Here is a sermon I preached three years ago on the texts for Epiphany 4c. You can read the scriptures for this message here.
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation”,
Ruby Turpin is sitting in the doctor’s waiting room,
evaluating each person around her.
Ruby judges herself to be superior,
by more than a grade or two,
to everyone there,
especially to a poor, unkempt, teenaged wretch seated across from her who is reading a book.
Ruby thinks it sad that the girl’s parents did not groom here more attractively.
Perish the thought of having a child as scowling as this one.
As for the “ugly” child, Mary Grace,
she listens for a while as Ruby chatters outloud about the superiority of poor blacks over “white trash.”
Then, without warning, Mary Grace fixes her steely eyes on Ruby and hurls her book across the room.
The book hits Ruby in the head and she falls to the floor with Mary Grace on top of her hissing into her ear.
“Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!”
This, says O’Connor, is the violent, shocked beginning of Ruby’s redemption and the foundation for a heavenly vision she will later see when she returns home from her visit to the doctor.
Revelation often begins when a large book hits you on the head.
While in Seminary in the late eighties,
my how the time flies,
I went with the Drew Theological School Choir on a tour of Jamaica.
There were 27 of us in all,
with cameras, Bibles and songbooks in hand.
We went to Jamaica to bring the people there a little of the “Good News” through our singing.
Our musical program even included a selection entitled “Ain’ta That Good News.”
But there are times when the good news may not seem so good.
There are even times when the good news upsets and offends.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I met someone who was not able nor wanted to hear any good news we might bring.
I was standing on the dock at Safe Harbor taking pictures of the bay and the birds playing in the air,
practicing their divebombing attempts to catch fish,
when I noticed a ferry crossing the harbor from the capital city of Kingston; it was loaded down with people.
I walked to one end of the pier to get a better look,
and as I passed by one rather tall, well-dressed and dignified woman I heard her say,
“If you take a picture of me with that camera,
I’ll push you out into the water.”
At first I thought she was kidding me.
I had no plans to take her picture.
I didn’t even have my camera raised.
So I said, “I wouldn’t dream of taking your picture if you don’t want me to.”
Her reply was totally unexpected.
“You Americans,
you come down here with your cameras and your money and your sermons about God and expect us to eat it all up,”
“Look at these people,” she said, “Some of them don’t even have enough money to buy themselves something to eat.
You either come down in your suits and ties preaching about God and taking pictures,
or you come with white robes,
acting like the Ku Klux Klan.”
I didn’t know what to say or do,
and so I stood by silently as she continued her verbal assault.
“You probably want to take some pictures of people pushing their way off the boat, tripping and stumbling.
That way you can go back and show your people how the little darkies live in Jamaica.”
Then she then yelled at the people on the ferry,
“Take your time getting off, don’t crowd or push,
you don’t want this boy to take pictures of you.”
And looking at me she said,
“We don’t need your gospel,
and we don’t want you coming around to give it to us.”
And then she walked off.
She had said her peace and had left me feeling more than a little weak and confused by the force of her words.
She would have nothing to do with the good news I or anyone else in my group might have.
To her, our activities were anything but good.
And for the first time I began to question whether or not I really had any “good news” to offer her or others in that small, poor country.
What is the good news, and what do we do when the news being proclaimed doesn’t seem all that good?
I believe there are times when the good news of God’s kingdom is mighty hard to take.
There will be times when we will be tempted to say,
“We don’t need this kind of good news.”
And in saying this we may well end up rejecting the very words that can heal us.
In today’s Gospel lesson,
Jesus is rejected when he delivers the good news in his hometown of Nazareth.
Now he wasn’t rejected right away, mind you.
As a matter of fact, everyone seemed impressed with him at first.
They liked what Jesus had to say.
“All present spoke favorably of him and marveled at the appealing words which came from his lips.”
But an amazing turn-around occurs by the end of verse 28.
We read “all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
They rose up, drove him out of town,
and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built intending to throw Jesus over the edge of the cliff.”
What’s going on here?
How can Jesus go from “hometown celebrity” to an unwanted and hated man in mere minutes?
I believe the answer to this question has a great deal to do with how people hear and respond to the “good news.”
It’s easy to see why everyone was pleased with Jesus at the beginning of the passage.
His first words are words of hope.
Jesus claims anointing to preach good news to the poor.
He is, of course, speaking to poor people for the most part,
common peasants,
and to them a little good news would have been especially welcome.
Jesus also proclaims liberty to the captives,
recovery of sight to the blind,
and freedom to those who are oppressed.
And after each statement,
the crowd cry out, “Amen” and “Preach it Brother.”
