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| A Disturbing Call |
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(Feel free to email questions or responses) January 31, 2010 Luke 4:21-30 and Jeremiah 4:14-21 So I don’t know whether or not to be worried that today’s gospel reading is the story of the world’s shortest honeymoon period for a new preacher. Maybe we had better begin with a prayer. Let’s pray together… O God, like you did for Jeremiah, give us your Word and call us forth. And like you did for Jesus and the people of Nazareth, challenge us to be bearers of your good news of freedom, of vision, and of release to true fullness of life for all people. Amen. Our passage from Luke is a continuation of last week’s reading. In it, Jesus has just begun his public ministry, and he finds himself in his home pulpit. Instead of preaching a cautious and politely rousing sermon to the crowd of his neighbors, his Sabbath school teachers, and his parents’ friends, this newbie issues a disturbing call that angers and incites them to murderous thoughts and action. His message... it’s a doozy. But it didn’t start out that way. Last week’s reading contains what seems to be a home-run for Jesus. He stands up, reads from Isaiah, and appears to be telling the congregation that God’s got some good news for them. He says, “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. " This is good news indeed for the much-maligned Israelites, the people of God, or so they think. They’ve been oppressed, exiled, downtrodden, and abused, and it’s about time they caught a break. I can just hear Joseph’s fishing buddy exclaim “Amen!” from the floor of the synagogue. His wife is next to him, and she says, “That Jesus. He has such a nice voice.” But Jesus doesn’t stop there. As one of my preaching resources for today says, he is “feeling a bit dramatic.” He rolls up the scroll, sits down for emphasis, and adds “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” O.k…. good. But he doesn’t stop there, “No doubt you think I’m here to wow you with magic tricks and put an easy band-aid on all that ails you. The truth is, though, that you don’t want to hear what I really have to say. You will write off this hometown kid just like you did God’s messengers before me, so I’ll just move on down the road and take God’s message and blessings with me. The Spirit doesn’t belong to you. It’s God’s Spirit. God is for the people you look down upon.” You can imagine how popular this made Jesus. The people don’t just try to cut him off or ask him to leave the synagogue. They run him out of town and attempt to throw him off a cliff. It seems that something in Jesus’ words really got under their skin. They’re mad, really mad. His words are hard to hear for people who have considered themselves God’s chosen for so long. What does God want with foreigners and enemies of the Israelites? How could God possibly heal and provide for them at the expense of the chosen? Jesus’ message was not simply a seal of approval like the people expected. It was a message that threatened to dismantle the status quo and the stereotypes that defined the people’s religious and social boundaries in the synagogue and beyond. How might we hear these words today? What if we took Jesus as seriously as the crowd in the synagogue did? The prophet Jeremiah also has hard words for those who considered themselves “God’s people” in our reading for today. He’s another new kid on the scene, and he’s also not received very well. The people simply don’t want to hear what he has to say. This may be because when he shares what God has called him to do, it starts like this, “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow…” He spends about the first thirty chapters of the book yelling at the people to repent and change their lives. They don’t, they get exiled and punished and they’re miserable, but they still haven’t turned into great listeners. Pluck up, pull down, destroy, overthrow… these words are fine if they’re talking about someone else, but the people aren’t interested in the change that God could be talking about through Jeremiah for their own lives. Just like the congregation in Nazareth, Jeremiah’s friends expect that God’s liberation will be handed to them, that the land of milk and honey should be theirs by way of inheritance. They don’t understand how important they are to the story and how much depends on their cooperation with God. In chapter seven, Jeremiah shares this message from God, “Amend your ways, and let me dwell with you in this place… For if you truly amend your ways, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood, or chase idols to your own detriment, then I will dwell with you in this place.” God says again and again through Jeremiah, “I want to dwell with you, but here’s what I need from you to make this co-habitation work… live in just ways, treat each other generously and with kindness and welcome, provide for one another, and let me hold your heart, for I am your home.” This requires some turning around for the Israelites, some real repentance and change, some plucking up, pulling down, destruction, and overthrowing of their ways of living that really do not lead them to life, certainly not to the full and abundant life God intends for them. When Jesus told the people gathered in the synagogue that Isaiah’s good news was fulfilled in their hearing, in their midst, I think he was saying two things. First, that release, recovered sight, and freedom had come to the Israelites so that they might have the vision and freedom to live in radically different ways—in the ways God was talking about in Jeremiah—in just ways, in generous ways, in welcoming ways, in ways that made God at home in their midst. Secondly, Jesus meant that these gifts had come so that the chosen ones might be this good news to the wider world. To the foreign widow, to the commander in the occupying army. To those outside their circle and comfort zone, their church family and their close knit group of friends. And living this