First Sunday of Lent: Knowing our limits (Luke 4:1-13)

This past Monday, I began the week with the miserable bug that had moved in over the weekend. After going to the doctor’s office, I picked up my prescriptions and then went home.  While driving around town, I had the radio on and heard the big headline taking up Monday morning news.  When I got home, I told Kerry the big headline of the week.  “Honey, the Pope just resigned.”

            Kerry said, “Honestly, Jerrod, what sort of medicine did they give you?”

            Monday, we found out how quickly the first papal resignation in centuries can melt the Internet.  Everywhere online, the unexpected news flooded the home page of blogs and news sites.  The morning talk shows found themselves with a curve ball of a media story just hitting the beginning of the news cycle.  I can imagine the Today Show producers likely started scrambling camera crews to chase down Cardinal Dolan for a reaction quote! 

As for the newsmaker himself Benedict XVI made his announcement at an already scheduled meeting to talk about canonizing new saints.  The church leaders gathered were shocked to hear this news added onto the agenda without warning. Without much fanfare, Benedict read a statement with a low-key rationale for stepping down by month’s end, noting his physical infirmities outpaced the demands of a literally global ministry required of his position. Benedict observed,

in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter [an old term for “ship”, an image of the Church] and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

As I read the transcript of his resignation, I thought the Pope was being refreshingly truthful about human limitations. Each of us, including those who are called by God to lives of ordained ministry, have our capacities and full vitality only for a season.  Some of us age and weather life at a different pace than others.  We know the creaks and cricks of our bodies, reminding us that our facilities change, our speed and agility declines and life in general can take many unexpected turns, sometimes for the best and often for the worst.  Being human is not for the faint of heart, and even the Pope had to weigh his papal calling with his body’s ability to carry on.

The Pope’s announcement came during the same week Christianity began the Lenten season. Lent is the forty-day period prior to Easter that calls us to be more focused on how we live out our lives faithfully before God. Lent brings us into the heaviness of the story of Jesus, considering the cross Jesus calls us to bear just as surely as we read reverently the story of the Passion of Christ crucified. 

The greater culture treats Lent like it does Advent’s season preceding Christmas.  Christmas and Easter become economic boosts for toys, cards, and chocolate, yet the tradition itself says both times, “Christians: Wait! Prepare! Pray!”  

Forty days seems an eternity in the fast-paced world we live in.  Truthfully, such a religious season is more desperately needed because of this world we live in.  Putting the brakes on with all manner of demands and deadlines upon ourselves seems nigh impossible, yet have you considered the benefit of doing so?  Lent aims to make us better disciples of Jesus, so that by the time Easter is celebrated, we have made progress (in whatever way or capacity we are able to do so) to move God move to the forefront of our lives.

Lent is often known as a time for “giving things up”.  One venerable tradition is well beloved by the good folks at Lil Britain who look forward to Fridays during Lent.  Some Christians bid adieu to friends on Facebook until Easter, a fasting from “social media”.  Others open up their pocket books or their schedules to support community needs through funds or volunteerism.  Such practices that require us to let something go that we think we cannot live without actually turns into a practice in saying “no” to self and “yes” to God, surely well in line with Jesus’ call to discipleship!  Time is indeed money, yet living life more faithfully is “priceless”.

Meanwhile back at the Vatican (I’ve always wanted to say that in a sermon), the Catholic world heard its leader offer another wise word:

I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

            I found Benedict’s remarks here most earnest.  In making a decision so rarely made among the centuries-long list of Popes, Benedict offers a cautionary word about the power he found himself entrusted at his election in 2005.  He understands that his words and deeds, usually the way we calculate whatever measure we hold in respect and authority for persons in high places, are accompanied by prayer and suffering. 

There is no greater humility than being in prayer before God, as it reminds the one praying that we cannot go through life on our own.  Suffering also grounds Christians in the reality of the world as it is and the will we have for living out the “against the grain of the world” type teachings of the gospel.  While Benedict weathered considerable challenges and criticism during his papacy, he offered a humble note befitting of his choice of papal name, recalling the other greats named Benedict, a pope as well as the monk whose followers (Benedictines) continue traditions grounded in simplicity and prayer.

            I note a similar wisdom offered by Roger Williams, the “first” Baptist in the United States. Back in the 17^th-century, as Baptists began to emerge in Europe, their beliefs and teachings began to work in the minds of these upstart colonists in America. Roger Williams founded the “first” Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1638, part of his personal odyssey of living a contrary-minded faith.

When he arrived in America in 1630, Williams was a controversial figure, aggravating the Puritan colonial government to the point that within six years, he was banished from Massachusetts. To avoid deportment to England where he was equally unwelcome, Williams set off in the dead of winter 1636 for the wilderness.

