Epiphany 4: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
January 31, 2010
It's lonely to feel like an outsider. As a child I attended the church my grandparents attended. My mom and dad were married in the same church. But despite this I never felt at home there. I attended school in a different district than most of the kids at church. They never knew me very well, nor did I know them. I always felt like a stranger intruding on someone else's party, shunned and on occasion made fun of. The fellowship there was like a clique and I didn't belong. I never really enjoyed the church in which I grew up.
Any church can feel like this. The atmosphere between people who know each other well can feel very warm and friendly. But to visitors it may feel like a clique where some are in and some are not. Groups within a nation can become like this. If you are not of the right religion or race or economic status, then you're not as important. You're looked upon as an outsider. You don't really belong. Religions can become like this too which is what Jesus exposes there in his home town of Nazareth.
No one complained about Jesus reading from the prophet Isaiah about good news for the poor, proclaiming release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free and announcing the day of the Lord's favor.' No one objected that Jesus was claiming to be anointed by the Spirit to do these things. But the people understood this scripture one way and Jesus understood it a different way.
At first the home town folks were very proud that one of their own was becoming known all over Galilee as a great teacher and maybe even a prophet. This reflected well on everyone there who knew Jesus from when he was little tike. Their pride swelled further when Jesus said that this scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing. The day of Jubilee had come at last and their little village was in the spot light. No longer could others scoff at them and say "can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Hometown pride and jubilation were busting out all over. But then at the peak of the celebration it all turns sour. A profound shock and anger sets in. And it wasn't just a touch of disgust and disappointment either. It was anger turned into outrage about something Jesus said such that they were ready to throw him off a cliff and do away with him when only a few moments earlier they were bragging all over him.
What Jesus talked about were two stories from the Hebrew bible, one the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and the other about the prophet Elisha and Naaman the Syrian. Both show God providing aid and comfort to people who were not from Israel. The widow lady and Naaman were both Gentiles. Jesus points out that while there were many widows and many lepers in Israel, Elijah and Elisha were sent only to these foreigners.
These illustrate then how God shows care for everyone, not just for Israel. God bestows goodness on those who may not even know him yet. God's love is not restricted by creeds, geography, race, culture and this is what rubs the congregation the wrong way. They believed that they would be favored over those who were not members of the chosen people. They were better and more deserving of God's grace. They had worked hard to earn it. All others were doomed to be destroyed. They were not part of God's family.
The relationship between people of Israel and all the other families on earth had long been a contentious debate. On one side were those who saw foreigners and their cultures as sources of corruption and temptation that would lead Israel astray from God. Therefore, one should avoid contact with outsiders. This group was tied closely to the laws of Moses and called for complete separation from foreigners.
Nehemiah 13:1 reads: "On that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God…" Mixed marriages came to be looked upon as especially bad. Nehemiah 13:23 reads: In those days I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab; and half of the children spoke [a foreign language while] they could not speak the language of Judah… I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair; and made them take an oath in the name of God…" Ezra commanded husbands with foreign wives to completely separate themselves from them. (Ezra 10)
In Deuteronomy 13 the Lord commanded Israel to annihilate the native people of the land they conquered as their inheritance: "But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded…."
By the time of Jesus this anti-foreigner attitude was deeply entrenched in the hearts and minds of the people including those of Nazareth. They were shocked then when Jesus reminds them how prophets like Elijah and Elisha actually were carriers of God's grace to people they didn't believe deserved it. For the people of Nazareth God was a God of wrath toward outsiders and a God of love only for insiders like themselves, only to those who really belonged.
In opposition to this Jesus proclaims good news not only for the poor of Israel, but also for the poor everywhere. And the release of captives, the recovery of sight, and even the year of Jubilee not just for Israel, but for all people. God's grace is not subject to human limitations. Jesus shows from his reading of the OT that God is a God of Love too and not just for insiders.
In Genesis 12 God promises Abraham that he will bless not only Abraham's family, but through him he will bless all families of the earth. (Ge 12) The second prophet Isaiah declares that God gives Israel "as a light to the nations so that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."(Is 49:6) Jesus could have mentioned Rahab, the harlot and Ruth, the daughter-in-law of Naomi. Both were notable examples of foreigners who helped Israel in the past. In fact these two women are in the family tree of both King David and of Jesus, himself.
He could have referred to Jonah 'the reluctant prophet' who didn't want to obey God's command to warn the Ninevites of their destruction if they didn't repent and so runs away. But when God brings him back and he obeys by warning the Ninevites, the people there are saved.
All of these reveal a loving God who can and does favor people beyond the clique of Israel. Rather than avoiding contact with these outsiders, Israel is to carry God's grace to them.
I think of Lou Dobbs here. The CNN commentator who recently resigned. He became very offended by the immigration problem and harangued about it almost every night on his show. How would a Lou Dobbs type person have reacted to Jesus teaching that we should care for the immigrant and the outsider, not to mention the outcast, the sick and the lame. This is what turns the townspeople against Jesus. He is teaching about a God who cares for every person. There are no cliques of skin color, creed or culture from God's perspective. Everyone is part of the family.
Though his neighbors and friends wanted to throw Jesus off the cliff, the scripture notes that he walked away unharmed and went on his way. What they wanted to do there though is exactly what the religious leaders in Jerusalem will do later on. We see all the dynamics of his ministry there in Nazareth from initial amazement and acceptance, to rejection and finally death.
How might this story apply to our world then? If we could meet Jesus as a flesh and blood person, would he make us angry too? What would Jesus say then about the problem of immigration in America? Where would he be on universal healthcare? What would he say about taxes on the rich and the poor? What if he said that Muslims, Christians, Jews and everybody else needs to respect one another and live together in peace?
There are too many people on both sides of these issues acting and talking as if they are God. And so instead of faith, there is widespread distrust; in place of hope, there is doom and gloom; and instead of being driven by love we are driven by fear. Would Jesus take the position that God loves only our side and not the other? Would he say let's build up the walls and keep the people out we don't like?
Or would he not say instead that like Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Jonah our mission is to take down the walls, to stretch our faith and the boundaries of our space so that "God's salvation may reach to the end of the earth?" (Is 49)
Often we are happy to hear about God's grace in the abstract. But when the message is boiled down to specific situations and people, it can be offensive if God's truth conflicts with how we understand it. The hostility against Jesus all came down to different ways of understanding the essential message of the bible. They all knew the stories, but they had radically different understandings of what they meant. The Jesus message didn't conform to what people already believed. And so they found him unacceptable.
This ancient debate over the breadth of God's love and grace still goes on and it's still controversial which is why the important thing to remember is not if God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side. "Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."(I Cor 12:13)