February 3, 2013 – Luke 4:21-30
Luke 4:21-30
The Good News: It’s not Just About You
4th Sunday after the Epiphany – February 3, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Many years ago, when we lived in Vancouver, my wife Sue and I went to hear the Dalai Lama.
He was speaking at a huge convention centre downtown.
It was lovely. It was kind of like going to hear your grandma give a talk,
if your grandma were invited to give a talk to many hundreds of people.
The basic message was, “Be good to each other.”
As he spoke, you could kind of feel everyone in the room get all peaceful and serene.
You kind of just have to contrast that with what happens in the Gospel reading today.
Today, when Jesus opens his yap, all heck breaks loose! (Willimon)
We’re in the second part of a two-part opening scene of Jesus’s first public act of ministry.
Last week we learned that he went to his home-town synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath and
was handed the scroll of Isaiah.
From Isaiah – written 600 years earlier to a people struggling to rebuild after
the Babylonian exile – from Isaiah, Jesus read this:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
And the hometown crowd is impressed.
Good message, Jesus!
You can imagine that after the service they were going to go through the hand-shake line and
and say, “Good sermon, Jesus!”
They think that when he says those things, he’s talking about them.
They think that when he proclaims that the year of God’s favour is coming,
it’s coming to them.
I mean here is a people who’ve had a pretty rough six hundred years.
Most of that time the Jews have lived as subjects of one foreign empire or another.
Most of that time their land has not been their own,
and currently their land is in the hands of the Romans.
So imagine: the year of the Lord’s favour is the Jubilee year,
the time envisioned in Leviticus 25 when debts were cancelled, when slaves were freed,
and when those who lost their land through debt or otherwise
were given their land back.
This is pretty good news. And the people figure Jesus the prophet is announcing it to them.
And they’re impressed.
In their excitement, though, they maybe haven’t noticed that Jesus left something out of
his quotation from Isaiah.
He left out the part where Isaiah talks about the day of vengeance on their enemies.
If they’d noticed, they might have thought that kind of a curious omission.
In any case, they don’t notice at first.
They’re all just, “ooooo, Jesus. This is great. This is fantastic. Great sermon!”
See, there’s a little home-town favouritism going on, too, I think.
In the middle-eastern honour code of the time,
Jesus, like an Italian don, was supposed to look after his own first.
The code of conduct meant that his home-town people could expect some favours,
like that maybe the day of the Lord would come to them first.
Well: this is about the point where everything goes south.
“Right,” says Jesus.
“I know what you’re thinking:
You want me to be doing all that stuff you’ve heard I’ve been doing elsewhere like
in Capaernaum, like healing people and stuff. Well, let me tell you something.
Remember how there were lots of poor widows right here in Israel when there was a
famine back in the prophet Elijah’s day and Elijah didn’t feed a single one of them,
just a gentile foreign woman of another nation and race?
And how about when a little later there were lots of sick people here in Israel but
the only one that the prophet Elisha cured was a leper who just happened to be the gentile general of your enemy Syria’s army?”
You know, I think maybe Jesus missed that day in seminary when
they teach you how to preach right.
That day when they tell you to build trust with the people you’re preaching to,
win their affection, contextualize your message.
Jesus doesn’t do any of that.
He announces about as baldly as he can: yes, this good news is for you, but not just for you.
See, if it’s just for you, then it’s not really good news.
In order for it to be good news, it has to be good news for everyone.
What God is about to do is good news for everyone.
God is not going to take this land from the Romans and give it to you.
God is not going to exact vengeance on anyone.
God wants to include both you and the Romans in the day of God’s favour.
God wants you to share this land with your enemies.
God wants you to share yourselves with your enemies.
God wants peace.
This Gospel, this Good News? It’s not all about you.
Well, that’s a hard thing to hear, it was hard for them and sometimes it’s hard for us.
No wonder they become enraged and try to kill him.
It’s amazing that even 12 stuck around after some of the outrageous things he said.
He hasn’t exactly come to make their lives easier: he’s come to make their lives more difficult!
