The Scandal of Love

PROPERS:         4 EPIPHANY, YEAR C

TEXT:                 LUKE 4:21-30

PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2019. 

ONE SENTENCE:        The offense that Jesus’ original listeners took at his                                             words were based in his understanding that God’s                                                       movement is not limited to the people of the covenant.     

                                    

            Today’s gospel lesson is the difficult part of the passage which began with last week’s gospel.

            Jesus is at home in Nazareth – the small community in which he has been reared and in which he is known as Mary and Joseph’s son.  This, in a sense, is his coming out party.  He is speaking in the local synagogue.

            The latter part of last week’s gospel and the first part of this week’s has the listeners being touched by his words – his graciousness.

            But it goes downhill quickly from there.  Jesus dares to confront the presumptuousness and privilege of his listeners.  After hearing his words, they rebel against him.  They drive him to the edge of town and try to throw him down a cliff.  Trust me: It would have been a long way down. But Jesus escapes.

            His offense was confronting the people’s assumed privilege – that they are the people of the law and the people of the covenant, and, therefore, the chosen people of God.

            Jesus cites two beloved figures of Jewish history:  Elijah and his successor, Elisha.  Those two men were widely recognized as some of the most important prophets of sacred history.

            But Jesus decides to afflict the comfortable.

            He tells of the famine which strangled the land and people during the days of Elijah.  Yet, he notes pointedly, Elijah was sent only to the widow in Zarephath of Sidon.  A gentile!  Not one of the covenant people!  (See 1 Kings 17).  Not only did he prolong her rations, he raised her son from death.  How inconvenient.

            He chose to swat the hornets’ nest even more.

            He recounted the story of Elisha who – despite a multitude of lepers in Israel – was sent to cleanse only a Syrian, Naaman.  Naaman, doing what Elisha directed, was cleansed of his leprosy, and his skin was made like “that of a young boy.” (Read 2 Kings 5)

            Once again, it was not one of the covenant peoplewho was touched by God’s gracious hand, but a Gentile – one of the people considered less than others.

            Scripture tells us that his hometown folks were filled with rage.

            That is because, in a very real sense, he had gone from preachin’ to meddlin’.  He had gone a bit too far for a home town boy.  He had started grilling sacred cows – and the result was not pleasing to the listeners.

            Jesus was reminding the congregants that even though they had Moses and the Lawon their side, that did not necessarily mean that they were the only ones that God was concerned about.  This was a bitter pill to people who saw their chosen status as something to be proud of – as evidence of their privileged position with God.

            Jesus pricked that balloon.  The result was the rage of the people.

            Lest we forget.  Lest we forget.  We do not need to cast the blame on the people attending the Nazareth synagogue more than 2,000 years ago.  Religious pridefulness is not something limited to first century Jews.

            The price of speaking the truth has not decreased markedly in the last 20 centuries.

            Think of Thomas a Becket.  He was the Archbishop of Canterbury who, in the 12^thcentury, challenged the power of Henry II, the King of England.  Four knights, after hearing the king express exasperation in these words, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”,went to Canterbury Cathedral to slay Becket.  That was his price – his blood – for challenging the king.

            Think of Martin Luther.  The scholarly and colorful German monk challenged the strategies of the Pope to build St. Peter’s Basilica.  That led to threats against his life – threats which were so serious he had to be spirited out of town to escape lynching.

            His courageousness in the 16^thcentury led to a church-wide tsunami called The Reformation.

            Think of Duncan M. Gray, Jr., my ordaining bishop.  As a young priest, he challenged a rioting horde of ruffians on the Ole Miss campus in 1962, as the James Meredith riots got underway.  He was beaten on the spot.  His parish church, St. Peter’s, almost closed because of objections to his stand.  Even facing death threats in the turbulent years to come, he endured, to become a beloved priest and bishop.

            Think of Will D. Campbell – a Southern Baptist pastor from rural Amite County, Mississippi.  An active leader in the Civil Rights movement, he never held a full-time pastorate after his years as Chaplain at Ole Miss.  Yet he exhibited courage as a pastor to both civil rights leaders and secretive members of the Ku Klux Klan – and he was roundly criticized for pastoring both sides.

            An axiom he repeated frequently was (and this is cleaned up), “We are all [scoundrels], but God loves us anyway.”

            That speaks somewhat to Jesus’ message in Nazareth – a message that nearly got him thrown off a cliff.

            The truth is that the love and grace of God are scandalous.  There is nothing we have done to earn it.  There is nothing we can do to deserve it.  We cannot be good enough to qualify for it.  His love and grace are poured out to us freely. And it is not limited to us.

            What God does hope – but does not require – is that we manifest transformed lives and open hearts.  His hope is that we will be so changed by our encounter with his love that we will be messengers of his love and compassion to those who do not yet know of his mercy.