Recently, I came across a quote taken from Williams’ writings about his banishment from the Bay Colony. After spending some of that first winter in an old hollow tree to sleep and get some protection from winter storms, Williams later set his reflections into verse form:

God makes a Path, provides a Guide,

And feeds in Wilderness!

His glorious name while breath remaines, O that I may confesse.

Lost many a time, I have had no Guide, No House, but Hollow Tree!

In stormy Winter night no Fire, no Food, no Company:

In him I have found a House, a Bed,

A Table, a Company:

No Cup so bitter, but’s made sweet. When God shall Sweet’ning be.

(Edwin Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience, Eerdmans, 1991; current edition, Judson, 1999).

Such determination to follow Christ comes only after the words and deeds have been grounded in the actual experience of living faithfully to God through prayer and suffering.  Lent opens the door for a forty-day exploration of such concepts with the hope that like all practices, they become habits or more likely to become engrained in our ways of thinking and acting.  Taking the time to let Lent’s ancient patterns and practices of self-examination, humility, prayer, restraint, and fasting allow us to open our hearts to the possibilities we might not otherwise explore while rushing through the hubbub of life or letting the competing voices of the world drown out the calm and steady voice of Jesus calling out to the flock.

It’s no wonder that the cycle of scripture readings take the same story from the gospels as Lent begins.  All three lectionary cycles give us “the wilderness temptations”.  Each of the three gospel writers tells a slightly different story, yet the image is much the same.  Jesus is affirmed greatly and grandly as the Son of God, the Christ/Messiah long promised, yet even after he’s still soaking wet from his baptism, the Spirit brings him out to the wilderness, the untamed, the lonely space where he is left for forty days and forty nights.

The old tempter himself turns up and offers the treasures of the world.  “Be this way and live it up!” echoes each time a temptation is presented.  Yet Jesus says “No” and turns away with great resolve.

Jesus, looking sun burned and dusty, parched and lean from a disciplined denial, sits out there in the wilderness.  We usually marvel at the Tempter’s great offerings, for deep down, we know how such things tempt us with offers to be great and to live above the rest of the crowd clamoring for worldly fame and pride of place.  Yet we know there’s something greater than all of this in the form of Jesus, who shall take us through the wilderness, through the world, and even death by way of the cross.

Will you join him on this journey?

Know before Whom you stand (Transfiguration Sunday Luke 9:28-43)

This past week began with a surprise.  British archaeologists confirmed a skeleton found buried in a parking lot (or “car park”) in Leicester, England, was indeed the earthly remains of Richard III, the King of England defeated and killed in battle near Leicester in 1485.  The team used the usual combination of historical research, archaeological knowhow, and ultimately the DNA of a modern day descendant of Anne of York, Richard’s sister.  Of all things, the descendant was a Canadian furniture maker now living in London!

Predictably, the jokes about this incredible find started getting passed around.  One editorial cartoonist suggested the team had even greater luck, also finding Jimmy Hoffa.  On Facebook, Richard was congratulated for being the world champion of “hide and seek”.  And then people began recalling the publicity problems Richard still has at the hands of William Shakespeare.

In his famous play about the king, Shakespeare depicted Richard as an evil hunchback.  This image became seared in popular consciousness, as centuries’ worth of lead actors have took up the challenge of playing Shakespeare’s Richard, often to critical acclaim.  Historians believe Shakespeare has done more damage to Richard than anyone at the battle in 1485.  While historians note Richard had issues, he is thought not to be everything as rotten as Shakespeare depicted!

The real versus the “stage” Richard III illustrates a longtime challenge for telling the stories of great events and famous people. Playwrights, and in modern days, screenwriters often adapt events and recreate the lives of historical figures, while adding along the way, some “dramatic license”.  In doing so, the storyteller aims to make the historical events and people fit better into the conventions of writing for stage, screen or television, not the lecture hall or historical record.

Right now, one such film is using a veritable truckload of dramatic license and now basking in Oscar nominations. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in his last months in office, the Steven Spielberg film depicts Lincoln’s efforts to gain passage of the 13^th Amendment to abolish slavery within the United States while dealing with the Civil War still raging on.  The playwright Tony Kushner was asked to script the film.  Kushner consulted historical materials as well as the best-selling history “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and yep, you guessed it, dramatic license.

With the Lincoln film, Spielberg and Kushner create a film worthy of award season buzz and much complaint from historians.  Responding to his critics, Kushner detailed in various interviews his methodology for drawing together the script.  He quotes directly from some sources and at other times, he composited period sources to create dialogue for the characters.  And yes, he opted at other times to create dialogue drawn from his imagination. 