Everyone likes good news,
everybody loves freedom and liberty,
and who, pray tell, is against the blind receiving their sight?
A few miracles would be most welcome in Nazareth,
for these people know all about captivity and oppression.
They live in a land occupied by a foreign army.
Every Roman soldier they see reminds them that they were prisoners in their own land.
And needless to say,
the state of medical care is not up to par when it comes to healing.
The lame will never walk again.
The deaf do not expect to ever hear,
and the blind certainly don’t expect to wake up one day to discover their sight has returned.
And so it’s no surprise Jesus’ opening words were well received.
We too would like to see some miracles in our rather humdrum lives.
Too often we are captives to and oppressed by the lives we lead.
too often our eyes are blind,
and almost everyone I know longs to hear some good news.
Bill McElwee, a minister friend of mine,
often tells the story of a professor of his going into an amusement arcade at a carnival.
The professor found a machine in which you could put a coin and receive a card with some good news on it.
The professor said, however, there was a sign on the machine which read, “The Good News Machine is broken.”
And that’s how it is so much of the time;
we are surrounded by bad news - it’s everywhere.
But it was no different in Jesus time.
The good news machine was broken,
and anyone coming to preach good news was welcome.
And the temptation then and now is to see Jesus as a “good news” machine,
come down from heaven to brighten up our otherwise dreary lives.
And there is some truth to this notion.
A life touched by Jesus becomes filled with grace and goodness.
But the good news doesn’t stop there.
If we just preach good news to the poor,
if we just proclaim liberty for the captives,
if we merely restore sight to the blind,
and free those who are oppressed;
if we stop there, we have not heard the whole gospel.
If we stop there, the good news has not been fully proclaimed.
And let me warn you the good news that follows doesn’t always seem so good.
In the remaining verses Jesus says some things that quickly turn the crowd against him.
It seems the people want Jesus to do for his hometown what he has done elsewhere.
They may have said aloud or thought in their hearts,
“You have done great things in Capernaum,
now let’s see some of your wonderful works here in Nazareth.”
In other words, “We want a piece of the action too!”
After all, this is your hometown.
It also seems that the people expect God’s presence and love to be confined to, or at least most powerfully felt in,
their own little corner of the world.
These people feel that Jesus owes it to them.
They are the apple of God’s eye,
and no one is more deserving of God’s attention.
And it’s not hard to find these same people in church pews today.
Today’s Churches have their share of “Bless me, Lord” people.
Prosperity and “you can have whatever you want, only ask for it” gospels are very popular.
But the message Jesus proclaims is different,
and because of that his popularity soon takes a nosedive.
You see, prophets and preachers are popular as long as they claim special privileges for their listeners.
They quickly become unpopular, however,
when they begin to talk of special responsibilities.
This is what got Jesus in trouble with the folk of his hometown.
To the Jews who lived in Nazareth the areas of Syria and Sidon were beyond the boundaries of God’s country.
They were considered pagan places,
and the people who lived in them were heathen and of little importance to the God of Israel.
After all, God was supposed to care about the chosen people - the Jews, first and foremost.
All others were basically unworthy of God’s love.
And so the people exploded when Jesus reminded them that the good news included the fact that God’s love was for everybody -
for the gentiles and the heathen as much as it was for them.
Jesus even gave them a couple of examples.
He told them that there had been many widows in Israel during the days of the great famine that lasted for over three years,
but God sent Elijah out of Israel to a widow living in Sidon.
He added that there were many Israeli lepers during Elisha’s time,
but the only one healed was Namaan, a man from Syria.
In other words, Jesus was saying that God’s love is not limited to a geographical area or a particular people.
And for those people who feel more important than others,
and who hope for a special blessing because of who they are;
this is when the good news turns sour.
Jesus called the folks in his home church to recognize that God’s love was for people everywhere,
even people they might despise or hate.
Well you may be saying that that’s all nice and good preacher,
but what’s that got to do with me?
Here is where our Epistle reading comes in.
It is perhaps the most famous passage in the Bible.
We have heard it so many times, especially at weddings,
that it’s message is easily lost in the sentimentality.
Love is patient and kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
I believe we can at times come close to expressing this love.
For instance, we can affirm this love within our families.
And from time to time we widen our circles and extend this love to include our neighbors and community.
At times of great tragedy we can even reach out,
if but for a moment, to others not so close to us.
To the people of Iran, for instance, during their recent earthquake.
But Love is so much easier when we keep it within the confines of our own family, community, or nation.
Love is easy when we can keep it in Nazareth.
