How many of us are able to go to our home town and have people look at us in our collars without them wondering how we ever became an ordained person?
Jesus deals with familiarity that hinders his ability to do the work of God in Nazareth, even after "news about him had spread throughout the region (Luke 4:14)." In Luke's account this story follows right after Jesus returns from being tempted in the desert for 40 days. Now Jesus, again resists temptation, the temptation to embrace the empty flattery of the hometown crowd, by speaking directly to the heart of their words. In essence, Jesus lets the crowd know that it is wholly dependant faith in God that brings healing and wholeness into their lives. He points out that Elijah healed the Gentile woman in Zarephath - a non-Jew who was desperate in her dependence upon God's providence. Likewise, he reminds them of Elisha's cure of Naaman the (Gentile) Syrian army commander of his leprosy. In both cases, there were those in Israel with the same conditions, but none were able to be made whole because of their reliance on themselves and/or the limitations they had put on God's power to work in their lives.
How often do we limit God's power to work in our lives?
And how often do we look for God's healing only to come in presently demonstrative ways that limits our vision and the hope of those we are called to serve?
I wonder if this makes God feel the same way we do when our hometown folks question our credibility.
Here in Luke 4, Jesus' exposure of the truth angers the crowd to the point of an attempt to throw him off a cliff. He survives. Later he will be led to a hill outside another city and he will be crucified, revealing the greastest Truth, . . . God loves us so much that death does not hinder the Divine in bringing wholeness and healing to us in our lives on the other side of the grave.
Resurrection is the ultimate healing. Our hope is founded in this truth.
And our hope and reliance upon God in our lives in the here and now opens us to infinite blessings today that we could not see or realize without this hope. So God's power to act in our lives is far greater than we can ask or imagine. . .if only we believe.
In the end we find out that there is no place like home, home with the blessed economia of the Holy Trinity.
posted by the Rev. P. Lance Ousley
Rector, St. Thomas' Episcopal Church
Wharton, TX
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3 comments:
In this continuation of Luke's account of Jesus in his home synagogue, I am still struck by the rising of a lynch mob at our Lord's message. What could we preach, or proclaim, that might evoke such hostility? In our increasingly xenophobic contemporary culture, maybe it's the message that nobody is "special", and that God's salvation is for everyone. In the words of Anselmo Carral (a late sometime assistant bishop of our diocese), "I am a child of God, therefore I am not an alien anywhere!" Many of us, at some time in our ministry, have borne the anger of parishioners who accuse us of having stopped preaching and gone to meddling. I have tried to fill in the blanks in Sealy, and anyone else has their own set of blanks where they are. Maybe also you've heard a variation on the theme, "Hey, old buddy, you can go to church or not go, whatever you want, but don't mess with Old Glory, or you're walking on my fightin' side!" The Word of God, however, slices through all the transient and phony structures upon which we pin our hopes. For those for whom this is truly good news, the routines and forces of the world will always be hostile. It's not what they want to hear, because those who do hear it will be out of control. Hallelujah! Bring on the lynch mob! Thanks. Jim Abernathey
What strikes me about this event is the fact that Jesus just walks away. Lynchings are not the type of group activities that allow their victims to just walk away.
I suspect that what is behind all of this, the rush up the hill to throw him off and then parting to allow him to walk away, is authority and presence. Jesus taught and preached with authority. The power of his personal presence stopped another mob cold in their attempt to stone the woman “caught in the very act of adultery.”
Their response to the truth of his teaching was rage, rage at being exposed by one whose authority they could not deny, at having their hypocrisy and denial laid bare before them.
But that same authority, that personal presence was more powerful than the group mind. I can imagine Jesus just looking them in the eye, unwavering, unflinching, and them looking down in shame and parting as he just walks away.
Our problem may well be that we don’t preach with authority, but merely as one who has a point of view to be considered among all the other competing points of view. After all, the syncretistic nature of our age is hard to miss. And our claims as Christians to any kind of unique or exclusive good news are scoffed at both within and outside the church.
Do we, by the grace of God, teach and preach with the authority and presence to really stir anyone up to any kind of passionate action, good or evil?
Rick+
For me the incident turns on hierarchy. It is only when someone, presumably someone whose stature in the community allows them to look down on a carpenter, sees that “All spoke well of him and were amazed” That they said "Is not this Joseph's son?"
There must have been a lot of sneer packed into that one, because Jesus turns on them in full brood-of-vipers mode, telling the two tales of the aliens against them.
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