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers interviewed Kushner in December 2012 on PBS.  Moyers cited a scene as a place where Kushner wrote a bit of his own created dialogue. Moyers asks if these are “Lincoln’s actual words or Tony Kushner’s dramatic license?”  Kushner replies, “You now, I can’t remember with that line.”  Smiling, Moyers says, “You don’t know where you start and Lincoln stops?” [Cf. http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-what-we-can-learn-from-lincoln/  Accessed February 4, 2012.]

Kushner writes a compelling story, yet he leaves some room for his own creativity to shape the film into something less ready for the “History Channel”, let alone a film that makes muster with some American history scholars.  He wrote a film script able to attract today’s movie audience. His hope is the Lincoln film makes us aware of the history as well as the pressing questions such history leaves us with generations later.  As I left the theatre after seeing Lincoln, I realized Kushner and Spielberg asked “big picture” questions for modern day America and our own issues of the day.  The film entertains and provokes, leaving me with a profound sense of the difficulties we face in maintaining democracy and freedom for all, not just some.

Oddly enough, Richard III and Lincoln came to mind this week as I read the familiar story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  It’s an odd comparison to make yet I find our human interest (obsession?) with historical figures plays out in this story as well.  When Jesus goes off to pray with just a few inner circle disciples, Jesus receives yet another word of divine affirmation.  The same voice from heaven at his baptism gives those present a good word:  “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 

If that’s not enough, the disciples also find two heroes of the faith flanking Jesus:  Moses and Elijah.  They are deeply respected figures in the imagination of ancient Israel.  You cannot tell the story thus far without including the one who liberated the people from Egyptian captivity and the prophet who stood for the people even as they wandered off after false gods. 

The patriarch and the prophet stand beside Jesus, heightening the moment of God’s big affirmation of Jesus, who is bathed in the most intense light imaginable. Scholar Luke Timothy Johnson points out that the Greek text claims this glory is more than just “light”.  It is “real glory”, God’s divine glory, being made known in the world.  (Luke, Sacra Pagina).  In this moment, the heavens are touching the earth!

The story of the Transfiguration, however, is still set in the same world of Lincoln and Richard III.  The story of Jesus is still at odds with a world of clashing kings and competing expectations.  Indeed, is it no wonder the Transfiguration is nearly tarnished by the way the disciples perceive it?   The “bright shining moment” is nearly undercut by bedazzled disciples ready to build a monument, not ready yet embrace the cross-bearing ways of Jesus.

Reading the gospel of Luke, we realize the Transfiguration is only heightening the irony already playing out in the narrative. Remember, the story today begins with the note the Transfiguration takes place “about eight days after” Jesus had said something to the disciples.  That something was the equally famous line of questioning of Jesus to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”   They guess a number of things until Jesus sets them straight, foretelling his passion awaiting in Jerusalem.  Jesus will be betrayed, killed and yet on the third day be raised.  To us, Jesus is giving them a sense of the plot they are in the midst of.  For the disciples, they don’t get it then, and certainly eight days later, they do not “get” much more of what’s really going on!  A scholar observes, “The three disciples see, but at the same time, and at the very moment of revelation, they do not comprehend what their eyes show them.” (John T. Carroll, Luke, p. 218)

The disciples are now thinking “great and glorious” yet with the wrong frame of mind.  Brash disciple Peter, the one who boldly named Jesus the Messiah in the “Who do you say that I am?” story, is the one claiming something grand be built to mark this moment.  In some ways, he wants to be a type of playwright, making the actual moment a story more befitting his vision of things.  You know, let’s just make this moment just like one of those summer blockbusters, focused on the bright lights and the guest appearance by Elijah and Charlton Hesston in a bathrobe.  (The CGI is fantastic!)

Jesus rebuffs such misunderstanding.  He takes the over-awed and mostly clueless disciples down the mountain, where they find a crowd waiting and Jesus heals a demon-afflicted young boy.   The glory up there on the mountain is important, yet it does not to stop the story right then and there in a great big scene of what would otherwise come off as divine pyrotechnics.  Jesus will show these disciples that he is indeed the Messiah, the Son and Chosen of God, yet it will not be in the grand narrative clouding up Peter’s brain.  Instead, there will be a much harder and less “grand” fate awaiting Jesus on another hill, not so far away from this time up on the mountain.

Scholar John Carroll summarizes, “Those with attentive ears and eyes can and must see [the hidden glory] in the earthly ministry of Jesus, in the world of human need and gracious liberation that already exists, beginning right now at the foot of the mountain.  Forget the booths, Peter; the Messiah has work to do!” (Carroll, 220).

               Disciples who chose to remain up on the mountain will never get to the path awaiting down below, where the world needs people to believe in Jesus and live out lives shaped by the cross and resurrection.  It is through the story we tell at Easter that we make any sense out of the life of Jesus as well as for our own lives.

