I am falling a bit behind in this blog. Here is the sermon for January 31, 2010. The readings were Jeremiah 1.4-10 and Luke 4.21-30.

“THROWING JESUS OUT”


Nobody likes bad news. There are various forms of it, ranging from news of catastrophe or tragedy to the difficult things people tell us, and it may or may not come as a surprise. Take this case, for example:
John McKay coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their early, dismal days. They were so bad, when one reporter asked him about their execution, McKay responded, “I think it’s a good idea.”

Some take disappointing news better than others.
Jesus faced this problem of giving disappointing news early in his ministry. As you recall from last week, Jesus was in his hometown synagogue and read a passage from Isaiah that described his purpose—to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, and declare the acceptable year of the Lord. He said that that word from the prophet had been fulfilled that day. The people in the synagogue were pleased with his words.
Today’s reading picks up at that point. They recognize that he is from there—“we know his parents”—and Jesus anticipates their next thought. He said that they will quote him the proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself,” that is, use your profession and skills to take care of business at home and not just at work, and they want him to do for them some mighty works like they heard he did at Capernaum, but his answer is that prophets are not taken seriously in their hometowns.
To clear up any possibility of misunderstanding he tells a story from the past. Remember the prophet Elijah? He came to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon during the drought. He gave her an endless supply of meal and oil. Of all the widows in Israel he came to her. You can almost hear it: “What made her special?” And remember Naaman the Syrian? He was healed of his leprosy. Of all the lepers in Israel he healed him. They were not Israelites; they were not among the chosen people. “How could these people come ahead of us?” The hard truth is that God will help foreigners who believe over the chosen people who ignore the prophets. Prophets talk to people who have faith, to people who are listening. Those in their hometowns might have stopped listening long ago. Their reaction to this is great anger and they drove Jesus out of their town to throw him off a cliff when he passed through their midst and left them. They think that it is better to get rid of Jesus than to listen to what they don’t want to hear.
The truth sometimes makes people mad. We like to think of the Gospels as a friendly Jesus meeting friendly people, kind of like the Good Shepherd. But the truth about the truth is, that in the Gospels there are times Jesus told people things and they didn’t like it. We all have heard things we didn’t like to hear. It seems to me there are two types of bad news. There are things that happen to us out of the blue. Like disease, like aging, like bad decisions by people on Wall Street that end up by taking away your job. These are things that are out of your control.
And there is another type of bad news. There are things you could have done something about but didn’t and now you face the consequences. A person might behave belligerently and then lose friends. A person might squander money and then be in need. A person might not grow in job skills and then be replaced by others. The results of actions or inactions have caught up to you and are bad news. But the truth is that it was in your power to do something about them but didn’t. Maybe for some people this is a harder form of hard truth. Maybe because something was in your grasp and you didn’t do it. Some people see these things as coming out of the blue but they are not.
The reading from Jeremiah is God’s words to him. God’s plan for him began before he was born. He will to what prophets do, tell others what God has told him. That word from God will have great power. It will pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant. His task is to bring that word to people for them to hear it or reject it. People are divided into those who hear the truth and those who don’t. And sometimes those who will not hear it will listen to or blame or become obsessed with everything but the truth.
It is amazing how much information we have available to us. Much of it in the news is about the ills of our world, nation, and region. There was an interesting study recently. They compared the diets of people in the categories of the things that cause health problems—fat, salt, calories in places that list those things in the food items and in places that don’t. There was little difference in the diets of the people who ate at the two places. Somehow just having the information available is not enough. Something more is needed.
The lives of the people of God are filled with God’s word. We can read it for ourselves daily. We hear it week in and week out in worship. The Spirit speaks to us within. The church is not always a place of comfort. Sometimes it is where we hear the truth, where God’s plans are made real to us. And yet, there is much that seems incomplete in the church, in our lives. 1500 years ago some of God’s people went out into the desert to live together as Christian communities. There are stories from those times that illustrate to us what faith is. Often one learns most from the older leaders of the community, called abbas. Here is one such story from Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers:
They said that abba Sylvanus had a disciple in Scetis, named Mark, who possessed in great measure the virtue of obedience. He was a copyist of old manuscripts, and the old man loved him for his obedience. He had eleven other disciples who were aggrieved that he loved Mark more than them.
When the old men nearby heard that he loved Mark above the others, they took it ill. One day they visited him and abba Sylvanus took them with him and, going out of his cell [, his room], began to knock on the door of each of his disciples, saying, ‘Brother, come out, I have work for you.’ And not one of them appeared immediately.
Then he came to Mark’s cell and knocked, saying, ‘Mark’. And as soon as Mark heard the voice of the old man he came outside and the old man sent him on some errand.
So abba Sylvanus said to the old men, ‘Where are the other brothers?’, and he went into Mark’s cell and found the book in which he had been writing and he was making the letter O; and when he had heard the old man’s voice, he had not finished the line of the O. And the old men said, “Truly, abba, we also love the one whom you love; for God loves him, too.’

It is in obedience that what we hear becomes real, becomes faith. If we are honest, that is, if we know the truth, we know that we do this imperfectly. The good news is that there is hope, as Andrew Attaway found when his daughter was frustrated at learning to play the violin. He noted her perfectionism and his advice to her was to learn the piece a few measures at a time. It reminded him of all his own shortcomings. But the message that stayed in his mind was that we can grow in love and Christ’s grace is sufficient for our lives.

The Gospel reading this morning might surprise us. Not all the people of Jesus’ time welcomed him. Not everyone heard what he had to say. And when he pointed that out to them, they wanted to get rid of him. Sometimes the truth can sting. But to refuse to hear it means that we are stuck living in the lies we make up. Jesus is the prophet, who like the prophets of old, has been sent by God to tell us the truth. What will you hear today that will change your life? What will you do that will set you on the road to following the truth?