This week, while the rest of you were surfing the Internet reading Ken Starr’s report, I was reading my favorite form of literature. I was reading "church bulletin bloopers." Church bulletin bloopers are those funny little errors that creep into church bulletins, maybe because the typist didn’t understand exactly what was being said, or because someone’s handwriting was unreadable, or just because using the computer’s spell-checker may get you a correctly spelled, but wrong word. And sometimes the results are absolutely hilarious.
For example, given what has been happening on the stock market, it might be a very long wait indeed if you were to take seriously the instructions given in one wedding bulletin, "The congregation is asked to remain seated until the end of the recession." I hope they meant recessional.
Or, since we are preparing for revival by doing some survey work, how about this item? "The Evangelism Committee is enlisting visitors to make calls on people who are not afflicted with any church." Well, "afflicted" is shorter than "affiliated", and it may even tell the truth.
I like this church bulletin blooper. You’ll have to think about this one just a moment, maybe. One church, invested in support groups of various sorts, gave these instructions: "The support group for persons with low self-esteem will meet on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. Please use the back door." I guess that is a little better than the next announcement in the same bulletin, "The weight watchers support group will also meet on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. Please use the double doors at the front."
Church bulletin bloopers sometimes reveal lots more than you want them to. Sometimes they tell a truth that you did not intend. In that category I’d place this brief item: "Churchwide dinner Wednesday night: prayer and medication to follow." Prayer and medication! We assume the writer meant to say, "meditation", but maybe he was getting at something else too.
Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication to follow. That could be bad news! The dinner will be so horrible you will need a strong dose of Maalox when you finish! Or it could be good news: having fed ourselves, we will be ready not only to pray and give thanks; we will also be ready to give out healing to those who need it. It could be bad news: that the things the church gives out are harmful and will make you sick if you linger too long. Or it could be good news: that the church of Jesus Christ nourishes people and then sends them into the streets, sends them both to the chapel and to the chambers of the sick and the needy.
Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication to follow. Could be bad news, could be good news.
I don’t know whether they had a synagogue bulletin on the Sabbath Day when Jesus came back to His hometown to preach. I rather doubt it. But I do know that what they heard that day could be good news, could be bad. At first they took it to be good news; but later it turned sour, and they heard it as bad news. I don’t suppose there was a synagogue supper, with prayer and medication to follow. But there was something about prayer and medication, something about a God who cares for hurting persons.
I
What was the good news part? Let’s start with the good stuff. What did the villagers of Nazareth hear that pleased them? They heard the old, old truth, that God cares about those who hurt. They heard something familiar, something they already believed in, that God identifies with the sick, the oppressed, the lonely, and the marginal. They enjoyed that message. That was exactly what they wanted to hear. They had heard it before, many times, and they applauded this:
[Jesus] stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "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." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph’s son?"
My, my, my. Now that’s real preaching. That’s good stuff. Can’t this fellow Jesus preach? God sends us to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. That’s right. Amen. Preach on. Let go! My, my, my. What a nice boy! Says all the right things.
And, you know, He did say all the right things, because this theme of God caring for those who hurt is not new. This is something which was deeply rooted in the faith of Israel.
Look at it for a moment. Did Jesus just make this up out of thin air? Did He just decide one day that He would spend His life seeking out the sick and the lonely, touching the distressed and the downtrodden? Did He just take some kind of aptitude test that suggested that this would be nice for Him to do? He did not. No, He did not. Jesus got this calling out of God’s own history. Jesus drew this agenda out of God’s longstanding commitment.
I’m sure you heard the reference here, that Jesus was reading from the roll of the prophet Isaiah. These words were hundreds of years old before Jesus read them. These words spoke of God’s care for those who hurt long before Jesus came on the scene in Nazareth. He did not invent this. He picked up on something that had been around for a long time.
