First Presbyterian Church, Cottonwood Falls, KS

“The Truth in Love”:  Luke 4:14-30

Rev. Pat Ireland, Pastor

January 31, 2010

The Lesson as Reader’s Theatre – Luke 4:14-30

Pat: Today we have the story of Jesus standing up in the Synagogue in Nazareth, and getting himself into a pile of trouble.

Sheila: Things seem to be going well for him at first. The folks kind of nodded and said, “Well, this is Joseph’s boy. We knew him well. He speaks nicely.” But then everything turns sour.

P: Well, Jesus didn’t go to business school to learn how to say nice things that nobody can get mad at. He seemed to have a knack for sticking his foot in his own mouth.

S: That’s true, but I’m still not sure what it was that got the folks in the Nazareth Synagogue riled up enough to want to kill him.

P: It’s because Jesus told them, we are Jews, and we think we are God’s chosen people.  But guess what!  God chooses others sometimes too.  And he gives a couple of examples. That’s when they tried to toss him off the edge of a cliff.

S: So let’s read this story. It’s from Luke’s gospel.

SLIGHT PAUSE

P: Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.

S: He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

P: When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

S: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

P: Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

S: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

P: All the people in the synagogue spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?"

S: "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb,  'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.' Truly I tell you, prophets are not accepted in their own hometowns. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land. Yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

P: When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.  But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Reading by Ralph Milton, From Rumors

This is the Word of the Lord Thanks be to God

For reasons I’ll explain shortly.  I’ve included one more scripture as I prepared this morning’s message:  Ephesians 4:14-16:

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

The last two weeks we’ve talked about the body of Christ and last week we added the “still more excellent way” of living together love found in I Corinthians 13 that we just heard paraphrased by Eugene Peterson.   The Ephesians lesson came to my mind as I realized that Jesus got in trouble for speaking the truth.  What I didn’t realize until I looked it up was that the verses bring us full circle combining both the metaphor of body and the excellent practice of love.

Let us pray:  Holy Spirit, guide the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts that we might grow in love and faithfulness, incarnating your kingdom on earth as in heaven.  Amen

Think of Jesus’ speech as his Inaugural or State of the Union Address.  He goes to the synagogue and is presented with the second scroll of Isaiah.  Jesus turns to verses we find in Chapter 61 and, following the rules of public Torah reading he chooses the verses he wants.  As you listen, remember that Christ means anointed one.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

With these verses Jesus announces that he has been commissioned to proclaim Jubilee, that is the time when all debts are forgiven and everybody gets to start over as equals.  He will bring good news to those who are poor and in debt, release the captives and bring sight to the blind.  What a joy!  What a marvelous vision!

But Jesus does not present it as a distant vision to give us hope in difficult times, Jesus declares, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The synagogue crowd murmured in approval.

Now, Jesus had a peculiar knack of getting himself into trouble.   After he’d read that passage from Isaiah he could have said something innocuous, like, “I’ve got some thoughts arising from this passage that I’d like to share with you.”

No, he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, “I’m the guy Isaiah was talking about.”  And even that is OK, until he goes on to tell the folks that it is foreign widows and lepers that will receive God’s gifts, not the good and proper folks there in the synagogue.

Remember, this story follows the wilderness experience when Jesus was so tempted to shape his mission in worldly ways.  Jesus, having learned in the desert that the easy route is not God’s way, turns to the congregation and tells them that they are not, by right, included in God’s Jubilee.  He reminds them of stories of how, in their own past, God worked with outsiders.  He promises that there will be no miracles for insiders on this trip!

Of course, Jesus didn’t have to say that.  He could have just said nothing.  People would have heard what they wanted to hear and been happy.  It has been said that preachers are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  Those folks must have been pretty comfortable because Jesus sure afflicted them… so much so they wanted to kill him.

Jesus stood before a crowd of God’s chosen people and told them God was working somewhere else; and not just anywhere, but among the Gentiles, the sinners, the outcasts from proper society.  He told them, in essence, that God was choosing those people rather than them.

Is it any wonder they were enraged?  Imagine how you would feel if I stood up here and said to this congregation:  We are way to comfortable with the status quo and I can’t discern any room in our midst for God’s new beginnings.  God is working with the folks who need a preacher in the Baptist church down the road… OR… God has decided to take his miracles to the folks over at the Longhorn and Dave’s place, rather than in this congregation.  Do see why they were upset?  This was not a message they wanted to hear!  It is no wonder they threatened to shoot the messenger!

