January 30 sermon

Let the words my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen

Today we have a continuation of our gospel reading from last Sunday. In fact, the last verse of the reading last Sunday is the first verse today. The sentence concludes with “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke goes further to tell us that “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Everybody’s happy—hometown boy makes good!

But by the end of the reading, they’re ready to throw him off the cliff. What happened so quickly that his friends, his hometown buddies changed their minds? Wasn’t this Joseph’s son? You’re one of us! But, how did a carpenter’s son get to be a rabbi? We’ve heard of the things you have done in Capernaum where there are many Gentiles because of the trade routes. So now, brother, we would expect you to do the same things here in Nazareth where everybody’s your friend and we’re all Jews. Something like that would put little old Nazareth on the map. You could set up your headquarters right here.

You can do for us what you did for them. That was the reversal! And all of a sudden it became a “us versus them” situation. After all, we are Jews and God came to us first. We are his chosen. “Do for us what you did for them.” They have done nothing to deserve anything from Yahweh. So, you should be doing things for us. It got to be a “us versus them” mentality.

But Jesus reminded them of two of their renowned prophets, Elijah and Elisha. Elijah saved a widow and her son, Gentiles, when he saved none of the Jews. And Elisha cured Naaman, the Syrian, in the in Jordon River when there were plenty of other lepers in the countryside. In both stories, the prophet healed foreigners, while seemingly ignoring fellow Jews.

What Jesus was saying to his friends was just because I’m from God doesn’t mean I’m only for you. Just because I’m from God doesn’t mean I’m only for you. His “friends” were filled with rage. They drove him out of the synagogue, the town, and they even wanted to throw him off the cliff.

Didn’t Jesus understand? In a small town, everybody works together. You’re one of us, not them.

We are in the season of Epiphany—the season in which God, through Jesus Christ, is revealed to the world. Jesus shows us who God is. But at the same time, in this season, Christ shows us who we are. And sometimes we are selfish, and we want Jesus to be ours and ours alone.
Most of us have sung the hymn, “Blessed Assurance.” Have you paid attention to the words? When we complete the first line, we sing, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.” Really? I know I’m not the first to question that. Jesus does not belong to us. We belong to him. We get so concerned about what Jesus can do for us, and we get too interested in having a Jesus that looks like us and thinks like us and acts like us that we forget Jesus was not made in our image, but we were created in his image. It’s a spiritual thing; it’s not a physical or ethnic or gender thing.

Jesus tells his friends at Nazareth that the Messiah has not just come for them, but for everybody—the people of Syria, of Capernaum, and to the Romans and the Greeks and to all other foreigners. And sometimes the needs of these people will take priority over the needs of the people who considered themselves God’s only children.

The people of Nazareth had forgotten about Jeremiah as we read earlier. They had forgotten that as God’s Chosen People, they had been claimed by God, even while they were in their mother’s womb, (they had been claimed) for a purpose, not for privilege. They had been created to be prophets to other nations, not rulers of the world. And as a church, we can sometimes forget that, too.

We begin to think it’s all about us and we have to be reminded that it’s not. It’s about being a servant people, a people who are invited to share God’s light, to share his never ending love and mercy to the whole world. After all he loves you, and so do I.