But the good news tells us Love is more than the tiny bit found in Nazareth, First United Methodist Church, or Pottstown, PA.
Love must go beyond our own little boundaries and reach out to people in our modern day equivalents of Syria or Sidon.
It must touch the lives today’s lepers and the outcasts.
And don’t be mistaken; there are lepers today.
We have our own outcasts.
And God’s love extends to these people.
It includes the bag ladies wandering the streets of our nation’s cities.
It includes those dying a lonely death suffering from AIDS,
whether or not we agree with their lifestyle.
It even includes the person whom you hate the most,
be that person Saddam Hussein, your neighbor,
or even that church member you haven’t spoken to in months or even years.
God’s love is not particular about whom it reaches out to;
it is no respecter of persons,
and our love should be like God’s.
Karl Barth, noted theologian and teacher, was once asked what he would tell Adolph Hitler if he could meet with him.
His reply was simple.
He said, “I would tell him that God Loves him.”
It is this kind of message that got Jesus in trouble.
All the Gospels agree that from the moment Jesus sets foot in the pulpit, things get nasty.
Will Willimon writes about a visit a friend of his had with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
“When his Holiness speaks,” my friend said,
“everyone in the room becomes quiet, serene and peaceful.”
Not so with Jesus.
Things were fine in Nazareth until Jesus opened his mouth and all hell broke lose.
And this was only his first sermon!
One might think that Jesus could have used a more effective speaking style,
that he would save the inflammatory speech until he had taken the time to build trust,
to win people’s affection,
to put his message in the proper context,
but no.
Instead he threw the book at the,
hit them right between the eyes with Isaiah,
and then jabbed them with First Kings,
right to the jaw, left hook.
Beaten, but not bowed,
the congregation struggled to its feet,
regrouped and attempted to throw the preacher off a cliff.
And Jesus “went on his way.”
And what a way to go.
In just a few weeks, this sermon will end,
not in Nazareth but at Golgotha.
For now, Jesus has given us the slip.
Having preached the sovereign grace of God–
grace for a Syrian army officer or a poor pagan woman at Zarephath–
Jesus demonstrates that he is free even from the community that professes to be people of the Book.
The Book and its preachers are the hope of the community of faith,
not its pets or possessions.
Perhaps the church folk at Capernaum won’t put up such a fight.
Jesus moves on, ever elusive and free.
In a seminar for preachers that Will Willimon led with Stanley Hauerwas,
one pastor said, in a plaintive voice,
“The bishop sent me to a little town in South Carolina.
I preached one Sunday on the challenge of racial justice.
In two months my people were so angry that the bishop moved me.
At the next church, I was determined for things to go better.
Didn’t preach about race.
But we had an incident in town, and I felt forced to speak.
“The board met that week and voted unanimously for us to be moved.
My wife was insulted at the supermarket.
My children were beaten up on the school ground.”
Willimon says that his pastoral heart went out to this dear, suffering brother.
But Hauerwas replied, “And your point is what?
We work for the living God, not a false, dead god!
Did somebody tell you it would be easy?”
Not one drop of sympathy for this brother in ministry,
not a bit of collegial concern.
And the same was true of Jesus.
Jesus moves right on from Nazareth to Capernaum, another Sabbath, another sermon,
where the congregational demons cry out to him,“Let us alone!”(Luke 4:34).
But he won’t, thank God.
He is free to administer his peculiar sort of grace,
whether we hear or refuse to hear.
This is our good news.
This is the kind of message that disturbed the good people of Nazareth,
and it is the kind of message which disturbs us.
God loves the outsiders, those in great need,
the stranger we care nothing for,
even those whom we positively despise.
This message is hard to take, but it is the good news,
and it is only through hearing this good news that we can come to salvation.
Why?
Because after all is said and done we are the outsiders,
we are the ones in need,
we too are strangers,
we are also the despised and hated.
And if God does not love even the least of his children,
then God does not love us.
And, of course, the truth is that not one of us is worthy of or deserves God’s love.
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But the good news is that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
For God so loved the world that He gave us his only son,
so that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have life eternal.
Whosoever believes.
Whosoever believes.
This is part of what we celebrate at communion.
For at the Communion table all of us -
sinners, outsiders, the needy and hated and despised -
all of us are welcome,
and all of us can find the healing and transforming love of God.
We can be the “whosoever believes.”
This, my friends, is the good news.
If you have ears, hear the good news.
And if you are in need of this kind of love,
then come,
come, taste and see that the Lord our God is good.
Amen.
1. This story is and the stories about the Dalai Lama and Hauerwas are from William Willimon’s article in The Christian Century, “Living the Word.”
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