January 30, 2022
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Luke 4:21-30; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Grace Beyond Our Hometown Borders
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
State Farm has an entertaining series of commercials with football quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rogers. Both quarterbacks are under the impression that they’re getting special deals from State Farm. Mahomes boasts about his “Patrick Price” while Rogers claims he’s getting “The Rogers’ Rate.” Jake from State Farm keeps trying to tell them, guys, no, we give that special rate to everyone.
Mahomes and Rogers like to think that they’ve got a one of a kind thing going on because they’re so special themselves. But it turns out that State Farm offers the exceptional rate to everyone.
Something similar to that is going on in our gospel reading today. Our reading from Luke is actually the second half of a two-part story. We heard the first portion last Sunday. Jesus has just begun his itinerant ministry. He’s been traveling about to various cities and villages in the Galilee region. He preached in the synagogues wherever he went. It didn’t take very long at all before a positive report about him began to spread.
And then his travels take him to his home town of Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue on the sabbath. He’s handed the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He finds a passage in chapter 61 and reads it:
“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 to free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then he announces: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus makes the big reveal to his hometown neighbors. God is fulfilling this good news prophecy through Jesus. Jesus has been chosen as the vehicle to bring good news and healing and liberation.
It’s a big reveal and a huge moment. At first, his old neighbors are pleased and amazed. But then they think about it some more.
“Hey, isn’t this Joseph’s son? You know, the carpenter?” They’re insinuating that Jesus has become too big for his britches. He’s getting above his raisin’, a little high headed.
Jesus’ hometown neighbors can remember him as Little Jesus. They know all the stories about him. They’ve seen him as the pimply teenager. And he’s the son of a common laborer; it’s not like he’s the rabbi’s son. Really, Jesus, God’s anointed?
Their skepticism is palpable in the synagogue. Jesus knows what they want from him. They want him to perform. They want to see the marvelous works he’s done in the neighboring towns. They want to see him heal the sick, restore sight to the blind. But Jesus won’t satisfy them.
Instead, he challenges his hometown neighbors. He reminds them of how it was during the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. When there was a prolonged famine, Elijah provided for a foreign woman of Sidon. And of all the lepers in Israel, Elijah cleansed the general of a foreign nation’s army. God didn’t show a preferential treatment to Israel. Divine grace didn’t stop at the boundaries of the Promised Land.
The people in the Nazareth synagogue are fuming. Jesus isn’t going to give any special favors to his hometown. When they realize that he isn’t going to shower them with extra indulgences, they’re hopping mad, mad enough to kill.
The American Express credit card used to have the saying, “Membership has its privileges.” Do we get any privileges as Christians? When we’re good Christian folk, does it grease any wheels? Does life bend our way when we follow Jesus’ way?
The people in the synagogue in Nazareth were confronted with the vivid reality that God cannot be tamed. We would like to manage and channel the good graces of God. But over and over in both testaments, God makes it perfectly clear that we cannot contain divine grace.
• Elijah provided for the Syrian widow;
• Elisha cleansed Naaman from his leprosy;
• King David’s great grandmother was from the land of Edom;
• God showed mercy to the despised Assyrians through Jonah;
• Jesus visited the Samaritan woman at the well;
• He freed a Roman centurion’s servant;
• And the Holy Spirit led the apostles to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations.
Our desire might be to horde the abundance of heaven for ourselves. We might wish that God would fall dutifully behind our steps like an obedient dog, that our enemies would become God’s enemies. But God will not be curbed or contained or channeled. Divine grace is bigger than we are. The Spirit blows where it will and God’s mercies flow where they will.
Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians shed light. He describes the character of love. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. Love never ends.
And we know the source of love, for God is love. Paul’s magnificent and profound words describe love. And n describing love, we come to know God. The love of God never ends. It’s ever expanding, just like the universe.
That love became flesh for us in the person of Jesus. And he shows us just how far divine love will go to seek us out and claim us. Jesus’ love pursued us all the way to the cross, to the grave, to the gates of Hell. There is no border, there is no region so remote that he can’t cross to reach us.
As that limitless, divine love embraces us, it impels us to love as we have been loved.
In the end, we don’t tame and curb God’s love. God liberates us to love more widely and forgive more deeply. And herein we receive the one privilege afforded to us as Christians: we are invited to take up our own cross and follow in the expanding love of Jesus Christ our Lord.
This cross presented to you and me invites us to extend beyond our own hometown borders. It calls us to a love as wide as the love that first claimed us. And that love will not be contained.
