4th Sunday after the Epiphany
Luke 4:21-30
Preaching is Risky
21 And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
22 And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth; and they said, "Is not this Joseph’s son?"
23 And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ’Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here also in your own country.’"
24 And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country.
25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land;
26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
29 And they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong.
30 But passing through the midst of them he went away.RSV
Grace and Peace to you from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus who is the Christ. Amen
Our gospel lesson continue the story in last week’s gospel lesson. You will remember that Jesus was at home and went to the synagogue and was given a scroll to read. He read from Isaiah and then said a remarkable thing, that "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Jesus was telling the people that he was the fulfillment of God’s salvation in the world.
And today’s text tells us of the reaction of the men who had heard what Jesus said.
The people were astonished at what Jesus said and they spoke out loud and said, "Isn’t this Joseph’s son?"
In a sense they were saying, how can he say that the scripture has been fulfilled in me when Jesus is just the son of a carpenter?
Jesus knew that it was difficult for the people to accept his new authority because they knew him as the son of Joseph the carpenter. How can Jesus says he has fulfilled the scripture when he is just a carpenter’s son?
It is difficult for people to change what they think of you and Jesus knew that when he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country."
It is like the boy in the following:
Small town memories can be long and brutal. Michael was a troubled child. While he was quite young, his father passed away. Michael responded by acting out in school, by underachieving in class, and with repeated brushes with the law. By high school, Michael had developed a pattern of truancy and disrespect for authority and a taste for the wild side of life. When Michael moved away shortly after high school, the town heaved a collective sigh of relief. The small town’s consensus?
Michael was going nowhere — fast.
Many years later, while scanning the Appointments section of a national business paper, I saw a face that rang bells. I backed up and read the name. It was Michael, smiling proudly. The ad announced that Michael had recently been promoted to the position of junior vice president of a well-known company.
It didn’t seem possible. Not our Michael. Not with his past.
The memory of the people of Nazareth made it difficult for them to see Jesus in a new light. Jesus, a prophet? Jesus, the Messiah? Not possible. They remembered his past.
And not only did they have a difficult time accepting who Jesus was, the Son of god, the Messiah, they also were thinking in their hearts, why doesn’t he do miracles here as he did Capernaum. Prove to us he is the Messiah.
Jesus understood what they were saying as he looked into their hearts. They were wondering why Jesus did not heal in his own town as he did in Capernaum.
Then Jesus told them that even in the scriptures, what is our Old Testament, that Elijah did not provide food in a land that was starving, that Elisha did not heal the lepers, but Elijah and Elisha were only sent to a certain people who happen to be gentiles to bring food and to heal.
After Jesus told them that, they became angry and tried to kill Jesus.
The people were expecting Jesus to do what they wanted him to do and when He would not they became angry.
The people wanted signs from Jesus concerning his authority. Jesus would not at that point give them a sing, like healing or feeding people, but He wanted them to believe only in his authority as seen in the scriptures.
The people’s expectation of the preacher Jesus was different than Jesus’ own expectations.
In the following we see rather high expectation
After hundreds of years, one has been found! A model preacher!!!
A model preacher preaches 20 minutes and sits down. He condemns sin but never hurts anyone’s feelings.He works from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. in every type of work from preaching to custodial service. He makes $60 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books regularly, has a nice family, drives a good car and gives $100 a week to the church. He also stands ready to contribute to every good work that comes along.
He is 26 years old and has been preaching for 30 years. He is tall and short, thin and heavy-set. He has one brown eye, and one blue, and hair parted down the middle, left side dark and straight and the right brown and wavy.
He has a burning desire to work with the teenagers, and spends all his time with the older folks. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work. He makes 15 calls a day on church members, spends all of his time evangelizing the unchurched, and is never out of his office.
Expectations can be a serious thing. Jesus knew what the people wanted, their expectations were for Jesus to do some marvelous sign among them to prove his authority. But Jesus did not want to do that. He wanted them to believe in his word, alone.
Sometimes our expectations of God are off the mark, too, like the men in our gospel lesson. We want to hear from God through our preacher what we want to hear, not what God through the preacher is trying to say.
Like in the following:
At a southern Church, an older lady was listening to the sermon, in which the parson was preaching fervently against all the common sins, from gambling, to Murder, and everything in between.
The lady swayed in her seat, and murmured "amen, Amen" from time to time. But when the parson hit on the subject of Snuff-taking, the lady sat bolt-upright and said, "Now he’s left preaching and taken to meddling"
Jesus started to meddle in the lives of those Jewish men by telling them that he was not going to any signs and that Jesus was going to start preaching to the gentiles as was done by Elijah and Elisha. That really made the men angry. They were angry because the Jewish people felt they were God’s chosen people and that God’s salvation belonged to them alone. They had forgotten about all the stories in scripture about God teaching our through the prophets to the gentiles.
And through God’s word, Jesus is meddling in our lives. He is telling us that through his word we can find the authority for our lives. We don’t need any special signs, just the word of God, the Bible for our salvation. We do not need any more special signs of God’s love that Jesus dying on a cross and rising on the third day and all that is spelled out for us in the Bible.
A pastor wrote:
Ten years ago my friend’s wife suffered a stroke which rendered her unable to walk or communicate. She has been confined to a nursing home ever since. My friend has suffered deprivation, loss of certain freedoms, loss of physical rest, and untold agony ot the soul because of his wife’s illness.
Daily my friend visits with his wife, and uncomplaining, he spends as much time with her as possible, just sitting by her side. Why? Because he loves her. His love for her is revealed by what he does.
Love is something you do. God suffered to prove his love for us, and he revealed his love for us through what he did. He gave his Son.
God could have cried out from outer space a million years, saying, "I love you, I love you," but we would not have believed him. We now believe that he loves us because he gave his Son Jesus Christ to die for us.
God’s love for us is revealled not only in the actions of God through his son Jesus Christ, but we at the same time have the Word of God telling over and over again about God’s great love for us.
As the people in Jesus’ home town demanded a new sign for Jesus authority, many today seem to think that they need something special to know about God’s love for them.
As Lutheran, we believe that God’s love is revealled in the sacraments and the word. We see God’s love in Baptism, in the Holy Supper and in the word proclaimed each time we gather in the name of Jesus. We need no other signs from God than these.
For we believe that God works through the common ordinary things of live, water, wine, bread, written and spoken words, that is all that is needed. Sure there are miracles of one sort or another but I like to think of them as the frosting on the cake, not the main course.
What sustains us day in and day are the waters of baptism, the bread and wine, the written and spolen word. That is what we should base our lives and our faith upon.
A closing story reminds us we need no more signs of god’s love than:
A certain medieval monk announced he would be preaching next Sunday evening on "The Love of God." As the shadows fell and the light ceased to come in through the cathedral windows, the congregation gathered. In the darkness of the altar, the monk lighted a candle and carried it to the crucifix.
First of all, he illumined the crown of thorns, next, the two wounded hands, then the marks of the spear wound. In the hush that fell, he blew out the candle and left the chancel. There was nothing else to say.1
No more signs are needed for us than that because unlike the men in the synagogue, we know the rest of the story and that story is the crucified and risen Christ.
Amen
1Source Unknown.
