2022 01 30 Sermon
Sermon for January 30, 2022 Epiphany 4C House of Prayer Lutheran Church
Luke 4:21-30; 1 Corinthians 13 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
You go to a concert. The artistry, the passion of the musicians that you feel coming through as you experience the music—it’s inspired! Greater than the sum of its individual parts. A performance like you just heard sounded perfect, fun, moving, and almost effortless on the part of the musicians, but it was actually the result of hours—days—years—of practice, lessons, rehearsals, hard work. As you left the theater you felt inspired, uplifted, taken out of your ordinary existence to a delight that exists only in the moment it is being created, yet the effect on you lives on. You’re excited by it, and want to experience a concert like that again.
Have you ever been to a performance like that? The reaction you might have is what I imagine the folks in Nazareth felt like after Jesus came back to his hometown. He had been on the road, traveling to neighboring towns, doing signs and wonders that gave people faith and hope. And now the local boy who made good is back. Last Sunday, we heard his core message in Nazareth, quoting from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.” It was that Spirit of God who was inspiring Jesus, as he taught people how to relate to others according to God’s ways—where each person is valued for simply being who they are, and recognizing that each person has something to contribute to the greater whole.
Well, the folks back home in Nazareth loved it! They loved his message! They were even amazed by it. “Isn’t this Joseph’s boy? We knew him as a little kid! We watched him grow up! Can you believe the man he’s become? Great job, Jesus! We’re proud of you!”
Their reaction makes what Jesus says next seem really strange; like he’s trying to provoke them for no reason. Jesus says, “Next you’ll be quoting to me the proverb ‘Doctor, cure yourself.’” In other words they’ll be saying: Jesus, take care of your own people. Take care of us. Similar to an uplifting, inspirational concert, we want to experience more and more of your gracious and amazing words for ourselves. “We know you’ve already been traveling to neighboring towns like Capernaum, healing people, teaching, working wonders and miracles. Now that you’ve practiced on them, you can set up shop right here in your hometown! You won’t have to go anywhere else ever again!”
Jesus anticipates that they will react this way because he knows them better than they know themselves. He’s spent years among the people of Nazareth—practically his whole life. He knows quite well their hopes and fears, their needs and desires, their motivations, their prejudices, their outlook on life. They’re not bad people. They’re good people, and he loves them. So he knows that they will like what he has to say, as long as it applies only to them.
Jesus doesn’t kick them out of his ministry; they are still included in God’s plan. But Jesus has to find a way to help them see that God’s grace, mercy, and love is at work on a much bigger scale than just the hometown crowd. So to broaden their horizons—to help them accept that God’s grace is for them but also for more than just them—he’s got to make them feel uncomfortable first. Christ came to bring comfort and peace to our souls, and to the world, but he knows that you don’t find that lasting comfort and peace without first acknowledging the discomfort in your life; in the world; and walking through the discomfort—until at last you gain deeper trust in God, deeper humility for yourself, deeper compassion towards others.
To make his point, this time Jesus turns not to the prophet Isaiah but hundreds of years earlier—to two stories of God’s grace from the prophets Elijah and Elisha. These are not simply stories of God’s grace for the people of Israel—but of God’s grace for Gentiles, for outsiders. For people not from “the old hometown”. For people who lived in a different place, had different beliefs, and a different way of looking at the world.
The first story Jesus tells is found in 1 Kings 17. A famine and drought in Israel resulted in many widows struggling to survive. But where did God send Elijah to work a miracle? All the way up the Mediterranean coast to Sidon (in modern-day Lebanon), to a widow at Zarephath. Elijah went to an outsider. The second story is found in 2 Kings 5, during the time of Elijah’s successor, Elisha. There were many lepers at this time, any one of whom would love to be healed of this skin disease. But who did God send Elisha to? Another outsider, Naaman the Syrian. Not only was Naaman a foreigner, he was commander of an enemy army! And now, as Jesus spoke, the people of Nazareth wanted so badly to have the enemy Roman army banished from their land. No wonder they were filled with rage at the examples Jesus used, and no wonder they wanted to throw him off a cliff!
From earliest times God has challenged his people to be looking for his grace at work beyond just ourselves, and even in those we consider outsiders. It’s when we fail to recognize that God is present and available to everyone, even to the outsiders, that we get into trouble: that’s when it becomes easy even to dehumanize those who are different, or turn them into scapegoats. This is what happened during the holocaust—and just last week was Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27th, 1945 being when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. With precise bureaucratic efficiency, the Nazi regime dehumanized and scapegoated the Jewish people as outsiders. I’ve read how, during those Nazi years, a non-Jewish person could go to a store in, say, Berlin or Paris, and find displays full of random items like silverware, or watches, or candlesticks. A random collection of household items feels like a rummage sale, not the result of carefully constructed mass-murder. A rummage sale doesn’t shock you or make you feel uncomfortable. A rummage sale makes you feel like you’re getting a good bargain—which is exactly what the Nazis wanted people to feel as they turned a blind eye to evil that was commonplace.
You won’t find the truth about the Holocaust by feeling like you’re shopping at an anonymous rummage sale. You’ll find the truth by looking for the particular details of the particular person behind each item. To ask: What town did this candlestick come from? Who set this on their dining room table, struck a match, and lit a candle, while they ate dinner with their family? Which family members sat around that table? Which schools did they attend? Which prayers did they say? What language did they speak? What hopes and dreams did they talk about? What jobs did they work so they could afford to buy this beautiful candlestick?
God created each person in his own image, to be loved and valued, not turned into an abstraction or statistic. So to know the truth you have to let the answers to those questions make you feel uncomfortable. Because even good people can be led astray—or worse, turned into accomplices to evil—when we stop accepting love as the greatest of God’s gifts; love as the primary description of who God is; love as the source and goal of our existence; love as the purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection; love as the difficult yet practical blueprint for how to live in the world. Because love takes shape in how we treat others. Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it’s not irritable or resentful. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
Faith in a God of love can, over time, lead us through the discomforts we feel until we finally gain the peace we’re hoping for—and we sure live with lots of discomfort on many levels these days. So many things changing so quickly; familiar ways of doing things not working like they used to; the constant need to adapt and improvise and develop. It’s hard and it’s tiring. But the God who sometimes leads us into discomfort will also lead us through it. When we allow ourselves to hand over our burdens to him in faith, Christ promises to carry them, and to carry us, and lift us up again. Not just us—his promise of grace is for all. Amen.