Preaching Unpopular Words

 

When Jesus spoke to his hometown folk.  He gave the worst sermon a congregation could ever hear.  He preached from the Bible but he didn’t highlight his nation or his people.

Check out Simona Frenkel & the trio Lidya Diaz, Jody Sinkway and Dotty McClelland sing – Lift Your Eyes

There are people who have been my heroes throughout my life.  When I was in grade school and junior high I admired Muhammad Ali & Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and as I entered college and seminary my list grew to include people like Gandhi and Bonhoeffer.

What I realize now is that they all had something in common they were fighting evil with good.  And I began to see that all of them were willing to lose everything, including their lives for what they believed in and it made me wonder would I have been as bold and courageous as they had been.  I’d like to think I would have spoken up or fought back but I probably would have kept my head down and my mouth shut?

So this scene in Luke troubles me because this story starts out so hopeful and filled with hometown pride in their young boy know become a superstar in his own right.  Jesus returns home to those who’ve known him since he was a boy.  They speak well of him.  A joyous reunion seems inevitable following the service, like the ordination or installation party that follows a pastor’s call to a new church.

But then things turn ugly and violent.  Jesus rolls up the scroll, declares the Scriptures are fulfilled in him.  The congregation beams with pride at this hometown boy from Nazareth about to fulfill all of Israel’s hopes and dreams as the fresh new face of the long hoped for Messiah.

And after he finishes quoting from Isaiah’s text he goes on to tell them a couple of stories, which he takes right out of their own Bibles.  And the first thing he does is lift up two examples of outsiders who did God’s will.  He tells his congregation that Elijah went to the widow of Zarephath and Elisha to Naaman the Syrian, not to the good people of Israel, not to the people like those seated in the pews that day in Nazareth.

As you can imagine this doesn’t go over well with his hometown crowd and they go from singing his praises to becoming and enraged mob that try and kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff.

Those who know Jesus best hate him the most.  Jesus’ first sermon leads to chaos, his first act of ministry a disaster.  Yet if I’m honest with myself I have to wonder what I would have done that day if I had been in Jesus’ congregation.  Depends on whose side I was on before I came to worship I suppose.

Was I a nationalist or into tribalism like those in the Nazareth congregation or would I have said, “You know he has a point.”  Would it have made any difference if one person stood up in the back of sanctuary and said:  “We should all sit down and take a deep breath and ask him what he is talking about and why is he talking about the widow of Zarephath and Naaman?

I am not sure why the congregation that day couldn’t contain their anger.  I do know that deescalating such sentiment requires uncommon courage.  I do know our current climate is a tinder box waiting to ignite already angry people.  Anger is our default mode.  I overhear weaponized rhetoric and I see vitriolic reactions everywhere I go.

So I wonder how well I and this congregation would have faired if we had been in Jesus’ congregation that day.  When you realize that it was his hometown folk and his closet disciples that either tried to kill him or abandoned him.  Why do we think we would do any better?  I think it should trouble all of us who attend church and especially those of us who are the paid religious leaders that we probably would have done exactly the same thing.

Would I have joined the Confessing Church of Germany that stood up to Hitler?  Would we all have run away the minute the angry mob came to take Jesus away to the High Priest and why would we have not yelled for his crucifixion like everyone else? These are questions that cannot be answered.  What is unquestionable is our call to be courageous in our current context.

We are to abide in faith, hope and love.  We are to be faithful to the call of God right here and right now. We, like Jeremiah, say: “I am only one person. We are just a small congregation. I am just an elder. I am only a youth. But God’s voice resounds from heaven: “Do not say you are only or you are just.  You must go where I send you and speak the words I give you.  I have put my words in your mouth.  I have appointed you.” There is no “only” or “just” when it comes to the power of God.  There is only faith or lack there of.

Wherever we find ourselves, whatever story we are living out of, we are to ask:  What word has God given to me to do?  Where am I to go and what am I to say and do?  What are we to uproot or destroy, build or plant?  Jesus went to Nazareth and spoke the word of God, regardless of how it was received, no matter the consequences. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King were willing to give up everything including their lives to follow the word of God in their time and place.

Surely, God has given us a word, a call, a mission, a reason to risk something for the sake of the gospel?  Perhaps, nothing so dramatic as dodging a murderous crowd or as painful as languishing in prison, but surely, something that entails risk, faith, hope and, the greatest of the three, love.

You want to know what I fear?  I fear standing before God and God saying tell me what you did with this great gift of life I gave you.  Did you play it safe and risk nothing.  Did you live out of fear or out of courage and faith.  What are you afraid of?  If you live by fear you will die.  If you live by faith you will still die but you also will receive everlasting life. The choice is ours but don’t think that the choice you make doesn’t matter.  It can affect the rest of your life both now and the life to come.  Amen