One of my favorite moments on any given Sunday is the chance to greet people at the end of the service: to literally “press flesh” and touch base with people in person with people. Even that brief interaction always does my spirits good. And, it was one of the things I missed most when we were worshipping online or with only a few people in the sanctuary during the pandemic.
Sometimes in those brief interchanges, there are words about the sermon. One thing I learned as a young preacher was best not to focus too much on a particular person or group when preparing a sermon – with the expectation that what you have to say will make a change in their lives. Partly, that is the growing humility of recognizing that only God really knows what a person needs to hear. And if the truth be told, a bigger part of the reason is that my words rarely had the effect I hope they would have.
I remember the sermon where I really had this one man in mind, a man who really needed to hear the words of the scripture passage and put them into practice I thought. At the door, he indicated he heard the message very well – but just not for himself. “Thanks Carter. There are some people who really needed to hear what you had to say today. I hope they did.“
Some things said about the sermon are probably better left unsaid. I remember an older woman in our church in Baltimore where Kerry was serving as the new young associate pastor – and the first woman pastor the congregation had ever had. With perfect innocence, the woman asked Kerry at the door after Kerry had preached: “Did you write that sermon all by yourself, honey?”
And some sermon reactions perhaps provide more honesty than the preacher wants to hear. I remember a colleague once shared about a woman who said to him at the door, “Pastor, that was a very good sermon.” “Oh, I have to give all of the credit to the Holy Spirit,” he said with genuine humility. She replied: “It wasn’t THAT good!”
Jesus never gets a chance to shake hands at the door after his first recorded sermon in his home synagogue in Nazareth. But his preaching certainly draws a reaction. More than one, in fact.
First, there is admiration. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” Luke tells us.
Then and now, Jesus gets a lot of admiration for being a good teacher and good man. But you have to wonder if those who treat Jesus as a good teacher and good man – and nothing more – have really paid attention to what he says. Look at what he says in the sermon just before this passage: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” And later, that the words of Isaiah “have been fulfilled in your hearing.” Or still later, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
What good teacher or good man would claim to be the Messiah and say all that? If someone were to repeat today what Jesus said then, we probably would ask them if they were on their medications. As C. S. Lewis once observed, “the only person who can say [what Jesus said] is either [the Son of God] or a complete lunatic suffering from [some] form of delusion.”[i]
When you look at all of Jesus’ sayings about himself, you may well argue that Jesus is a lunatic, or you can claim by faith that Jesus is who he says he is: the Son of God, our Lord and Savior. But it is hard to see how you can argue that Jesus is a good moral teacher – and nothing more. In any case, Jesus makes clear in the gospels that he does not just want “admirers” or spectators who appreciate him
The second reaction to Jesus is a combination of wonder and doubt. This is Jesus’ hometown synagogue, and these people have seen him grow up. Luke tells us that they say to each other, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” You can imagine the follow up responses: “Who does he think he is – we saw him running around the village when he was a snotty little kid.” “What’s so special about him? He’s just one of us.”
This scene reminds me of a woman I knew in our church in Richmond. She was facing serious surgery when she met one of the doctors on her surgical team. It was Dr. Hank Stoneburner. She knew him: he had been a friend of her son when they were younger. All of the sudden she got very nervous and was filled with doubt, she told me. All she could remember was thsy immature middle schooler. And now, that teenager was going to cut her open and perform a serious operation?!
Jesus knows what the people in the congregation are saying – and thinking. He understands their doubts and skepticism. He recognizes that familiarity can breed contempt and that “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” It is easier to be skeptical than to believe that Jesus is worth listening to, much less, imitate. When you have been around Jesus for a long time, it is easy to take Jesus for granted.
What about us? We have not watched Jesus growing up in our neighborhood, but have we let our familiarity with Jesus lead to complacency, if not skepticism? Do we take Jesus for granted?
What does it look like when we take Jesus for granted? It is a matter of thinking we know all we need to know when it comes to Jesus or our faith. When we take Jesus for granted and are complacent when it comes to our faith, we often only pray when desperate. If we do read the Bible – or hear it read, we tend to think “oh, I know that story…same-old, same-old.” We compartmentalize our faith – keeping it as one part of our life, but not something that should affect the rest of our life. Or, we treat the church like a Christian service organization or civic club, rather than the new incarnation, Christ’s body in the world.
