Luke
4:21-30
At
the risk of giving away a personal practice of procrastination and confessing
more of my sins from the pulpit, I thought I’d share with you this morning a
handy little habit of mine. You see, throughout most of my life I’ve been the
type of person who doesn’t make a great deal of plans ahead of time, at least
when it comes to things like what I’ll do over the weekend, or where I’ll eat
lunch on Wednesday, or where we’ll go for vacation this summer. Luckily (for me
at least), I married a woman who thinks about what she’ll have for supper
Friday, while she’s eating lunch on Monday, who not only likes to decide what
kind of vacation we’ll take, but when, for how long, and maybe even the street
address of where we’ll stay.
All
of this has worked out quite lovely for me, but if I’m honest, there are times
when Sallie asks for my input—it may be something small, just a confirmation
that I’m up for going wherever over the weekend or something like that—and I’m
a little less than interested in going wherever it is she’s asked about us
going, or whatever it is she’s asked about us doing. We may be driving in the
car, heading to the grocery store or somewhere, when Sallie might ask, “What do
you think about going to such-and-such a place to do such-and-such next
weekend?” If I’m interested, I might simply say, “Yeah, that sounds good to
me,” but if I’m not interested, I may not just say, “Nah.” Instead, I might
say, “Well, we’ll see.” “We’ll see.”
Now, I know none of you do that sort of thing, but I bet you have someone in
your life who does. It’s a “non-answer,” a way to acknowledge that you heard
the request, but really aren’t invested enough in the idea even respond in the
negative.
It’s
an answer of false hope, the kind of answer a father gives his children who ask
every Friday morning on the way to school if they’ll get to go to Chuck E.
Cheese on Saturday: “We’ll see.” It’s the kind of answer one gives when the
honest answer may hurt someone feelings, when it may not be the answer they
want to hear, like the husband who asks his wife if she thinks he’s gained a
little weight, if his hair seems to be thinning a bit to her, and she responds
by saying, “You know, I think your eyes are bluer than when we first met!” It’s
an answer that refuses to touch the present reality because it’s just too
awkward, too painful, too real. Like the pastor with her arm around the shaking
shoulders of the mother who has just closed the casket on her son, knowing in her
heart this is all part of the wickedness of addiction and the social
circumstances that pave the way for such tragedies, but when she looks into the
tear-soaked eyes of that mother who says, “Well, I just have to trust that this
is part of God’s plan,” she fights the urge to correct her understanding of
God, she resists the temptation to help this poor mother see that God’s love is
about life and not death, so she simply nods as she offers a smile and a closer
hug. It’s a non-answer, a response we give when we don’t know what to say in
those moments when what we would like to say just doesn’t hold up, or when what
we’d like to say may in fact be to our detriment.
You
know, when I think about it, I sort of believe those are the kinds of answers
we give to the hard questions that are given to us in the Scriptures. We tend
to push the reality of their meaning a little farther away from us, keeping it
at a safe distance from our reality, never wanting to confess that the two may
actually be one-in-the-same. Bible verses have become our own sort of spiritual
“non-answers,” handy little saying broken down by chapter and verse, used as a
handy deterrent for facing down the hard realities life often brings before us.
One I hear a lot isn’t actually in the Bible, though I suppose one could twist
the words of 1 Corinthians 10:13 a bit to make it fit: “No temptation has
overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will
not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are
tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Most
folks simply say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” as a shorthand
for this kind of proof-text whenever things aren’t going the way they want.
Another
way to think about it, I suppose, is that we tend to spiritualize everything in the Bible, even those
things that are clearly not meant to be spiritualized. The Bible is laced with
commandments, teachings, and parables about caring for the poor, the immigrant,
the widow, and the orphan, but so many Christians are quick to add their own
footnotes to these passages, giving qualifications, exemptions, and excuses for
why these verses couldn’t possibly be about the actual poor people, immigrants, widows, or orphans in their
communities. Of course, it wouldn’t take much to discover the ways the Bible’s
teachings (most especially, Jesus’ teachings) about money and material
possessions have been spiritualized in order to excuse things like wealth,
corruption, and greed. It’s just another way to give a non-answer. “Didn’t
Jesus say to love your neighbor as yourself?” “Yeah, but what he really meant was…” We do it all the
time, and so has anyone who has ever claimed to be a person of faith, a person
of tradition, a person of Scripture.
I
am beginning to believe that this way of thinking is behind what’s really going
on in this synagogue in Nazareth here in Luke 4. We saw last week where Jesus
came in, was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and from it read, "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 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 favor." As we heard last week, it was a passage about the
Jubilee, a sabbath of sabbaths, a time to return land to its original owner, a
time to let the land rest, a time to forgive debts and free slaves, and it was
a time (as best we can tell) that was never observed. Yeah, I’m beginning to
bet there were an awful lot of conversations in those “Bible times” when
someone would bring up those Jubilee passages and say things like, “Well, I’m
pretty sure that’s not meant to be taken literally, like maybe Moses meant for
that to be an ideal we should aspire
to, but not actually be able to accomplish,” or maybe something like, “Well,
you know you can’t have a functioning society if you let slaves go free and
forgive debts every fifty years; I mean it’s in there too that people should
honor their debts and contracts (probably somewhere in Leviticus).” Oh yeah, I
bet there were lots of those interpretive conversations where folks read back
into those Jubilee passages whatever helped them sleep better at night,
whatever helped them justify their slave-holding, land-grabbing, and debt-collecting.
