Epiphany 4 C

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

I feel like I maybe misled you. You see, last week I preached on the Spirit-enabled proclamation of the Gospel that Jesus claimed as his calling and that we are called to do also and how its result is that it sets us free. Which is true.

But ‘free’ is not always necessarily easy, comfortable, or even wanted. Our lectionary saves this inconvenient truth for this Sunday…

• last Sunday Jesus’ words inspire freedom
• this Sunday they inspire the people to try and throw Jesus off a cliff

Let’s talk about what’s going on here…

Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth. He’s been travelling around, creating a name for himself, and now he’s back home and teaching in a synagogue filled with people that knew him from the time he was young.

He performs a bold, dramatic reading and interpretation of scripture, and seems to have successfully wowed the people there. Luke even tells us that everyone spoke well of him at this point.

Seems like a good time to take a bow, right? Instead Jesus begins to antagonize the assembly…first by putting words in their mouths, saying:

“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.’

And before the people can confirm or deny whether they were actually planning on saying those things, Jesus scolds them with another proverb:

“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

And I think that even at this point, the people there that day would have been OK…mostly perturbed that Jesus was bad at taking a compliment. But then Jesus takes his rant a step further. And he begins to interpret more scripture for them. He reminds them of a couple of well-known stories about Elijah and Elisha, two of the most important prophets in the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus brings up the story of Elijah and widow of Zarephath…a story about God sending Elijah to a widow outside the bounds of Israel, God’s chosen people. Jesus points out that while there were plenty of deserving widows in Israel to be saved, God chose to save a widow that was not part of Israel.

And again, Jesus quotes from scripture to bring to mind when Elisha is called to cleanse Naaman of leprosy. Naaman — the commander of another army — was cleansed ahead of lepers among God’s own chosen people.

Do you see the implication of what Jesus is telling his hometown crowd? They would have known those stories…but they wouldn’t have liked his Jesus was using them.

Just when they were expecting to get a special show from their own local hero, Jesus directly confronts them and tells them that his mission to proclaim the Good News in word and deed begins with pretty much anyone except his own people.

Well, now he’s done it. Jesus has taunted his own local support base to the point of murderous rage. The idea that Jesus would offer God’s favor to others — outsiders — before them was insulting enough to make them want to throw Jesus off a cliff.

(This will not be the last time that the words and deeds of Jesus put him in harm’s way.)

If you’re already feeling at home and comfortable and you hear that your own prophet’s favor is first for others and not for you…that is frustrating, angering news. But, wow, is it good news if you’re someone in need like the widow of Zarephath, or Naaman of Syria.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to feel at home and to feel homesick over the past couple weeks as I’ve travelled away from home and run into some challenges and unexpected health issues — a story for another time.

So I tried to remember the first time that I felt homesick, and I think it was in Middle School, when I attended a weekend Confirmation retreat. The retreat started out great. I was not a ‘cool kid’ but I could make the cool kids laugh so that was usually enough. The food was good. The music was good. And I enjoyed what was probably my first trip away from home without anyone from my family with me. But then something happened. It seems silly now, but I remember so clearly missing a catch in a game of football we were playing. It was a big enough flub that I attracted the ridicule of everyone that saw it. I was ashamed, and instead of making jokes, I became the joke.

I remember how quickly I went from feeling right at home to feeling this weird feeling in my stomach that I now know was homesickness.

Maybe you can relate to this sudden move from feeling at home to feeling homesick. It can happen even when you haven’t gone anywhere, but suddenly your home doesn’t feel like your home anymore.

The words and deeds of Jesus brought good news to people who knew this feeling. People who were pushed out by religious rules, by economic forces, by hunger, disease, and disability. Those Nazareth folks had just heard Jesus proclaim, after all, that his mission was 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.” (Luke 4.18–19 NRSV)

That sounded really nice until Jesus helped them realize that it meant he would refuse to cater to the powerful. He would refuse to give favors to the insiders, but would instead break the inside open to the outside — and to show that there are no borders to God’s love.

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When you are in the hometown crowd, it’s not that God doesn’t love you…it’s that God is inviting you to open yourself up to those who are not at home. To those who suffer the homesickness that comes with ridicule, with injustice, with loss and grieving.

And, yes, it seems unfair that Jesus cares first for the lost and the homesick…but when you and I find ourselves in need, we will know why. No matter how far from home we feel, Jesus has opened himself up — and us with him — so that all may share in abundant life.