               Indeed, even with Moses and Elijah, we have two great figures of faith who needed God to make them who they became for ancient Israel’s time of need.  Moses the great leader had to get over his sense of being worthless after refusing to live in Pharoah’s court while his true people suffered.  The prophet Elijah spent his fair share of time hiding out, thinking he had nothing to offer when he felt outnumbered by the false prophets of the false god in vogue with the wandering loyalties of the people.  While they show up to talk and affirm Jesus’ identity and purpose, Moses and Elijah know their place in the unfolding story.  Kings shall fall and competing expectations shall fade away, yet the gospel of Jesus goes on.

               Eventually Peter will “get” the story Jesus is telling, and he will start living it out.  Peter will be transformed by the story and begin living out a witness that points others not to himself or any of the greats of faith (for all of us have clay feet included).  Peter and the other first disciples will lead others to know and live out the ways of Jesus, for whom no human understanding of glory, authority and wisdom can match.

Untamed Sermons

To begin this morning’s sermon, I offer a parable told by theologian Justo Gonzalez.  Imagine….

a young man who becomes a famous athlete and signs a contract for millions of dollars.  He then returns to his hometown, and all come to receive him and hear what he has to say.  The town band goes out to greet him.  The local papers praise him.  The town gathers at the stadium for a welcome ceremony. 

        Everybody is excited.  Some say:  “It is difficult to believe that this is Joe, who grew up next door.”  When Joe finally comes to the speaker’s stand, all are eager to hear what he has to say.  They know that he has talked of the need for better schools and clinics, and that he has supported such institutions elsewhere.

        Now Joe stands up and says: “Do not think that because I grew up in Smallville you will receive any special favors from me.  Actually, I have decided to support the school in Eastville, and the clinic in Northville.” 

        There will be a chilled silence.  Soon shock will turn to anger, and anger to hostility.  “Who does he think he is?  We don’t need him!  Run him out of town.”

Gonzalez finishes the parable saying, “This is exactly what happens to Jesus in Nazareth.”  (Gonzalez, Luke, p. 66)

Here in Luke’s gospel, we are in the early days of Jesus’ public ministry when his name is just starting to spread around the small and remote places of the Galilean countryside.  He teaches, he heals and he brings that sort of hope to the hinterlands unaccustomed to receiving “good news” of any sort.

Like all kids, he comes back for a spell to see the family and the familiar old haunts.  As we learned last week, a trip home is not complete with the Sabbath worship at the local synagogue.  Since he’s the growing religious teacher, he is given the pride of offering the commentary on Isaiah for the day.

What the crowd hears, they miss out on.  Bedazzled by the spectacle of a headline come true (“local boy makes good”), they take him only at him, y’know Joe and Mary’s boy from down the block.   When they get over the euphoria, they start taking Jesus at his word, and suddenly casual belief turns into militant disbelief.   Now they want to throw Jesus out of town and off a cliff.

At the heart of the crowd’s consternation might be the realization Jesus is doing great things here, yet he certainly seems reticent to do the same for the hometown crew.  Why does he tell the crowd that the prophets of old are being fulfilled in their hearing right now, yet he has not hopped up to start offering the same good word and signs of healing enjoyed by neighboring communities?

It’s hard to go back home, yet it is even harder to realize that you cannot go back home again that easily.  The Nazareth crowd wants the same treatment, and indeed they expect it of the hometown hero.  Instead, they get this teaching about the good word and then some commentary on other ancient sacred stories involving great prophets coming to help out everybody except the home team.

The stories Jesus adds to his commentary are drawn from times when great challenge arises.  Instead of exclusive service to the fold and the fold alone, Elijah and Elisha, great prophets without a doubt, act in ways casting suspicion on their loyalty.  Widows and lepers are saved, yet they are not numbered among the faithful of ancient Israel.  By referencing these stories, Jesus adds some edges to his message back to the complaining crowd.  He looks at them and says, “But, the truth is….”

I have to stop at this moment and note that I knew someone who was quite fond of prefacing her remarks with “The truth is…”.  I can assure you this phrase was not followed by words subtle or peaceable.  While I pause a bit to make this comparison between my friend and Jesus as teacher, it is apt!  Jesus is offering a word countering the crowd’s expectations with some old stories that “tell a story” on the people themselves. 

In the midst of these stories woven into the sacred texts, we find the prophets siding not only with the marginalized and the voiceless.  The crowd realizes that Jesus is taking up the side of Elijah and Elisha, stepping away from the boundaries long established, and they offer their ministry to those well outside these boundaries.  A widow and a leper get help, yet it is not “about us.”  It’s about “them”.

The terms “Us” and “them” are ones we think in whether we wish to admit it or not.  The “them” is a label applied to persons who we have deemed different, to be kept at a distance, and a little thought of “them” being deviant in some fashion is likely there in the mix as well.   Today, we talk of the various forms these attitudes and exclusive ways of living them out take on:  racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, heterosexism, and the list goes sadly on.   In all our human diversity, we tend toward making all the shades of variance more monochrome, befitting our particular values about what “normal” or “normative” looks like.

