Scripture Reading: Luke 4:21-30
The reading is a continuation of a story begun last week. Jesus is beginning his work of teaching about the kingdom of God, and showing the people of Galilee how near the good will of God is in their lives. After travelling all around Galilee, he is finally back in Nazareth where he grew up.
It’s the sabbath. Jesus is in the synagogue along with everyone else. He stands up to read, and chooses a passage from the prophet Isaiah about God anointing a servant to bring good news to the poor, to free those who are bound, to help those who are blind to see in new ways, and to help the oppress rise up and be strong.
As was the custom, after standing to read at the lectern, Jesus rolls up the scroll, and sits down to offer teaching about what he has read. The story says “the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him” as they waited to see what he would say.
Jesus began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
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.
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.’”
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “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.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.
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. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Meditation
In this story, I think we need to pity the poor people of Nazareth. Show them some grace. Cut them some slack.
They come off sounding pretty bad when they turn against Jesus for telling them that the good will of God for people in need is starting somewhere other than with them. The story says that when they hear this, they are furious. So angry that in the middle of worship they get up (just picture this -- right in the middle of worship they get up), force Jesus out of the synagogue, march him out of town, and take him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.
As you see in the picture, it's quite a drop. It might very well have ended Jesus’ ministry right then and there almost before it got started. Would’ve saved the authorities in Jerusalem and Rome all the trouble they had to go to three years later.
But we can’t be too hard on them. Because who doesn’t want the home-town hero to stand up for them, and give them a special place in the sun?
They heard the news of this wonder-preacher spreading good news of God’s healing love all over Galilee, and now he’s in their midst. And lo and behold, it’s Jesus the son of Joseph. He’s their own hometown boy, and how could they not expect that the blessings of heaven would now begin to shower down on them? “It’s Jesus – our personal messiah!”
Personal messiah!
That was the language of my teenage conversion experience – that I was giving my heart and my life to Jesus as my personal saviour. Not that I desired the judgment and destruction of others in hell just to serve my needs and my place in God’s kingdom. But it meant that if others didn’t give themselves to Jesus as I did, at least I was still saved. I might pity and pray for and even work for the salvation of others too, but no matter how that turned out, I knew I would be going to heaven. I would be blessed in this life on Earth. I had my messiah to save and serve me, even if no one else got included in that holy grace.
Jesus sees it differently, though. I think I severely misunderstood the meaning of the Gospel, and the nature of God’s love.
The way Jesus puts it to the people in Nazareth is that the year of the Lord’s favour – the time of setting things right, at least for now, is beginning with other people, and is not being headquartered in Nazareth.
He knows they’ll be let down. They’re already envious of what’s happening in other towns. “I’m sure you’ll ask me to do here what was done in Caparenaum,” he says.
And then of all the stories of the prophets that tell of God working for good in the world, he picks two in which instead of blessing the people of Israel in a time of need, God reaches out to bless their enemies instead. Non-Jews. People outside the covenant community.
It’s almost as though -- not even "almost" -- Jesus is going out of his way to antagonize them. To poke at their understanding of what it means to be “God’s people.” To put a pin to the balloon of what they think it means to be “God’s elect.” And to burst it.
Because what does it mean?
In this story Jesus makes it clear it doesn’t mean we have first dibs on God’s blessings and the worldly signs of God’s favour. Very often that’s what we think, and what any religious people are tempted to think. From the ancient times of national gods and household deities, up to our own day, it’s been assumed that the point of having a god and worshipping your God properly is to be guaranteed some kind of place and power in the world, to have your nation blessed, and to enjoy prosperity and well-being for your household, your family and yourself.
But Jesus doesn’t see it that way. Not that God doesn’t care about us, and isn’t at work in our lives for good and for our well-being. And doesn’t reach out to help and to heal us. We have enough evidence in our lives to know God does care and does act for our good and well-being.
But it’s not just us that
God cares about. It’s also the
others. All the others. Even the others who really are completely
other from us. And sometimes before us. Sometimes seemingly instead of us.
And we’re called not only to be okay with that, but to rejoice in it.
A professor of theology named David Lose puts it this way – “If there is one line that sums up the Jesus we discover in Luke’s account, it’s this: God came to redeem everyone. When we focus on ‘redeem,’ it’s good news. When we focus on ‘everyone,’ and call to mind those we believe have done us wrong … or who frighten us … or who are different … or who seem unnatural … that same line is terrifying. In being drawn into the way of God’s love we lose all claims, you see, to why we deserve something (and presumably others do not), as we recognize that deserving simply has no place in the kingdom of God.”
Because what the kingdom of God is about is having a perspective as big as the healing of all the world, and a vision open enough to embrace the whole picture, even if the focus at any one time is on the healing and empowering of people other than us, beyond us, and maybe even against us.
And if that’s the case, what does it mean to be God’s people and to be God’s elect?
As I said, it doesn’t mean we have first dibs on God’s blessing. It does mean, though, that we’re among those in the world who are attuned to see and to hear where God is at work, and to be part of it, and to help others see it for what it is. To lift it up. To speak and to act in support of it.
Which is why, for instance, people of all colours are invited by God to rejoice in the rise of Black Lives Matter, and to let it be what it needs to be as a gracious movement of God and God's Word and God's Spirit for someone else's healing at this time in our history.
And why in Canada, indigenous and settler
people alike are called to affirm that Every Child Matters, and to be glad that the First Nations are being helped by God at this point in our history to find new voice, new hope, new strength.
It makes me think that one great thing about COVID is that at least for a while we all learned to say things like “we’re all in this together” and “no one is safe, until all are” and “I do what I do and do what I can not just for my own well-being, but also for yours, whoever you are, and for theirs, wherever they are.” And we really believed these things, and tried to act them out.
For a while ... most people ... as best we could.
Which really focuses a light, I think, on the answer to the question of what it means to be God's people in the world, and God's elect in our time.
We know God cares for us, and seeks our well-being in all things. But it doesn't mean we have first dibs -- or some times even any claim at all, on God's blessing.
Because part of our own well-being is to see how God is alive and moving in the world in so many other places, and on behalf of so many other people different from us, and apart from us. We are invited to bear witness to that, to rejoice in it, to speak and to act as we are able in support of it, and to be one of many in the world who give thanks for the unveiling of the good work of God in our time, for the healing of all the world, no matter where and among whom it begins at any time.
Because really we are well, only when all are well.
And that is what God is up to, all the time, in one place after another, for the good of all.
Praise be to God.
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