way, being this good news for a wider world… that was going to require the people to stretch their minds farther than their own pockets, their own tables, their own households and their well being and comfort. And all this was going to require some plucking up, some pulling down, some destruction, and overthrowing of the ways they had been living and the narrow boundaries they had been drawing around themselves. And the people didn’t like that. In this case and in Jeremiah, it seems that the prophet had come more to afflict the comfortable that comfort the afflicted. Historian, playwright, and social activist Howard Zinn died this week, and our readings today seem to pay fitting tribute to him in a variety of ways. He was a boundary breaker and understood the need to stir things up a little. Ann Catlett, a friend of Phil’s and a local doctor shared the following quote from Howard Zinn on her facebook page this week, “Relinquish the safety of silence, be prepared to speak up, act against injustice wherever you see it. This, of course, is a recipe for trouble.” Dr. Catlett also wrote, “I think [Zinn] refers to the kind of trouble that is a natural outcome of love and justice-centered action in a society built on greed and protection that is spawned by fear. Courageous lovers and truth-tellers stir things up.” Dr. Catlett seems to really get what she writes about. She is currently working on establishing hospice for homeless folks in our community. Talk about crossing boundaries and stirring things up. Jeremiah and Jesus and Howard Zinn all knew the recipe for trouble. Take a cup of plucking up, add equal portions of pulling down, and destruction. Sift in the overthrowing of what has been and makes the people rest comfortably within their own little worlds. Bake at 350 for thousands of years and watch the people rise in protest. Let the rising continue until the poor, the oppressed, the foreigner, the forsaken, and hurting are lifted up and all God’s people become one, beautiful, delicious creation. In the readings for today, a disturbing call sounds out, for the Israelites, the people of Nazareth, and for us. It is a recipe for trouble and upheaval, a call to see how God is freeing us and giving us vision to widen our boundaries, to reach farther, to love more deeply, to give more generously, to see those who are foreign to us as family, as God’s people, as those with whom God is unfolding that great and creative narrative of love. It’s a call that does and should make us uncomfortable. Faith can bring comfort, but it’s not about being comfortable. Something about our faith in this troublemaking God should disturb us so the circle can widen. After all, God didn’t call Jeremiah to pat the people on the back and give them the thumbs up. God didn’t send Jesus to tell the people of Nazareth, “I think you’ve got it all figured out. Keep on doing exactly what you’ve always done. Super job.” In both cases and in our case, God is calling those who would listen to an uncomfortable place, to a radical place, to be willing to sacrifice what we have known for the sake of what can be. God has released us and given us vision, so that we can move outside our comfort zones, our homes, our church, and our chosen communities, and as Jeremiah says, God can truly dwell with us. Then we will love as one people through justice and generosity, through kindness and radical welcome, through provision, through shattering boundaries and joining hands and lives with those who are unknown and unwanted to the rest of the world. Then we will truly be God’s people. Then God will dwell with us and hold our hearts. When we have plucked up and pulled down what keeps us from each other and God, when we have destroyed the walls that keep us apart, when we have overthrown the hardness of our hearts and all that holds us from abandoning ourselves to love, then we will build and plant as Jeremiah says at the end of his call narrative. And what rises from the dust will be beautiful and good and loving and of God. Then will God’s good news truly be fulfilled in our midst. Jesus and Jeremiah heard a call to speak and act. In fact, the passage from Jeremiah today is exactly that, a call narrative. It might be reassuring to hear that Jeremiah’s first response is, “Oh no, not me. I can’t do that.” And it might be reassuring to hear that God says, “Oh yes you can. Don’t be afraid, I’ll give you the words and help you do what you need to do.” In this specific instance, God words actually touch Jeremiah’s lips. At another point he eats the word of God. We may not frame it exactly like that, but we talk about not being able to escape some word or some truth. We talk about having a story inside of us. We say we live with a certain hope or faith or passion. There is a truth that finds us repeatedly, that won’t let us alone, that keeps the wheels of our minds and hearts spinning. Jeremiah might tell us that that is what he meant when he spoke about being called by God. We might not all be prophets. We might not all wear linen loincloths as our prophet’s mantle like Jeremiah did (thank goodness). As modern people of faith, probably no one can identify us by what we wear or look like. Our faith is evidenced by what we do and what we say. Our call to serve the God who wants to dwell with us is to live out the Divine Love’s truth in daily life. We are asked to respect and protect the dignity of every human being. Hardest of all, and easily the riskiest road we are asked to take, is the road that seeks justice and counters evils in very tangible ways, letting the face of Christ emerge in the love we show to God’s beloved on the edges. Sometimes we must even speak a word of truth to power or change the ways we live in the world. This is a troubling Spirit that led Jeremiah and Jesus to these places, but it is the troubling Spirit of the God we love. Let us be open to this same Spirit. Let us get in this same kind of trouble for Love. Let us answer that disturbing call of God and so invite God to dwell with us. May it be so. Amen. |