In the end, we can live out our attitudes towards “them” and create a world for ourselves that seems all decent and in order, yet we have lost something essential to understanding the ways of God in the world.  Ironically, religious people can be just as guilty of stripping away the fullness of God’s diversity in the world in favor of a fairly narrow way of living.  We become the congregation reacting to Jesus rather than the body of believers living out the way of Jesus, who built upon the witness of prophets crying out for and reaching out to those lost in the shuffle and shadows.

The truth is…God expects more, not less, of Christ’s flock!

A year or so ago, the venerable Protestant journal The Christian Century asked theologians and clergy to name their top five theology texts published in the past quarter century.   As these lists were received, some titles tended to repeat across the listings.  One of the most cited books is “Exclusion and Embrace” by Croatian-born theologian Miroslav Volf.

Why did this book resonate so with pastors and scholars?  In this book, Volf deals with the deeply engrained problems of exclusion in our world, and he does not exempt the church from its own complicity.   He tells a number of sad stories along the way where society and the nations and the people claiming to be religious creating situations where not everybody is enfranchised, welcome or given their full human rights.  We tend toward creating people who are different into the category of “Other”.   Such persons, or “others”, tend to be kept from moving ahead or enjoying the same freedoms and dignity.   “Others” are often shoved onto uneven playing fields, where unjust economic and social concerns pretty much insure “Others” can make it up the steep incline where those in control or dominance enjoy the full benefits of the imbalanced system.

Volf wrote as the child of Croatian parents, caught up in the Communist era when Yugoslavia was a “one size must fit all” type state.  The family experienced discrimination and ethnic/religious rifts, and Volf recalls the difficulty of living in a time where only exclusion seemed to matter.  How could “embracing the other” happen?

Volf’s book explores the theological and global challenges of erring on the side of embrace.   He challenges his readers to consider what it takes to have

the will to give ourselves to others and ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them…[such work] is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity” (Exclusion and Embrace, 29)

In other words, the work of those who follow the gospel is about dismantling the barriers, identifying and atoning for the hurt and alienation such practices have brought about or embedded much too nefariously in society and even among the pews.  Such work is a matter personal and interpersonal alike, made possible by individuals and communities changing the status quo prevailing unquestioned perhaps for decades if not centuries.  This is not easy work, nor is it readily accomplished yet it begins when we decide to end our ways and take up those of the gospel.

As we heard earlier, Justo Gonzalez finishes his retelling of Luke 4 saying, “This is exactly what happens to Jesus in Nazareth.”  Reading Luke’s gospel, I add my own word of commentary:  What happens to Jesus ought to happen to anybody who claims to follow him.  

The story of Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth is part and parcel of telling and living out the gospel story.  For starters, the “good news” is not a mass appeal type of “word”.  The gospel asks very hard questions of us, tossing aside our sense of societal structures as mattering not a bit in God’s eyes.  Indeed, the more you have reached the zenith of whatever your economic, social and even religious values claim is the lofty heights, the seeming “simple” story of Jesus lays such talk flat.

The good life Jesus offers gives his followers a cross and says let your life be shaped by it.  Accept no substitutes.  And while you are at it, accept everyone.

Preaching to the choir is not easy

            First sermons are quite an experience.  Certainly, they are for the first time preacher, all nervous and pondering how to make sense of a scripture text without passing out in the pulpit.  You might dream of wowing the entire crowd.  Instead, you find yourself fighting an uphill battle with yourself, second guessing your way through a text and hoping that everyone stays awake.

            Generally, the praise afterwards is friendly and merciful.  People tell you good job, even as they might have been thinking about the grocery list or something else.  One story I’ve heard over the years sums it up well.  When a venerable old preacher was told of a new preacher giving his first sermon, the minister smiled and inquired, “Were there any casualties?”

            A first sermon is sometimes one you wish to forget.  I look back on my own memories and affirm a few things that I was doing even at that time.  I also quietly shy away from other elements in my first sermons.  One thing I can assure you is the lesson not taught by a seminary professor of preaching.  Rather the lesson originates from advice given by my mother.  “Remember, son.  You have to keep the sermon at a reasonable enough rate.  If you go over, the roast at home will be ruined.”

            In comparison, Jesus had a different sort of “first sermon”.  He went back home, read a passage from Isaiah, and said just a few words in response:  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

            On one hand, the response is quite positive. The locals are very pleased with his wisdom and poise as a teacher.  After all, this is the same Jesus who Luke tells about earlier when an adolescent.  The kid talks circles around the Temple elders, holding his own with those who gather daily to hold court on matters of faith and scripture.  No wonder by the time Jesus is an adult, he can bring a sermon with confidence and authority!  When Jesus emerges in Nazareth, he has gone through the “formative years” of growing up, being affirmed by the heavens above at his baptism and even outwitted the old tempter out in the wilderness.  What could possibly go wrong?

