Be the Exception
Luke 4:22-30; Jeremiah 1:4-10
Last week, as we anticipated the pulpit swap with Hope Presbyterian, Pastor Christie Ashton said that she believed this was close to the 20th time that this tradition of Hope’s pastor and Weatherly’s pastor trading places. When Christie asked me last fall if I would be interested in continuing the tradition, of course, I said, yes! In the midst of a lot of change here at Weatherly, it seemed like a good plan to stick with something that had been meaningful in the past. Of course, a Baptist would want to keep a tradition going. We are a pretty change-averse crowd. We stick with things we like. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
By the way, Do you know how many Baptists it takes to change a lightbulb?
CHANGE?!?!
No one hears any words after the word, change. I try to be very careful about even using the word. I say it gently and quietly… Change is hard. I should know. We have been through plenty of it... Especially when it’s change you don’t expect.
I think that’s some of what the people of Nazareth are experiencing in today’s text – change they didn’t expect. Jesus stood and read a few verses from Isaiah 61. He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and then gave his eight-word sermon, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
If he had just stopped there... Everyone was raving about him. So impressed. “This is Joseph’s son, isn’t it?” It wasn’t disparaging. It was pride. If he had stopped there, it would have been a sweet and wonderful homecoming. They would have shaken his hand at the door and invited him to lunch and talked about the good old days. He was home. He could have stayed there and been a minor celebrity – someone folks wanted to be seen with, spoken to out in public.[1]
For Jesus, at home with these people who helped raise him, and with this important, defining community – this was the place he intended to be clear about his mission and purpose. In front of the hometown crowd, who remembered Jesus the way that hometown folk do, Home became a place of clarity. Charisse Tucker described Jesus as “grounded in his unfolding.”[2]
Those gathered in the synagogue that day were people who lived by the Law, who reverenced the writings of the Prophets, their spirits were stirred by the good and hopeful word that Jesus proclaimed from the prophet Isaiah. Those verses spoke of a time that all of Israel had hoped for, prayed for, prepared for. But he didn’t stop there.
From this point forward his relationship to Nazareth would be different. He knew it. Because if this scripture is fulfilled TODAY, and God’s purposes are unfolding through him, there will be CHANGE. There will be changes in the conditions of those who have waited and hoped. Those changes for the poor, the wronged, the heart-broken start today. Jesus had come to set things right but this would turn things upside down. Jesus’ mission and vision was bigger than one small town in the hill country of Galilee.
That’s what he sets out to explain. And the crowd doesn’t want to hear it. Well, he starts by saying something like, I know you don’t understand why anyone would want to leave Nazareth… I know you want me to settle down here where all the people who matter to me are… But honestly, you don’t need me here. You won’t hear me here.
Wait, he said that?
No prophet is welcome in their own hometown.
He knew what was between the lines of their approval. He could SEE that they were blinded by their assumptions of him… Here he was back to demonstrate his extraordinary works among them. They assume privilege for themselves that Jesus brought God’s favor to Nazareth. But he talks about what he did in Capernaum. Capernaum had a strong non-Jewish population. That Jesus has taken God’s favor to others beyond Nazareth… That’s what’s bugging them. That’s the problem. God’s healing, liberation, restoration has gone and will go beyond the hometown, beyond Judea, beyond the chosen Israel.
Then, he takes a jab at their old familiar interpretation of the scripture. Defending his ministry to outsiders, he offered two stories from the Hebrew scriptures. Both Elijah and Elisha took God’s favor to non-Jews.[3] In a time of severe famine, their hero Elijah was sent to a Sidonian widow. She was important enough to be saved, blessed and loved by God. She wasn’t one of them. Then another time, Elisha was sent to heal a Syrian general of leprosy. Syrian? What is Jesus proclaiming now? Is he just trying to tick people off? God sent Elisha to a Syrian refugee who was as likely to hurt a Hebrew as hate him. Syrians lived in fear for their whole lives. They were surrounded by war and killing and lived in unjust systems that didn’t value them as human beings but as pawns in a power struggle. Perhaps Jesus’ listeners thought, “don’t drop that mic just yet Jesus. We need to look out for our own. We need to think of ourselves first before you run off to save… them. [Wait, are we still talking about Biblical times? Or is that me in the story?][4] That these two stories were in their own scriptures, might account for their blind familiarity – heard it so many times they didn’t see the true meaning. It might also account for some of their growing hostility toward Jesus. They had read how God saved Gentiles (outsiders) again and again. Hadn’t they? Israel knew of God’s grace toward other people as early as the covenant with Abraham. Remember Jonah… The mascot of that capacity in all of us, Jew and Christian alike, to be offended by God’s grace to all those of whom we do not approve. The reason Jonah did not want to preach to the Ninevites was, and I quote, “I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2). He knew God would save them!
[5]Fred Craddock writes, Learning what we already know is often painfully difficult. All of us know what it is to be at war with ourselves, sometimes making casualties of those who are guilty of nothing but speaking the truth in love.
Sending a Messiah to God’s chosen people was never going to be about only saving themselves. This month of scripture lessons is asking us to consider what it means to be the exception. The ‘exception’ to what you might ask. When you say you're a Christian, what do people expect that means? Or when you say you’re a Baptist? Or when you talk about church… I think those words in our context, our culture, carry a lot of baggage. They carry a lot of Us and Them baggage.
I have seen so much Us and Them talk recently. I’ve seen so many trying to say This is what it means to be Christian and That is not what it means to be Christian. There’s been a lot of un-gospeling. That’s not the gospel. THIS is the gospel! A caution I take from today’s scripture lesson is, let’s not allow ourselves to get so familiar, or so comfortable with our religion (with what we think we know, and what we think each other expect) that we forget to question what we’ve always read, always said… We can still learn something from Jesus, from this living Word.
The gospel, the good news is not only what we have experienced in Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. The good news, as preached by Jesus himself, is supposed to also liberate souls and minds; heal hearts and brokenness. The good news is meant to stretch our understanding of who God is and who Jesus is. It is supposed to break open what we have always believed and always done in the name of faith because God’s circle is ever-widening. God’s grace extends beyond any border we establish. As God’s story unfolded in the person of Jesus Christ, he is literally run out of town and nearly killed but for the guiding hand of the Spirit. (this time)
Friends, proclaiming the truth about God’s mercy and love for all people is the exception here in the Bible Belt. Because it means God wants to turn things upside down - the rich and powerful change places with the poor and oppressed… And change that seeks to unseat power is revolutionary. That’s the message of Isaiah 61 and Luke 4.
Be the Exception to trite religiosity. Let us stand up for a Gospel that doesn’t protect its own, but puts others first. A Gospel that is both John 3:16 and Luke 4… if you will:
For God so loved the ever-widening world, that God gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish in bondage and oppression, in blindness and brokenness, but shall live clear-eyed, in wholeness, liberated and free NOW and forever. Amen.
[1]https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/where-you-are-embracing-the-familiar/fourth-sunday-after-the-epiphany-year-c-lectionary-planning-notes
[2] Tucker, Charisse
[3] Craddock
[4]https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/where-you-are-embracing-the-familiar/fourth-sunday-after-the-epiphany-year-c-lectionary-planning-notes
[5] Craddock