And I suppose that’s the way it always is with honest preaching of the Good News.
The Lutheran writer and thinker Soren Kierkegaard, who lived in the 19th century,
noted how in the times he lived in, so much effort was being put into creating
labour-saving devices that made people’s lives easier.
He decided that he would dedicate himself to making people’s lives more difficult:
He would become a preacher.
God’s claim on our lives often makes them more difficult.
Just ask Jeremiah.
God calls him this morning: “Hey, Jeremiah,” says God. “I’m calling you to be my prophet.”
And Jeremiah says, “Call someone else.” Smart guy, Jeremiah.
He knows that it’s going to make his life more difficult.
He knows that he’s being called to participate in God’s work in the world.
He knows the people are not likely to want to hear what God has to say to them:
because it will make their lives more difficult, too.
He doesn’t yet know – but I imagine he suspects – that this call of God upon him is
going to mean that he will languish for long periods of time in jail.
Jesus seems to know that while he gives them the slip today,
eventually the people – Jewish and Roman leaders alike –
are going to catch up with him and nail him to a cross.
The thing is, though: love inevitably leads to a commitment.
Love is the foundation of everything, Paul poetically states to us this morning.
God is love. This universe and everything in it is created in love,
has its beginning in love, has its being in love, and has its end in love.
God enters into a love relationship with us in our baptisms.
But as in every relationship, love leads to a summons, to a marriage proposal and
the invitation to a commitment.
Love summons us, calls us to something we would not otherwise be,
to something greater than we currently are; that is the beauty of God’s call upon us.
Okay: maybe you’re not called to be a prophet, but each of us here is called to be something,
something we would not otherwise be without God’s call upon us.
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living.
But what I take from the examples of Jeremiah and Jesus this morning is that
the un-called, the un-summoned life is not worth living.
And the great good news in the midst of this is that when we respond to God’s call,
no matter how difficult, God promises us – as God promised Jeremiah – “I will be with you.”
And God is with us most frequently and most meaningfully in our presence with one another.
God’s vision is a big one, an inclusive one,
so inclusive it involves the vulnerable as well as enemies.
God’s love for us and for this world and every person in it leads God to call us to participate in
God’s work in the world: that is what it means to be the church.
And this call summons us often to a more difficult life than we would otherwise have.
There is no sense in denying that. Anything else would be dishonest.
The question for us this morning – and every morning – is whether we want to be the church.
Not the church of human imaginings, but the church of God’s imagining.
Do we want to be the church so badly that everything else will take second place?
Because I follow the Jets now I listen to TSN Sports Radio as I drive around town.
This week I heard an interview with sports legend Jerry Kramer,
Who played for the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.
The interviewer asked Kramer what that was like.
Lombardi made it all about the team, he said.
You know, some days I played with cracked ribs, a fever, and a broken thumb that was all taped up. I never considered not playing. It wasn’t even discussed. When I was like that, I didn’t play for the money. I didn’t play for the fame. I didn’t even play for Vince. I played for the team. I played for the team. That’s what Vince made you want to do: play for the team.
God’s call summons us to the church and to mission.
And I’ve been so impressed lately with how I’ve seen you responding to this summons,
To be the church of God’s imagining.
I’ve been impressed with long-term members who’ve taken on new roles in our mission.
I’ve been impressed with how some of our new members have jumped right in to our life and
Missional projects together.
And I’ve really been impressed with how council works so hard – especially President Anne –
at making sure that our budget reflects our mission:
to participate with God in God’s loving mission to love, bless, and
heal this world and every person in it.
This is not an easy summons, and it means recognizing that the Gospel, the Good news,
Is not all about us.
But it is about recognizing that the church of God’s imagining and
its mission is where Jesus is found.
It is not an easy summons and it is not an easy mission: it will make your life more difficult.
But God will be with you.
And you will become something you could not have become without the summons.
A light to all peoples. Food to the hungry. Forgiveness to the guilty. Comfort to the afflicted.
Faith for the faithless. Hope for the hopeless. Love for the loveless.
And truly the greatest of these is love.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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