            For all this affirmation and excitement, the positive comments will fade soon, and the same crowd all giddy with approval turns into a mob ready to toss him off a cliff.  In retrospect, I have never heard of any other “first sermon” that involved a violent reaction like this.  I read this story and feel better about my own first sermon!  I didn’t need to skip town!  With a crowd ready to toss him out of town or over a cliff, Jesus should have made plans! 

            We’ll talk about the bad reaction to the sermon next Sunday.  Instead, I invite you to join me in looking at Jesus the teacher, bringing this message of few words and a great promise his first audience grew uneasy about once they pieced together what he was saying about the order of things.  What Jesus is saying in his teaching here resonates throughout Luke’s gospel and even in the sequel known as the Book of Acts.  The only problem, however, is reading the unfolding story of Luke.  Like all the other gospels, Jesus the teacher, the healer, the spinner of parables, the bringer of good news about the Kingdom/Reign of God, will wind up on a cross! 

This “one night only!” appearance in Nazareth will cost him his ability to “go back home” as well as unsettle the order of things.  It is oft quoted from this very story that a prophet cannot go back to his home country.  Alas, it is true as the gospel unfolds, bringing good news that some people cannot handle hearing and believing…..

Over the centuries, women and men have followed Jesus, even to the extent of going against the grain of society and its bounds.  The inner circle of Jesus’ followers would go onwards to spread his message, yet many of them knew only hardship and challenge.  Back in the 16th century, the Spanish monk Bartolome de las Casas wrote a powerful chronicle of the problems of colonization in the Americas, detailing the inhumane treatment of native peoples at the hands of the Spaniards seeking wealth and other ways to exploit the New World.  This month, we recall the King legacy, recalling one who could have settled for a big fancy pulpit, yet found his preaching needed more in the national spotlight and over the radio and TV speaking to those hungering for civil rights and seeking dignity for all, rather than upholding rights for a self-chosen few. 

These stories abound through church history, the questions they raised through word and deed alike digging into the soil of unjust situations in need of prophetic critique and hands-on engagement.  Many of these faithful Christians found Jesus through their love of his message as well as their willingness to endure great hardship and suffer for it.

All because they listened to Jesus, who was listening intently himself to the great words of the prophets, especially those words of Isaiah:

“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 favor." 

Often preachers look at the task of preaching as the challenge of making an ancient text find a new audience.  Better yet, we hope the morning message brings the old text to new relevance, not just a retracing of the overly familiar biblical narrative with as much excitement as going home and having leftovers warmed in the microwave.   With a text like this, it could be summed up as merely “one we heard in Sunday school”, meaning no reason to get excited about it.

 Scripture scholar Gail O’Day looks at this story from Luke’s gospel as a good example of how we should read scripture together in worship.  She notes that Jesus’ commentary on this passage is cleverer than we presume.  To tell his listeners, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” is not just a claiming for himself of the Messiah Isaiah claims is coming to do all this great work of bringing good news, proclaiming especially to those downtrodden that God’s favor is at hand.  She suggests that the Spirit is upon Jesus and those who listen.  O’Day writes, “The Spirit guides Jesus the preacher and leads him in discerning how to make the old story new” (“A Scriptural Hermeutic of Biblical Authority”, World and World, Vol. 26, No. 4, p. 361).  In turn, the word proclaimed is now put into the ears of those Jesus calls to live out the good word. 

The crowd will think they get it, yet they will reject him.  Throughout his ministry away from home, Jesus will be out among those who are nowhere near the center of society’s good standing.  They will get what he is saying and join him in the cause of proclaiming the good news and God’s favor to all peoples.

The choice of hearing and heeding or hearing and rejecting is clear in this text.  The Baptist translator and activist Clarence Jordan renders Jesus’ brief commentary on Isaiah rather pointedly.  He renders Jesus’ words: “This very day this Scripture has become a reality in your presence.” (Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts, p. 24).  What Jesus claims is nothing short of astonishing.  The old prophet’s call is being brought to life in the midst of this small gathering off in Nazareth.  It is not a message given to the Temple elders.  It is not a message being proclaimed in Herod’s court.  In the midst of normal, everyday Galileans, Jesus claims the great hope and promise of the prophets are being made known in a place and time nobody would have ever expected. 

The crowd will piece together what Jesus is saying, “that the lasting significance of this present fulfillment is that the way they ordered their world would have to change” (O’Day, 361).   Such a message will go over like a lead balloon, once they “get” the gist of Jesus’ message with all of its approving words and welcome for those who the Nazareth crowd’s societal norms prefer best kept out of sight, out of mind.  No more shall it be acceptable to live with scorn in the heart of the faithful.  Jesus saves, and it’s more than the soul. It is more than heaven above and includes the here and now.  It is the dignity and sacred worth of every person, regardless of what is said in the Temple or by the Crown, or even held as “gospel” in the society standards about “those people”.