Of
course, there’s always the easier, less exegetically risky way to interpret
such texts in order to preserve one’s personal comfort: you can always say such
passages are about some other time or place down the road, a reality yet to
arrive, a time not-yet fulfilled. “We’ll forgive each other’s debts and return
land and free slaves…when the Messiah
comes. We’ll join hands with sisters and brothers of all nations, tribes,
and tongues, to lift one another up, to care for even the least of these among
us…when we all get to heaven.” The
teachings of scripture suddenly become conditional upon the arrival of time or
the fulfilment of some prerequisite, as if the commandments of God are only
valid once the conditions are right! So, yeah, I can imagine in that Nazarene
synagogue, when Jesus read those Jubilee words from the prophet Isaiah, that
more than one of those folks were starting to hum some hymn about the “sweet
by-and-by” or maybe one or two were thinking to themselves about how great that
time will be for those who are alive when it comes around. But Jesus shakes
them all from their slumber, when he rips the mask of the lie and shows that
the reality of God’s calling and the reality of the present life we live are
not two separate things, but one reality on the same plane of existence. And he
does it simply by saying, "Today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing." Not tomorrow. Not at some date,
centuries from now, buried in some “code” in the Scriptures. Now:
there’s no putting this off, no making excuses anymore; this Jubilee is
happening now, in your hearing, in your presence, so get on board and let’s go.
Of
course, to proclaim something so bold can’t help but create a little confusion.
After all, when those kinds of passages are read and proclaimed to be
fulfilled, you can’t help but start wondering which side of things you might be
on: are you the poor to whom the Good News is to be proclaimed, or are you
among the rich who so often seen the elevation of the poor as anything but good
news? Are you among the captive who will be released, or are you part of the
system that has helped to keep them confined? Are you the among the blind in
need of the restoration of your sight, or are you among those who take your
health for granted? Are you among the oppressed or those who aid the
oppressors? Does the Year of the Lord’s favor sound more like a blessing to
you, with things being given, restored, evened out in your favor, or does it
sound like divine punishment where your worth is devalued as others are brought
up to your level? I cannot help but imagine those thoughts were running through
the minds of some of those there in Nazareth in that gathering—perhaps such
thoughts are running through the minds of some of you in this gathering…
Nevertheless,
“All
spoke well of [Jesus] and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They said, ‘Is not this Joseph's son?’” Maybe it was a back-handed shot
at Mary that they would call him “Joseph’s son,” recalling every whispered
conversation and sideways glance Mary likely got from those in the community
who weren’t buying her “God’s the father of my baby” story, especially after
Joseph’s likely death earlier in Jesus’s life. I think it’s more likely that
they were genuinely curious about Jesus, calling him Joseph’s son out of
cultural custom. I can’t help but think they were interested to hear his spin
on the whole Jubilee thing, his “spiritualizing” of the text. But that’s not
what Jesus gives them. After all, he told them the scripture has been fulfilled
in their hearing…
What
if he meant something more than just a nod to his identity as the Messiah? What
if he was telling them then and us now something we need to hear, to
realize, but perhaps we’re too afraid of what it actually might mean for us?
Listen
to how Jesus responds to their curiosity, beginning in verse 23: “Doubtless you will quote to me this
proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, ‘Do here also in your
hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum’… Truly I tell you,
no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were
many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three
years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet
Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There
were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of
them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."
Perhaps Jesus was picking up on their
“spiritualizing” of passages like the one from Isaiah, their desire to see his
presence, his ministry as one of miracle-working and faith-healing, when he
responded with the two stories about Elijah and Elisha. But if you can read
between the lines of the stories, you’ll find what Jesus was really getting at when he first said, “Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Both stories
involve the prophet’s ministry among the foreigners, the disenfranchised, the
(to borrow Jesus’ words from later) “least of these.” The promise of Jubilee
was fulfilled for the widow at Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. God did not put
the fulfilment of God’s promise on hold for them, nor did the prophets proclaim
to them some handy, “in the future” prophecy about God’s eternal reward in
heaven—it was real, now, a
reality hands, feet, water, oil, flour, and fire!
Luke
says, “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They
got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which
their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” How
in the world do you go from asking the hometown boy to read the scroll, sit in
the seat of Moses to teach, and speak well of him as you’re amazed by what he
has to say, to wanting to literally throw him off a cliff to die?! What in the
world can drive good religious folks to turning on someone so quick? How can
people who no doubt grew up with Jesus, went to school with Jesus, rode the bus
and played in the park with Jesus, all of the sudden flip a switch and want to
murder him? I’ll tell you how I think they could: because Jesus showed them
that all the stuff in that scroll they held in such high, holy regard, all that
stuff in this book in which we place so much trust, all those words about
Jubilee, letting the captives go, forgiving debts, freeing slaves, returning
the land…all those words about caring for the poor, the immigrant, the orphan,
the widow…all those words about loving God and loving your neighbor as
yourself…all those words were not written to be recited and counted in one’s
favor simply because he could say them in order, nor were they words written
down about some idealized, unknown, and unattainable future in a place beyond
the clouds…all of those words were written for the here and now. And when you start reading those words as the potent,
fulfilled, reality-inducing words of God, you begin to realize that you may not
always be on the side that sees their fulfilment as Good News, but thanks be to
God, that on that day in that synagogue in Nazareth, the hometown prophet came
in, read from the scroll of Isaiah, and said, "Today this scripture has
been fulfilled in your hearing." It was true then, and it’s true
now. Amen.
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