It is not the first time a prophet has been persecuted because the message was not what people wanted to hear.  Nor, was it the last time.   Now, I don’t profess to be a prophet in the biblical sense of “Thus says the Lord.”  But I do have a heart for God and God’s people.  And I seriously wonder if we aren’t a lot like those folks in Nazareth.

We come from good stock, and we’re comfortable in our worship.  We take offerings and host the preschool.  Some of us volunteer in the Clothes Closet on Broadway, and I suspect everyone has passed on clothing or household items to be sold/shared through the Clothes Closet.  We are pretty satisfied with the status quo and happy to wait for God to proclaim the good news to the poor and release to the captive.

The problem is, we are called to be the Church, the Body of Christ commissioned to proclaim the good news to the poor and release to the captive.  But, in our satisfaction, we close our eyes to the real needs and issues in our midst.  We are a little too satisfied and I suspect it might keep us from sharing in God’s new work in Jesus.   We are so satisfied we seldom invite folks to worship.  As a consequence we haven’t even received enough new members to replace those who are dying off.   That is part of why worship attendance has dropped 20-25% in the last decade.

We are so comfortable with our operating reserves that it’s OK if we spend more than we give there’s enough to last until my funeral!   But what concerns me even more is that we are so comfortable, we don’t have the passion to “provoke one another” as suggested in Hebrews 4:24.   We irritate each other, but not because we are provoking the other to share in the kingdom.  I’m concerned because this congregation insists on letting the pastor do everything!   I wouldn’t worry about it if it were only me, but I won’t be here forever.

As much as I appreciate that you enable me to minister to the whole community though Ministerial Alliance and other community groups, I can’t BE the church.  You are the church and the church is not meant to rest on its laurels- or, for that matter, anything else!

The church is to be- like it’s Lord- Spirit-led, passionate and enthused.

We talked a little about this at Session this week and as their request, I want to lift up portions of my printed report in the booklet you’ll receive in our meeting.

According to an article from the Alban Institute by Jeffrey Jones, the pastor is not expected to provide answers to bring about change, “because no one knows what answers are needed to address the concerns the organization is confronting.  The key to discovering the answers is giving the work back to the people, so that the answer can emerge from their experience.  What do the people have to offer that enables this answer to emerge?  In a word: conflict. The appropriate responses to adaptive challenges most often emerge out of a conflict of values within the organization.  Sometimes the conflict is between values held by different groups. Sometimes it is between professed and lived values.  But the answers needed nearly always emerge from a conflict of values. Without the conflict, there can be no answer.” Jones continued:  “Avoiding conflict, however, is one way to ensure the slow death of the organization, because if disagreements are not faced, there is no possibility of the kind of change that will enable the organization to renew itself.”

We haven’t had a good fight since I came, and I have yet to hear anyone tell of a serious congregational conflict in the past.   If that is true, then it means (1) either you haven’t been doing anything, or (2) you have no passion for it.

Now, I am not proposing that we start a fight for the sake of a fight.  I am suggesting that we need to acknowledge our differences and points of contention so that we can work together to solve our issues.  I am suggesting that it is time once again to have serious conversation about who we are and where we are going.

The last time we did that was in 2005 and frankly, though we had good conversation, and worthy ideas, the only lasting change was an expanded mission statement that we sing at the end of worship.  The question is:  Have we lived into our stated vision?  Do we need another vision?  How can we think and talk about those things, telling the truth in love?

A pastor considering a call to one our Presbytery’s congregations recently wrote:  “My next church or churches should embody the following Prayer of Dedication: “Accept these gifts, O God, given in faith and love, that they may be used by this church in this community to spread God’s word and to share God’s love.” She continued: In order for this to happen, the members need to engage in serious Bible study.  There should be an active Sunday school or midweek Bible study for children, youth, and adults.  The congregation should be mission-minded.  The members should see themselves as the body of Christ, working as partners with the pastor, to reach out to others with the love and compassion of Jesus.”

I found myself thinking: ‘Who wouldn’t want a congregation like that!’

The question is can First Church be that kind of congregation?   Can we muster enough Spirit to be passionate about our ministry?  Can we be enthused enough to be the Body of Christ in the world?  Can we love the Lord and one another enough to speak the truth about our strengths and weaknesses as a part of the body?  Can we disagree, telling the truth in love, in order to find new answers and build up the body?  Can we “provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together,…but encouraging one another”?

That last phrase comes from Hebrews 10:24 and it came to mind I also remembered why.    It was the focus of my candidating sermon in October of 1997.  Twelve years after coming to you, I’m still asking the same questions.  I pray we can continue to work on them together.