The crowd liked being entertained and engaged by a good word well spoken.  Yet like any good word that is God’s good news, such “good words” burrow into the hearts and minds of those hearing it.  Sometimes, such a word sparks the beginning of a believer’s conscience and compassion.  Other times, the preacher had better keep a bag packed and a car running out in the alley.  I knew more than a few preachers who lost standing in their congregation, even in their employment, for speaking out against the prevailing spirit of the day.  Long after, we hail them as heroes, saints even.  In the moment, they found (and find) the good news was unwelcome when it came to transforming hearts and minds within community and congregation alike.

The word Isaiah gives is built upon the words Jesus gives.  The word is not just “past word”.  Rather it is the word for the now, where we have to decide if we wish to hear and follow.  Being a Christian where Isaiah’s text resounds is not an easy task.  You get into all manner of difficult situations and make hard choices about how you choose to live with the veritable challenge found in the gospel.  Fidelity to Christ’s message is not for the faint of heart.

Apparently, it is not for those who hear the word and decline to believe the word “is becoming reality in your presence.”  The crowd gets surly.  They try to make good on their threats of violent opposition to his teaching.  The gospel writer claims that Jesus will slip away from their midst and go on his way.

Will you follow him?

No Assembly Required (1 Corinthians 12)

William McGlaughlin was the long-time conductor of the Kansas City Symphony.  On one occasion, McGlaughlin praised three musicians about to retire, giving collectively 139 years of service with the Symphony.  My preaching professor was in the audience that night and he recalls, “In a very informal and touching moment McGlaughlin waved his baton and said, “See, it really doesn’t make any noise.  I am dependent on the musicians.” (Mike Graves, The Sermon as Symphony, p. xviii).

Another story shows a differing take on orchestras and their conductors.  The musician Peter Schickele is known for his gift of weaving comedy into classical music.  He tells the tall tale (we hope!) of an orchestra touring the country, though after awhile, they decided they could just leave their conductor on the tour bus.   The musicians figured they did not pay any attention to the conductor anyway, so why bother bringing him in for the performance?

Both stories tell the story of conductors and orchestra musicians, yet which one story might involve a good degree of musicianship and beauty in the performance?  Likely the Kansas City Symphony is the better choice.  The tour bus orchestra without need of a conductor probably produced many fine noises, yet their concert likely sounded as pleasant as what you hear while stuck in big city rush hour traffic with all the other cars blaring their horns at one another and the drivers all shouting, “Out of my way!”

In Paul’s correspondence with the church in Corinth, we find a group of people at the ready to pay no heed to one another.  By the time they decide to write Paul for his advice, disharmony and disunity reigned among them.  Indeed, Paul will write at length (two letters!) helping the church to find some sort of common ground.   The epistles of 1 and 2 Corinthians are hard letters to write, and I imagine these words from Paul are even more difficult to hear when Paul’s messenger arrives. 

What do you do when the congregation is at each other’s throats with barely a thought given to the way of Jesus?  All like talking about who is right and who is wrong, yet very few seem to know that the gospel is not supposed to be lived like this!

I read the two letters to the Corinthian Christians as some hard words given by a wise outsider looking in, worried at what he sees as the real “health” of the congregation.  Paul sees that their weakness in disunity is really a greater loss of their greatest strength:  their unity in Christ.  Without their common belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, what really would unite them?  Yet why are Jesus’ teachings the last thing on their hearts and minds while exchanging hurtful words and throwing chairs at each another?

Now in the Corinthians’ defense, take one look at the crowd and you just wonder how on earth they got together.  The congregation is a wide variety of people from every corner of the known world.  The rich sit next to the poor.  Women and men, slave and free all under the same roof for the Sabbath, even though the society they lived in told them to stick to the world as it wanted to be known with its uneven playing field where economics, gender and race divide. 

How could anybody ever think this batch of people could work?

The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor shares of a similar congregation with diversity in the pews yet not embroiled in Corinthian level conflict.

In a big city [her congregants] might have found homes in five markedly different parishes, but in a county with only one Episcopal church they learned to live together—the Yellow Dog Democrats, the National Rifle Association boosters, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the League of Women Voters. Once, when I asked a newcomer what had brought him to [this congregation], he shook his head. ‘I know people who come to this church,’ he said, ‘and I finally had to come to see for myself how they got through a Sunday morning without assaulting each other.’”  (Leaving Church: A Memoir)

How can any congregation with diversity like this possibly exist except chronically at odds with one another?  Looking at the newspaper headlines or the blog d’jour you prefer to read, how can I look out and see ObamaCare Democrats and Reagan Republicans able to sit in the same pews and never consider throwing chairs at one another over coffee hour conversations?  

