Keeping Up

Last Sunday a son of this congregation was the preacher of the day. He displayed a disturbing lack of diffidence toward his father – something he learned from his mother. Nevertheless, Adam did show that he possesses a certain measure of common sense – more, I suspect, that most seminarians his age. He could have preached on Luke 4, the story of Jesus’ visit to his hometown of Nazareth, the second installment of which we just read. But that young man’s daddy didn’t raise no fools. Adam avoided this text like the plague.

Good call. When your second-grade Sunday School teacher is the reader and folks who have known you since you were two are looking up at you in the pulpit, it is not wise to remind them that there is Biblical precedent for throwing the preacher over a cliff. This story is the most dramatic example of rhetorical dissonance recorded in the gospels, and should be avoided by all seminarians – indeed, all preachers – who want to make a good impression.

Where did it all go wrong? There was Jesus, the hometown boy made good, reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, sitting in the rabbi’s seat, basking in the approbation of those who knew him when. How beautifully he reads. Such poise, such diction, such rounded vowels to make Ms. Aide and Ms. Betsy, his choir directors, proud. Everything was going so well. What happened?

The simple answer is, Jesus does what he is called to do. He starts proclaiming good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and he does it by challenging his hearers’ concept of God. The fact that he does this without first complementing his hearers on their wonderful synagogue, their outstanding Sabbath School, and their remarkably wise rabbi, is bad enough. Even more irksome is the fact that he uses Biblical examples to illustrate his point. You might say he throws the Book at them.

Remember that terrible dry spell back in the days of Elijah? It didn’t rain for three years and six months and the whole country was suffering from famine. There were plenty of widows in Israel back then. God could have sent Elijah to any one of them, but instead God sent the prophet to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon – a foreigner, who, though near starvation herself, welcomed and fed the prophet of the Lord.

And what about that story about Elisha and Naaman, the Syrian general? Were there no lepers in Israel back then? Of course there were! But Elisha didn’t cleanse a single one of them. He cleansed Naaman, the foreigner, the infidel.

Jesus has been anointed a prophet, and a prophet’s job is to tell the truth. The truth Jesus brings home to Nazareth is, as a certain public figure might say, "an inconvenient truth," a truth the hometown crowd does not like to hear. This truth that will get you run out of town on a rail – or worse, hung on a cross.

And what is that truth? Well, it seems that God’s love doesn’t stop at the border between nations, or races, or even religions. God is on a mission to set all people free, to give all people sight, to draw all people to God’s own self. That truth comes as good news to the oppressed, the poor, and the blind – especially to you and me, who need it like wanderers in the desert need water and hurricane victims need ice. But should we try to possess that truth, to claim it for ourselves alone – we distort what is good in the good news about God.

God cannot be possessed, only worshipped and obeyed. We can "glorify God and enjoy God forever," as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, but we cannot own God. The god we attempt to own is not the true God at all, but an idol of our own devising.

When you tell that to people, especially to people who think they know you well, it makes them mad. Fighting mad. Mad enough to throw you off a cliff. Mad enough to nail you to a cross.

This inconvenient truth from Jesus comes to you and me at an inconvenient time, a time when Christians are being challenged to define our faith more clearly over against other religions of the world. The world-wide tension between religions makes some Christians want to climb into the ring to duke it out with Muslims and Jews and people of other faiths, until a clear winner emerges. Others of us are so scandalized by the behavior of our brothers and sisters in Christ that we go around with a bag over our heads, ashamed to wear the name "Christian."

As a group of clergy from different faiths were breaking bread together week before last, the imam of one of the local mosques told us a about young couple from his congregation. They’re both African Americans – homegrown Muslims you might call them – and newlyweds to boot. Like many Muslim women, this young woman chooses to wear the hijab, or headscarf, as a sign of modesty. They were walking down the street a few days ago when a man in a pickup truck slammed on his breaks, jumped out of his truck, and started yelling at them. "Go home," he shouted. "Go back where you came from. You don’t belong here. This is a Christian nation." Then he jumped into his truck and sped away.

Perhaps he was in a hurry to get to church. According to my friend the imam, a local pastor whose photo appears on a billboard not far from here, has just completed a series of sermons explaining that Islam is a demonic religion and that all Muslims are engaged in a worldwide jihad against America. He delivers this message, of course, in the name of Jesus.

One wonders how this particular pastor might interpret that story about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, or Elisha and Naaman, the Syrian. Apparently, he and Jesus would disagree about how to read the text.

There was a time when Christians spoke of the church’s "mission" principally in terms of converting others to Christianity. The "mission of the church" for many of us meant "winning souls for Christ."

But the Jesus in this particular story seems much more interested in what we might call "the mission of God," which apparently makes no distinctions between insiders and outsiders, Israelites and Syrians, women in headscarves and women without them. It would be entirely consistent for the God of the Bible to use our encounters with non-Christians as occasions to meet God all over again.

Particularly in these days, when there is so much bearing of false witness between the religions, the mission of the church should match God’s own barrier-breaking, category-crossing, world-embracing mission. It’s hard to convince people that God really loves them when you’re shouting at them to go back where they came from – especially when "where they came from" is right here.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that all religions are the same, or that Jesus Christ is anything less than the Lord of Life and the Light of the World. But it is one thing to say that Christ is the Light of the Word and quite another to say that the church has sole possession of that Light. Christians do not own Jesus. You and I are his servants, not his masters. It’s pretty clear from this passage what Jesus’ agenda is. It’s not so much about winning souls as it is about doing the mission of God.

The very notion that God might be working outside the confines of Israel drives Jesus’ hearers to violence. They had put God in a box, you see, and they thought they could keep him there. When Jesus showed up with stories from their own scriptures revealing God’s broader agenda, they did their best to keep the lid on that box, but they failed. "He passed through the midst of them and went on his way." According to the text, he never had very high expectations of the hometown crowd in the first place.

With God’s help, you and I can do better.

We might start by acknowledging that a lot of what passes for "Christian witness" these days is less about getting in step with God than it is about squeezing God into a box. When we "bear witness to Christ," are we pointing to the Jesus who was run out of town because his God was too big or the Jesus who saves only true believers? Is the cosmic Christ who was God’s word from the beginning, or the contracted Christ who checks i.d.’s at the pearly gates and makes sure no outsiders get in?

The time has come for Christians to stand alongside people who do not profess Jesus Christ for the sake of Jesus Christ. Not because we agree with all the precepts of their faith, but because we believe that Jesus stands alongside them as well. He long ago passed through the midst of the crowd who wanted to keep him pinned down, and escaped to spend time with the widow in Zarephath and the leper in Syria.

W.W.J.D.? Where would Jesus dwell? What is his mission? Where is he taking the church? Please don’t throw me over a cliff, but judging from this story, I’d say we’d better change directions if we’re going to catch up with him.