Epiphany 4C
January 30, 2022
Good Shepherd, Wells, MN
Luke 4.21-30
When they heard this, all the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up and drove him out of town … so they might hurl him off the cliff.
They wanted to kill Jesus. It’s only the fourth chapter of the Gospel and they want to kill Jesus. He’s barely begun his ministry and it seemed to be going well, but now they want to kill him. Presumably, they want to kill him because they didn’t like the message he proclaimed. Was that your reaction last week when we heard the first part of this passage? Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth and is worshiping in the synagogue. He is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and reads words meant to comfort the exiles in Babylon. I asked you to hold in awareness whatever your response was to Jesus’ words from the prophet. They were words that spoke against systems of injustice that both make and keep people poor, that oppress and keep people oppressed. They were words that advocated for a Jubilee, a massive redistribution of wealth ordered in the Old Testament but rarely carried out.
In today’s reading, the second part, Jesus throws gasoline on a gathering amazed yet skeptical hometown folk. If family are those people who knew you before you became the person you are today, and don’t let you forget, the hometown crowd of Nazareth sees only Joseph’s son, not the Son of God. And when Jesus widens the circle of who is in God’s favor, it becomes too much for them. Never mind the fact that the circle still includes them, but they have a hard time seeing that and only see red. They wanted to kill Jesus because Jesus wouldn’t conform to their expectations of what and who he should be.
It would be easy for us to say that we would never do that to Jesus, except I think that we (I) do more than we realize. To paraphrase the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I kill thee? Let me count the ways.” Generally speaking, I think that we kill Jesus every time we make Jesus into someone of our agenda, not his. Conservative Christians kill Jesus by making him into a superpatriot, vengeful warrior wrapped in the American flag. Liberal Christians take whatever social agenda they have and slap Jesus on top of it, calling it good. Both scour the Scriptures for whatever Jesus they want to support their particular point of view.
Pastors are not immune. Here again, it’s easy to point fingers to escape the brutal reality that I need to admit: I find ways to kill Jesus, too. I kill Jesus when I keep Jesus up in my head and don’t grant him access to my heart. And when I do grant him access to my heart, it’s only a small portion of it and I don’t allow what he brings with him. I kill Jesus when I insist on my own way of doing things, that I know what’s right, and don’t need help. I kill Jesus when I refuse the love he has for me, love that would transform me into what he intends instead of what I think I should be.
Is there Good News here? It’s hard to see it, but when Luke tells us that Jesus passed through the crowd and went on his way, that phrasing is the same when he talks about Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem where he will be crucified, die, and rise again. In other words, God has sent Jesus to fulfill his mission to love and bless the world and nothing will prevent Jesus from fulfilling that mission, regardless of our expectations for him. Jesus will be killed, but God’s mission will be fulfilled on God’s terms, not ours. Furthermore, death will not be the last word.
In a short while we’ll conclude worship, put away our hymnals and bulletins, pick up the annual report and convene our annual meeting in this same space. As we do so, it would be helpful to remember that God not only has a mission to love and bless the world but also that God’s mission has a church, of which Good Shepherd is one congregation. And as we discuss God’s mission and ministry through Good Shepherd, we keep in mind the wider circle of God’s love that includes us but encompasses far more than we can imagine or dream of. And we remember that death does not have the last word in the Bible, resurrection, new life, and transformation does. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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