I can honestly tell a newcomer that such ability to welcome difference is part of our congregation’s story, as we are indeed a mix of differing political and social convictions.  Why haven’t we gone “boom!”?  Many in US society have come to see religious communities as wildly to the left or the right, just like the seating chart in Congress.  How can people with views as different as matter and anti-matter sit in the same pews calmly and pass the cookies around afterwards? 

(On a side note, I do admit we have our limits.  If you wish to be excommunicated from the Baptist church, try cutting in line at the potluck!)

The Corinthian congregation is admonished to remember that none of them have the right of way alone or the ability to lord it over the others in their midst.  The rich and the poor are to know their place in the congregation, and it looks nothing like the measurements being discussed in their day or even our own.  Equality and Unity are not mere concepts.  Paul insists the conflicted Corinthians are already many parts of one and only one body, the Body of Christ.  Nobody’s to be tossed aside or discounted, as each person is essential to the greater whole.

We learn that human hands do not make the unity.  God makes us one, whether we like it or not! Our hands, our feet, our elbows, our everything are in service to the only One who makes us one, the God who creates, redeems and sustains us, the Holy Trinity, and as we pray, One God in heaven now and forever. Amen.   Out of this divine unity, Christ’s gospel calls us to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the greater good.  No pecking order or hierarchy is presumed, even if the Church over the ages has tended to let that practice creep in.  Each of us is essential, yet none of us rise above the other.

Another Episcopal, the writer Nora Gallagher tells the story of her congregation in California that nearly went under. Well, until the congregants decided to make a go of it. They brought the church back from oblivion. The congregation discovered the answer to their prayers for God to send laborers to help is found in those doing the praying (cf. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary).  God has given abundantly in the gathering of believers seeing only their lack.

Nora Gallagher saw something completely different, as she and her fellow congregants dug in their heels, often without a priest on staff.  The remarkable story is summed up best in her words about the year they spent intentionally working toward new life: “we felt grace, learned compassion--for ourselves and others--and sometimes, even sensed rebirth.”  (Things Seen and Unseen)

With such wisdom, individual believers become a congregation.  Budgets, programs and even the ordained roles some congregants play are all in service to the gathered people, who are in turn in service to the greater Body.  We are not stuck like parents and grandparents on Christmas Day, trying our best to read the instructions and hope we can put together a gift for our wee ones.  God already assembles us.  It’s just our responsibility to live into the fullness of what God has already made us to be as the Body of Christ.  We are gifted individually, yet those gifts are in greater service to God.

In 1^st Corinthians, we learn each of us has spiritual gifts: talents bearing witness to God’s diversity, bringing praise to God and the good news to the world, all while we endeavor individually and corporately to live up to God’s unity.  The gifts we are given will vary, and the diversity of gifts helps our Body be varied.  “Church” is not about making cookie-cutter Christians.  We are similar to a really challenging puzzle, the type with oddly shaped puzzle pieces that look impossible to fit together.  You wonder how in the world these pieces can possibly one to another.  As you know, we have to work with patience and even more patience before the whole picture emerges and everything makes glorious sense!

Sometimes, I receive requests to meet with other congregations who feel overwhelmed or stuck when it comes to thinking about their present and future ministry.  I go and speak with them.  What I hear are often stories of deep frustration or the leadership seems to be picking up the pieces after hasty, anxiety fueled decisions have run their course and gained them nothing.  I listen and wish to myself that I forgot to bring something better than my handouts and presentation.  What I really wish I brought with me was an English bishop. 

A certain English bishop found himself once with a congregation in his diocese utterly afraid of going any longer than they had with no priest in charge of the parish.  No great leads had emerged on this rural church’s open position for a new vicar.  As it happens from time to time, the lay leadership had given into the myth that churches cannot do anything without “a minister” present. 

The church’s leaders complained long and loudly to the bishop.  Finally, the bishop smiled and simply held out his hands.  “See these hands?” he said.  “These hands ordain people to ministry, and I see a whole number of ministers right in front of me.”

If you ever find your minds wandering in worship, make sure you read the bulletin.  Rather than snoozing during the sermon, I hope you will enjoy reading the bulletin instead. You can learn of our congregation’s upcoming events or the weekly tithing report. I encourage you to look in the fine print on the back page where mention is made of various people serving as our church staff.

Each person listed plays a particular role in the day-to-day upkeep of facilities and church programming, yet you may notice that our church ministry is more than just the roles played by a handful of staff.  In the fine print, you’ll see where the real energy and power is to be found within a congregation.

What else does the fine print say? 

[The line in question reads:  Ministers—Everyone.]