Feb 3, 2013 Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

Luke 4:21-30

21 And he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
    22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.
    23 Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' "
    24"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy[a] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian."
    28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

“Not Just Nice Sounding Words”

Jesus ‘blew’ his first sermon in his home synagogue.  He really blew it!  He said some things which he could have left unsaid.  More then just nice sounding words which we like to hear.  He told them they were way off base, and he, Joseph son, was here to set them straight.
I doubt they were singing, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds” after this!

So what was he saying?
He was saying that God’s goodness and mercy does not limit itself to a chosen few; it goes out to all, even strangers and aliens.  We can reject God’s goodness but we can not stop it.  It will find a receptive heart and there it will do its work.

God can and does use the ‘unorthodox’ as instruments of his goodness and mercy.

Our sin, in not wanting to believe this, is that we put our faith ahead of God’s grace.  We say that before God can act we have to believe in Him.  As if we are in control.  God can use those who know Him not to bring about His will; to be instruments of goodness and mercy.

Jesus didn’t come to just talk about God.  Jesus came to be God .  It is not enough when we talk about God; it is only enough when we become little Christ's as Luther said,  and be something of God’s goodness and mercy with those we meet on the street, as well as those we live with.
It’s not just a matter of the right words, but the right living which counts with Jesus.

No prophet is accepted in his home town, or country, or people.  For to be a prophet is to have to say what doesn’t want to be heard and to keep saying it until it is heard even if it doesn’t want to be believed.


“On Being A Prophet”

“The prophet is human, yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears.  He experiences moments that defy our understanding.  He is neither a  singing saint’ nor ‘a moralizing poet’, but an assaulter of the mind.  Often his words begin to burn where conscience ends.  The prophet is an iconoclast, challenging the apparently holy, revered and awesome.  Beliefs cherished as certainties, institutions endowed with supreme sanctity, he exposes as scandalous pretensions.”  Herschel, The Prophet, 99 9,10

Jesus was such a prophet.  We are such people.
We didn’t want to heard what
 George McGovern said about Vietnam;
Martin Luther King said about segregation;
     Bishop Tutu said about apartheid in South Africa;
          Or what Jesus said about God’s love for all!        
The truth is, the prophet has to say what the people don’t want to hear.  And say it with love.  Herschel again: “The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging.  but behind his austerity is love and compassion for humankind.  Almost every prophet brings consolation, promise, and hope of reconciliation along with censure and castigation.  (They) begin with a message of doom; (they) conclude with a message of hope.”
 see Jer. 33:10,11