For those in attendance at the Nazareth synagogue, taking Jesus for granted robs him of the power to do miracles in their lives. Not because he lacks the power – and not because he wants to punish them. But because they are not really open to what Jesus, the hometown boy, has to offer. The same can be true for us. When we are apathetic, when we do not hunger or thirst as disciples, there is not much room for us to receive anything from the One who is the Way, Truth, and Life.
What does it look like to take Jesus for granted? Consider the opposite case: someone who was really willing to listen to Jesus – and obey him. Fred Craddock recalls preaching in a university church in Norman, Oklahoma. After he preached a sermon on Jesus’ call of the disciples, a woman came up to him at the door and shared this sermon reaction: “I’m in med school here, and that sermon clinched what I’ve been struggling with for some time.”
“What’s that?” Craddock asked. “Dropping out of medical school,” the young woman said.
“Why do you want to do that for?” he asked. “I believe that is what God wants me to do,” she answered, “to move to the Rio Grande Valley and teach the children of migrant laborers. And that’s what she did.”
With a twinkle in his eyes, Craddock imagined the conversation if her parents ever came down to Norman from their home in Montana. “She was going to be a doctor. Now she is sleeping in a shack and teaching poor kids. What in the world happened?” And he would defensively reply, “Well now, I was just preaching. I didn’t mean for her to take me so seriously.”[ii]
Are we willing to take Jesus’ words seriously? Are you willing to let Jesus loose to do miracles in your life? Am I willing to let him change my life?
The third reaction to Jesus’ sermon is anger. Some of the people in that Nazareth synagogue get angry with Jesus – very angry. So angry, that they drive him out of the town. For a time, it looks like he will be thrown over a cliff and be killed. But the time is not ripe for Jesus to give up his life: he passes through the angry mob and goes on his way.
Why are they so angry? Because anger can be the last defense against facing an uncomfortable truth, something that we do not want to hear or acknowledge. Whether at home or work, in first century Palestine or 21st century America, anger can be a way that defensive people go on the offensive to avoid listening…or self-examination…or changing.
What is the truth that Jesus’ audience does not want to face? That outsiders sometimes do a better job of hearing God than God’s people do. And that God’s grace may not be limited to God’s covenant people. Jesus speaks about prophets not being accepted in their hometown and then refers to the Old Testament stories of Elijah and Elisha – stories where the recipients of grace are foreigners and outsiders. Too often Christians want a God who will back our nation, endorse our cause, reinforce our beliefs and prejudices. What Jesus tells the people here in Luke 4, is not to expect that from this God, nor from this Messiah.
What Jesus preaches here is that religious insiders such as we can sin and distort the message of the gospel, while outsiders and non-believers may sometimes be more obedient to God’s will. What Jesus wants us to pay attention to is that God does not belong to us; we belong to God. Grace is God’s gift – and we are not the ones who get to tell God who the gifts can go to. So, we have no grounds to be angry if that grace is showered on people whom we would not choose to love.
What Jesus is warning us here in Luke 4 is that he is going to disrupt the status quo and change things in the world. If we want to be his disciple, then we need to be willing to face uncomfortable truths, to shake things up, and to be open to change – not just of others, but in ourselves.
Admiration, skepticism, doubt, and even anger are all natural responses to this Jesus. We may well pass through each of these reactions in stages – and do so multiple times – but pass through them we must. Because in Christ, God calls us to set aside our skepticism and complacency and face up to the uncomfortable truths that might make us angry. After all, Christ did not come to collect admirers who approve of him and cheer him on from the sidelines. Christ came to call and mold disciples who imitate and follow him.
At the end of this passage, as we noted before, some in the crowd yelled to hurl him off the cliff. “But,” Luke tells us, “he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” As is always the case with Jesus, he “does not go elsewhere because he is rejected; he is rejected because he goes elsewhere.”[iii]
He goes on his way. The question is: will we go with him or will we stay where we are?
In the end, the only ones in this crowd standing at the edge of the cliff who will find and experience the reign of God that is being fulfilled in Jesus Christ…
…are the ones who follow him.
Amen.
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[i] Quoted in C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian: 127 Readings (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1977), 74.
[ii] Paraphrased from Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, edited by Mike Graves and Richard Ward (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), 24.
[iii] Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 64.