In fact, for a lot longer than Isaiah, even. Because if you read the Old Testament, you find all kinds of stories that remind you how God cares for those who hurt. Well before Isaiah, there was Moses, who gave the Law, and in the Law it said that God’s people are to show mercy and kindness, that they are to provide for the hungry and the homeless. Long before Isaiah, long before Jesus. Go back some more. Even before Moses, there was the outcast woman Hagar and her son Ishmael, hurt by Abraham, sent out into the desert to die. But God came alongside Hagar and Ishmael and protected them. God has always done this. That’s God’s history. If that’s not far enough back for you, go back to the dawn of time. Go back to the story of the first murder. Go back to Cain and Abel; go back and see that the heart of God bled for Abel, destroyed by the pride of his brother; and see also that the heart of God reached out to Cain, and even in the middle of punishing him, God put a mark of protection on Cain. God cares for those who hurt, all of those who hurt, even for those who hurt themselves by their own foolishness. The people of Nazareth knew that. They agreed with that. Jesus, preach on. You are telling us what we already believe.
You and I today fall in the same tradition. We too believe that our God wants to cure and to heal. We too believe that our God is ready to seek and to save that which is lost. We too believe that the sick can be cured, the lonely can find community, the lost and the straying can find refuge. This is good news. It’s part of our tradition. Prayer and medication: we think that spiritual health and personal health go together. In just these last two weeks I’ve had several conversations and several counseling sessions in which these themes come out. This is good news, with which we can really identify. This is of God, from the very beginning. God cares for those who hurt. Prayer and medication. Who can argue with that?
II
But things turned sour on that Sabbath Day in Nazareth. Things went quickly from acclaim to accusation, from praise to petulance. All of a sudden, they didn’t like what they were hearing any more. As sometimes happens with preachers, yours truly included, we can’t seem to stop while we are ahead. We miss several good opportunities to shut up. In the same way, Jesus didn’t stop once he got the "Amen" corner running its mouth. He went on and put something else out there, and this changed the mood in the room completely. "Prayer and medication" became a bad news item in a hurry. Why?
He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ’Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ’Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum. And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
Wow! What a turnaround! One moment, their darling; the next, their dunce! One moment, hometown boy made good; the next, a candidate for boot hill! Throw Him off the cliff! What did He say? Where did it go sour?
It went sour when He told them that what they wanted from God they wanted only for people like themselves. It went down the tubes when Jesus got beneath their skin and showed them that they wanted the mercies of God only for the people they valued. They got upset when they were told that God cares for all persons, even the outcasts, the different, the foolish, and the unclean. They couldn’t deal with it when Jesus saw beneath their enthusiasm and said that all they really wanted were goodies for themselves and others like them, but that God has a funny history of giving His blessings to a Sidonian widow and a Syrian soldier, neither of whom was Jewish, neither of whom was our kind of people. Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication, but guess who’s coming to dinner?!
That’s what got the preacher of Nazareth in trouble. Churchwide dinner. He went so far as to suggest that God had invited everybody to the table, even the wrong race, the wrong class, the wrong morality, the wrong everything. That the good churchgoers of Nazareth found hard to take. That medication was too strong. They only wanted the mercies of God for their kind of people.
You and I face certain social realities in our community. We face the reality that there is more than one Takoma neighborhood. This community contains a variety of people, with a variety of needs. We as a church are tempted to expect God to bless us, and to bless others like us, but do we welcome those not like us?
There is more than one Takoma neighborhood. There is the Takoma of solid, middle-class, hard-working families, with children going to school, parents employed, modestly successful, keeping up their homes, invested in good causes. That’s who we are.
But then there is the Takoma neighborhood of marginal people. There is the Takoma of people hiding in apartments and rooming houses, wandering in the parks by day and meandering on the Avenue by night. There is a Takoma which is not so pleasant; not like most of us in this room. But if I hear Jesus, they are loved by God, they are the objects of His care. They are hurting persons whom God wants to bless. The question is whether we are ready as a church to reach out and love and be the channel of blessing for these folks not like us. God says He wants to bless them. Christ says He wants to walk among them. It troubles me to think that we might throw out that Christ, in our nearsighted selfishness. It bothers me to imagine that we might hurl Him over the cliff and get rid of His pesky walk among the lowly and the poor. Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication.
On the other hand, there is still another Takoma neighborhood. There is the Takoma of the upward and onward. There is the Takoma of accomplished people, men and women who enjoy the luxuries of life, whose household income is into six figures and whose homes boast things of beauty and comfort. But they too have needs, let us not forget. They too are oppressed, they too are lonely, they too are sick and distraught and full of anxieties. Among them, the up and out as well as the down and out, among them there are ulcers and suicides, broken families and shattered hearts. Among the powerful and influential, as the news seems to tell us every day, there are spiritual sicknesses of huge proportions. And if all we do is to cluck our tongues, vent our anger, and point our fingers at the up and out, whether they are in Takoma or at 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue, then I worry. I worry that we have thrown Jesus over the cliff one more time. Because His love and His mission are for all people, all people. Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication.
