PROPERS: 3 EPIPHANY, YEAR C
TEXT: LUKE 4:14-21
PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2022.
ONE SENTENCE: A relationship with Jesus allows us to leave our past behind.
I have somewhat clear and somewhat cloudy memories of my youthful days.
People frequently pine for a return to their days in high school. I respond with the perspective that all the money in the world could not get me to return to those days.
The word awkward was invented to discover how I felt. Perhaps you did, too. Or maybe not.
Each year in high school was recorded for posterity in a yearbook. The pictures are like a fly in amber – a permanent recording of what awkward looked like. My tenth grade picture looks as if Alfred E. Neumann sat for the photo.
The following five decades have been a relentless effort to leave those days behind me. The fact that I am standing before you today is evidence of two things: (1) The success of those efforts; and (2) The mercy of God.
Memories of those days occasionally come to mind like an unwelcome visitor from out of a dense fog. Some are funny and are embraced. Others make me cringe. I recall telling my friends one Saturday morning in those days that I felt like I should go on the local radio station and apologize for the night before.
I truly hope our young people, such as Gracie and Emory, are having an easier and happier time. They deserve our love and tenderness – and understanding.
But, as for me, I am thankful those days are in the rearview mirror. As some famous person said, I have lived all my life to get to this age. I’m not going back. When I drive through my hometown, I accelerate.
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That perspective helps me sympathize with Jesus today – not that his experience was anything like mine.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem – a tiny village a few miles south of Jerusalem. Other than a brief sojourn into Egypt, he was reared in Nazareth – a rural, Galilean hill town 100 miles or so to the north.
He was a child and a teenager there. Other than some apocryphal writings that are not part of our scriptures, we know very little about those days.
As a young adult, he worked with his father as a carpenter. I am told by Israeli guides that that likely meant that Jesus was a stonemason in that era. He may have helped build the Roman city of Sephoris a few miles away. Those ruins are being excavated.
Sometime in his late 20s, after years of studying his faith and the scripture, he perceived a call to teach and preach. His call drew him toward other areas of the Galilee, such as the fishing villages of Magdala, Capernaum, and Bethsaida. There his message gained traction and he accumulated some followers. That small group of disciples which hung on his every word were like a Jewish group known as a yeshiba – an academy.
And ultimately, he would go home. He returned to where he was known as Jesus, the young man who had grown up in Nazareth. He was the son of Mary and Joseph. He had helped build nearby villages. And this is worth noting: Not a single one of his disciples came from his hometown. The people who had known him best chose not to be among his intimates.
I find his willingness to return to his roots breathtaking. I cannot imagine doing the same. These were the people who had known him in his childhood, in his teen years – in the days when everyone feels awkward, unusual, uncomfortable. And he boldly began proclaiming a message which will elicit a strong response in next week’s gospel.
Jesus’ message was formed among ordinary people in an ordinary world. His message was for those same people – and you and me.
It is a message that transcends our personal discomforts, our flaws, our errors, our awkwardness and allows us to put our past, our mistakes, our errors behind us. All this is because in him we are made new beings, in which we leave the previous lives behind us.
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