Readings: 1
Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke
4:21-30
We pray: may all
that is said, all that is heard, all that is understood be to your glory O God
so that we might be your people in this place.
In Jesus name Amen.
‘The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ [1]
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ [1]
So we heard in the
reading for last week, the words from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah that
directly lead into the reading for today.
Jesus had been baptised by John, entered the wilderness for 40 days and
nights, and began to teach in the synagogues to great praise. And so he came to Nazareth, to speak in the
synagogue there. And then he preached from the text, (we don’t have the detail here,
probably because there was nothing unfamiliar to the people of the day) - but
what would have made them sit up was when he said that the scripture has been
fulfilled this day. Yet they seemed not to have been phased - as we hear: “And they were amazed at
the gracious words that came from his mouth.
Is this not Joseph’s
son?” [2] they said.
It is interesting
to know that commentators today disagree over whether the phrase ‘Is this not
Joseph’s son?’ is meant to be a put down,
said with derision, or an awakening, said in awe and wonder. I go with the second – it seems to me that
there is a sense of the listeners being blown away by what has been said, and
from this a local boy.
The response,
whatever you deem it to be (and we will explore that a little bit more in a
minute), illustrates an important thread in Luke’s gospel writings – one that
emerges time and time again – that of acceptance to the unacceptable.
Luke tells us that
the mission of Jesus is to bring salvation to the people, that he comes
fulfilling the promises of God made known through the prophets, he comes to
convince us of the extravagance of God’s love and offers a timeless
unconditional forgiving grace that allows us, in our very humanity, to walk
with God and be part of building the kingdom here in this place.
I am in the
process of reading the Gospel of Luke, accompanied by a book called ‘The
hospitality of God: a reading of Luke’s Gospel by Brendan Byrne who is a
Catholic theologian from Australia.
Luke, suggests
Byrne, sees Christ’s ministry as one of acceptance, hospitality rather than
vengeance or judgement, and that then and now is a time when Christ offers
God’s hospitality to all - the hand of Christ is held out to the afflicted, the
trapped and the bound, accepting all into the hospitality of God. Judgement is not to be forgotten and will
come but for now we live in a space of salvation history which Luke calls ‘the
acceptable year of the Lord’ - that is, God’s hospitality offered to all the
world.[3] And, says Byrne, do we accept or reject this
acceptance of God? It is worth noting
that in just about all of the moments where Jesus offers this new way to people
in this Gospel, there are those who are convicted and there are those who
reject it.
Holding those
thoughts, let’s return to the passage for today.
“And the people were amazed at the gracious
words that came from his mouth”. Maybe
today we would call this a building up sermon – no surprises, great rhetoric,
inspirational hope and fulfilled promises. The people acclaimed him and his
preaching and his claims to be the messiah.
Special moment.
What did Jesus do with it? He deliberately and most provocatively broke
the mood – he upset virtually everyone in the synagogue by challenging their assumption
that this message was for them alone – he literally forced their faces to the
world and suggested they open their eyes to see that the world was larger than
them and God was greater than their understandings.
Jesus was not prepared to be boxed in – to be
contained by anyone groups assumptions or needs – his way was bigger and bolder
and less comfortable than that. He
talked of God’s accepting love for the heathen Gentiles – and this was just too
much. The mood changed dramatically –
saying they became a lynch mob would not be stretching the truth at all - at
such outrageous teaching. They went to
throw him off the cliff – an angry mob reacting to this threat to their very
understanding of their God. A choice was
made – to reject. There one more
small but very important sentence at the end though that can kind of get lost –
it is a word of endurance and hope in the midst of the rather violent human
reaction to his uncomfortable message - the last verse says ‘But he passed
through the midst of them and went on his way.’[4] He was rejected but the rejection was not the
last word –the last word was Jesus continuing on his way despite all that was
thrown at him, continuing on through what was to be the worst the world could
throw at him - rejection of the cross - to the resurrection.
So here is, in Jesus, a new narrative for the
Jews to consider – where the old
narrative became refreshed in Christ in a way that challenged and shook the
very foundations of what they had thought was their exclusive story.
What capacity do we have for hearing the ‘new
things’ of God in our midst? When
offered a new often challenging insight into what it means to be a people of
faith, how do we respond, do we accept or reject?
There are some obvious parallels that we can
draw I suspect.
Firstly are there things we do that box God in?
In our imagining of God do we allow that there are ways that we don’t know,
purposes that we can only touch the edges of, mysteries beyond our
comprehension? I suspect that many of us
do this in ways we don’t even realise, that we find it hard to, for instance, reconcile in any meaningful way the
immensity of God with the intimacy of the Spirit and absolute humanity of
Christ – and that what we don’t understand we find difficult to accept?
Do we hold God in Christ close to our chest so
to speak? Unwilling to share if it means
our views might be challenged and we might be forced to rethink and realign who
it is that we believe God to be. One
thing that usually happens when you allow other perspectives in is that your
own changes and grows as well – either that or you go to your corners in the
ring and come out fighting until one knocks the other out!
Do we allow that there might be other ways to
do church, to be a person of faith and to be with God – not that those ways
would necessarily be for us but rather recognising that we don’t have an
exclusive hold on what is truth? Do we
allow others to gather with us round the table accepting them as they are
rather than feeling we have to integrate them into ‘the right way?’
And here is one – straight from my heart. Do we feel uncomfortable with what God is
asking of us – at least some of the time?
Because I reckon if we know only comfort in God’s call on our lives then
we might need to have our understandings of faith and of Jesus way challenged
just as Jesus did in the synagogue. For,
as Simeon said, Jesus would be a sign of contradiction and discomfort for many
who were comfortable. He would accept
the unacceptable – whether people or
ideas or ways of living – in the name of love.
So when Jesus stretches our understanding of
what it means to be a transformed people of God, tells us again that God’s
hospitality is for all people, and that there are forever new ways of doing
this which will surprise us, how are we going to respond? With amazement at the grace of God or
hostility and rejection.
Amen
Margaret Garland
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