I want to call us today toward our community. I want to summon us to see everybody who is out here. If we cannot welcome all, because some don’t dress well or some dress too well, are we pushing Jesus over the cliff? If we cannot embrace the needs of everyone around us, because some will mess up our building and others will push us to think too hard, then I wonder, are we pushing Jesus over the cliff? If we won’t listen to the heartcries of immigrants, whose language we don’t speak, are we pushing Jesus over the cliff? If we just assume that every educated person or everybody with status ... well, he wouldn’t want to be in our little old church, because we’re nothing special ... isn’t that pushing Jesus over the cliff? Churchwide dinner, prayer and medication!
I tell you today that the barrier to our church’s effectiveness is that we seldom get in touch with our own prejudices and our own fears. Just as Jesus touched a raw nerve on that Sabbath Day in Nazareth by telling His hometown folks that the real issue was they wanted the grace of God for themselves, they didn’t want to embrace outsiders, so I have to say today that you and I will never be faithful to the Kingdom’s agenda until we know our own hearts, eradicate our own fears, and deal with our own prejudices. Until we do that, we will push Jesus over the cliff and get rid of Him as an inconvenient, uncomfortable challenge.
Churchwide dinner: prayer and medication. Community wide. Healing for all. For all.
III
Church bulletin bloopers are fun to read. Church bloopers, however, are not so much fun. What you put down on paper can be corrected easily. What we do as a fellowship of God’s people will take work to correct. There is a word of warning. For the truth is, that if we do not do what God wants done in our community, He will do it some other way. If we are not faithful to God’s will, God has not left Himself without a witness, and God’s work will be done by somebody, some time, some way. It might be a little storefront church, or it might be by somebody whose theology we don’t like, but God may use them. God will do what God will do, whether we approve of it or not.
For when the crowd tried to lynch this troublesome Jesus, this pesky prophet, something strange happened:
But he passing through the midst of them went his way. And came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days.
Jesus passed through their midst and went his way. He moved on to Capernaum and did God’s work somewhere else. He always does. He always will.
Jesus passed through the midst of the Jewish people and went his way. He went to seek out those he called the other sheep, not of this fold: Greeks and Romans, Scythians and barbarians, it says in the Bible. His own people didn’t want to associate with them, so he passed through and went his way. He always does. He always will.
Jesus passed through the midst of the early church and went his way. He went, through missionaries like Paul and Barnabas, to every part of the world they knew. They established churches made up of people who were not very pleasant. People who had stolen, look it up in Thessalonians; people who committed sexual infidelities, look it up in Corinthians; superstitious idol-worshippers, look it up in Colossians; jailers and prostitutes, swearing soldiers and smooth-talking svelte sellers of silk, look it up in Acts. Some objected. Some didn’t like it. Some kept to themselves. But Jesus cried out, "Do not call unclean what I have made clean." He passed through and went his way. He always does. He always will, when we will not do His work.
Jesus passed through. He passed through the church in its history. A church which corrupted the good news, a church which perverted grace and sold it for a price on the streets of Europe, despising the poor and catering to princes and power. But Jesus passed through and went his way, calling on Luther and Calvin, claiming the lives of William Carey and Luther Rice, reshaping and reforming His church. For He will pass through the midst of those who refuse to understand, and He will go his way, He will go elsewhere. He always does. He always will.
Jesus passed through the churches of America too. He passed through a segregated church and went to Martin Luther King. He passed through a passive church and went to Billy Graham. He passed through a selfish church and went to the Salvation Army and the rescue missions and the family shelters. Where the church will not go to work on God’s agenda, where the church will not receive those He wants to bless, He passes through and goes on. He always does. He always will.
I cannot tell whether Jesus will pass through the midst of Takoma Park Baptist Church and go on his way elsewhere. I only know that if we are not faithful to the God who cares for hurting persons, if we do not invite everyone to the churchwide dinner, for prayer and medication … I only know that He will go his way. He always does. He always will.
