon
would. People in your hometown know you a little too well; you’re no better
than they are. They might have expected the hometown hero to put on a big show only
to tear it down and pick it apart. If Jesus wouldn’t perform then they would
reject him. Jesus knew this from the very beginning.
Jesus tells the
people in Nazareth that the Gospel must go elsewhere, to the Gentiles as well
as the Jews. Jesus references Elijah and Elisha, the well-known Israelite
prophets, yet cites stories that show them helping the outsiders more than the
Israelites.
In the first
example, Elijah seeks refuge from a famine with a poor widow at Zarephath in
Sidon. Why did Elijah go to this foreign woman to seek refuge? The king of
Israel was Ahab, who worshipped Baal. Elijah, as a prophet of the Lord fled,
seeking refuge in the land of the enemy, bringing blessing to a Gentile.
In the second
example, Naaman the Syrian general came to Elisha to seek healing from his
leprosy. Why was this foreigner cleansed when the lepers of Israel were not? Again,
it was a time when God’s judgement fell on Israel for turning away from the
worship of the Lord. Naaman, having been healed, became devoted to the Lord.
“When they
heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”[5]
How dare he insult them like this! Preaching God’s judgement against us? We’ll
show him our judgement. And they drove him to the brow of the hill to throw him
off the cliff.
How did they go
so quickly from admiring the wise boy from home to wanting to kill him? They
felt provoked. Jesus had attacked their sincerity and questioned their motives.
They didn’t appreciate the criticism. If I preached too often about Black Lives
Matter, gay people, or against guns, you might run me out of town too. Someone
like me has to strike a balance between comforting the afflicted and afflicting
the comfortable. There is the priestly task of maintaining things the way they
are, and the prophetic one of turning over the tables. Jesus leaned heavily on
the prophetic side of that scale, and folk didn’t always appreciate being
criticized. Most of the time, I prefer to keep my job.
In the end, Jesus
wasn’t pushed off a cliff, “but he passed through the midst of them and went on
his way.”[6]
Jesus—who brought a message of freedom for the oppressed, good news for the
poor, and release to the captives—moves through the crowd and goes in search of
other ears to hear. The gospel is good news, but not to those who have no need
of saving. The fulfillment of scripture is a challenge to those who aren’t
ready to leave everything behind to follow the way of self-sacrifice. Yet, for
those who keep their eyes fixed on Jesus, the paths are straight and the hills
and valleys become but bumps in the road.
Imagine Jesus
walking out of Union, heading for Marengo, Belvedere, Rockford, and beyond. We
can stand here and grumble about how we like the way things are and nothing
needs to change. Or, we can accept that today the scripture has been fulfilled
in our hearing, allow it to change us for the better, and seek for hope,
healing, and justice in the name of the One who loves us all. Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] Isaiah
61:1-2a.
[3] This
imagining of a sermon on Isaiah adapted from the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, “If
Jesus Was Your Preacher: a Sermon,” January 27, 2016, on https://www.patheos.com/.
[4] Luke
4:21.
[5]
Luke 4:28.
[6]
Luke 4:30.
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