San Williams, Presenter

Luke 4:21-35

"Christ's Broadening Way"

Not long ago, the Dahli Lahma visited Austin. People who went to hear him reported that, when the Dahli Lahma spoke, a serene and peaceful atmosphere filled the coliseum. Well, when Jesus spoke at this hometown synagogue in Nazareth, the atmosphere was anything but serene and peaceful.  Jesus' words provoked outrage. Worshippers leapt to their feet, shaking their fists at Jesus, faces red with anger. In fact, the assembled listeners rushed the speaker, dragged him to a nearby hill, and attempted to hurl him to his death. Such was Jesus' very first sermon!   

If only Jesus could have been one of our Teaching Church Students, I could have advised him on how to avoid the kind of reaction his first sermon provoked in Nazareth.  I'd tell him that it's not a good idea to charge into a congregation on your first Sunday in the pulpit and start offending people. I would have coached Jesus to take time with the congregation, listen to church members, build trust, establish relationships. Then, if necessary, he could say some hard, challenging words and the congregation would be more likely to listen to him. Any pastor who has been in the ministry for a while could have offered advice to Jesus about his first sermon. But if anyone gave Jesus such advice, he ignored it. 

Oh, his sermon started off agreeably enough.  For his text, he chose a reading from the prophet Isaiah.  "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," Jesus began, "because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor."  Surely the congregants were already nodding their heads in approval.  Undoubtedly they considered themselves poor, and thus assumed Jesus was affirming them as recipients of God's favor. Jesus continued his reading, "Proclaiming release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed."  At this the congregation probably shouted, "Amen." After all, they were captives who were oppressed by the Roman occupiers. The hometown folks must have been pleased, at least at first, with Jesus’ gracious, encouraging words. 

But then Jesus’ sermon took a dangerous turn.  He quoted two proverbs and made reference to his ministry in Capernaum. With the mention of Capernaum, people’s eyebrows raised and a murmur of disapproval erupted. This congregation would associate Capernaum with its large population of Gentiles.  Is Jesus saying that the Gentile sinners in Capernaum are as worthy of God's grace as are faithful observers of the law?  And why would Joseph's son cavort with these outsiders anyway?  He should stick with his own kind. But Jesus really sets them off when he reminds them that his inclusion of outsiders is biblical, well attested to in their own scriptures, and part of their tradition.  Jesus leans toward them and recalls an incident in I Kings. He tells the congregation, "Surely you've all read how the prophet Elijah bypassed many widows in Israel in order to offer assistance to the widow at Zarephath in the Gentile region of Sidon.” Now the protests begin in earnest. What impudence!   

Yet Jesus is undeterred.  He makes matters worse by giving them yet another story of God's inclusion of outsiders. "Now scroll down in your scripture II Kings," Jesus says. "There you'll note the passage about how there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except one and he was Israel's number one enemy, Naaman the Syrian."

"Enough!" the people scream. "Throw him out. Kill him.  Kill him." 

Now what do you suppose infuriated this congregation to the point that they wanted to have Jesus killed? His sermon must have been so threatening to their sense of self, and to their understanding of community, that that they could not tolerate it. After all, they were God's chosen, a people holy and set apart. Unlike Gentile pagans, they lived by God's laws.Their community had set boundaries prescribed by law and those boundaries were sacred, essential to their identity. It's almost as though Jesus, figuratively speaking, took an eraser and erased the script by which they lived.  In its place he wrote an alternative script for them, an alternative way of living and practicing their faith. In today's marketing parlance, Jesus was branding their community with a shocking message that read: Your enemies are God's friends. 

Is the congregation at Nazareth just one example of how mad we get when someone suggests that God loves the people we can't stand—people who disturb and offend us, who belong to God just as surely as we do? How would we like to be told that Jesus has become chaplain to Al Qaeda?  Or that God passed over a Sunday school teacher who was in the hospital in order to take care of a skuzzy strip-joint owner who was sick. "The problem," suggests Barbara Brown Taylor, "is not that God loves the despised Other more than God loves us. The problem is that people we cannot stand are loved just as much as we are by a God who has an upsetting sense of community. No matter how hard we try," Brown continues, "we cannot seem to get God to respect our boundaries. God keeps plowing right through them, inviting us to follow or get out of the way."  

And this is just what Jesus was doing in Nazareth.  Our episode in Nazareth concludes with the observation that Jesus "passed through the midst of them and went on his way." From Nazareth, he will go on his way, breaking down barriers and crossing boundaries.  Jesus breaks the barrier between men and women by speaking to the Samaritan woman.  He breaks the barrier of legalism by healing the blind on the Sabbath.  He blurs the boundary between clean and unclean, righteous and unrighteous, worthy and unworthy, by eating with sinners, embracing tax collectors, forgiving thieves, touching and healing lepers. And every time Jesus welcomed outsiders he met opposition from people who considered themselves insiders.   Yet no matter the opposition that Jesus encountered--first at Nazareth then elsewhere and finally in Jerusalem--he continued to press on. He went on his way, and his way was to proclaim the inclusive love of God.

So I suppose the only question remaining for us is whether to go with him. Our first step might be just to pause and ask ourselves who, in our lives, is the despised Other. Who are the people we simply can't abide?  For some it may be a co-worker, an arrogant professor, an abusive relative, a national leader or foreign enemy. We sometimes call Jesus' way the narrow way, and in one sense, that's true.  But in another sense, his is a broadening way, because it leads us into an ever-widening understanding of just who our neighbor is, who is included in God's family.

Newspapers several years ago carried the story of a reporter covering the war in Sarejevo.  It happened that a little girl walking in the street right in front of him was severely wounded by sniper fire.  Before the reported could react, a man had scooped up the little girl and was pleading with the reporter to drive them to the hospital.  "You have a car," the man begged.  "Please, won't you take us to the hospital?"  What could the reporter do?  Without hesitating, he loaded them into the back seat of his car and began to drive.  After minute or two, the man said urgently, "Please hurry; she is still living!" The reporter drove on.  A few minutes later, the man in the back seat said, 'Hurry, please, my little girl is still breathing!"  Soon, they pulled to the hospital, but alas, the girl was pronounced dead.  The man and the reporter went into the restroom together to wash the child's blood from their hands. "Now comes the hardest part," said the man. 

“What is that?"  asked the reporter. 

"Now I have to go and find the little girl's father and tell him she is gone." 

The reporter was stunned. "But I thought you were the Father!  I thought she was your child." 

"Aren't they all our children?" the man replied.   

Friends, this is the essential message Jesus proclaimed to his hometown congregation at Nazareth.  The Gentiles at Capernaum, widow at Zarephath, the Syrian General—they are all God's children!  Jesus gives a radical new understanding to the question who is my neighbor.  To follow him requires the ongoing effort to leave behind our prejudices, divisions and resentments. Jesus has gone ahead of us proclaiming God's favor to insiders and outsiders alike.  Are we willing to go and do likewise?