Wednesday, December 11, 2019

"Fulfilled" (Fourth Sunday after Epiphany)


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.


No comments:

Post a Comment