Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
Preached on January 28th, 2007, by the Rev. Preston Parsons

Preaching can be pretty dangerous business!

In our gospel reading from last week, Jesus was preaching in the synagogue, and proclaiming that he was the Messiah.

This passage that I just read to you immediately follows that story, and Jesus is still in the same synagogue, and still with the same congregants. But the mood of that same bunch of congregants that sat with their eyes intently on Jesus, their mood has changed a lot. They aren't listening anymore, their amazement has turned to anger, and by the end of our reading they are trying to throw Jesus over a cliff.

Like I said, preaching is pretty dangerous business!

I think it's tempting for a lot of faithful Christians, to take this story far too seriously. A lot of us, not just preachers, like to think of ourselves as prophets like Jeremiah, or Messiahs like Jesus.

This is far more dangerous: to be self-appointed prophets, or would-be messiahs.

***

I wonder how many of us can relate to those folks from the synagogue that day. This was the synagogue of Jesus's hometown, and the people of Nazareth had been hearing stories about him, their home-town boy. We still hear these kinds of stories, don't we – the "local boy" or "local girl makes good" story? Just pick up the Free Press, or even a diocesan newspaper, and you can find these kinds of stories.

My American friends used to make fun of me for this. Some theologian, actor, or musician would come up in conversation, and I was hasten to add: "He's a Canadian,
you know", and sometimes, "She's a Winnipegger, right?"

My friends would make fun of me because it was like I was somehow better just for being from the same place as some famous person.

They were right, actually, I'm a proud Canadian, a proud Winnipegger, and when someone does something special, and they’re from where I'm from, I feel proud. I imagine that you feel the same way.

This is what happened to Jesus that day. Jesus's fellow Nazarenes were proud that this healer was from the same place as them. The word was out, Joseph's son was doing miracles in other parts of the countryside. Jesus had even done miracles in Capernaum. So the people of Nazareth were saying to him: "Step up! Do your thing! You're our guy! Do something for us! You did miracles out there in Brandon! Do something for us Winnipeggers!"

**

Faithful Christians can be like this, I think. We can cry out to God, we can cry out to Jesus, saying, "I'm a Christian! I believe in you! I even worship you! Jesus, you're one of us! So now I'm going to ask you for something, and you better deliver! I deserve it! Because you're my guy in the sky!"

Sound familiar?

It does to me, I know that I can pray sometimes like Jesus owes me something special.

I'm a Christian, and I can act as though this gives me special standing as far as my requests go.

But we all know that God doesn't work that way, and our prayers aren't always answered the way we expect, any more than Jesus did exactly what the people of Nazareth wanted him to do that day. Don’t get me wrong, here. I want you all to pray, and to pray fervently. But God may not always answer your prayers the way you want Him to.

Jesus's actions actually tell us something quite different about God’s action in the world; Jesus's actions tell us that God acts contrary to our expectations sometimes. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth that there is more to God's purposes than paying back tribute. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth, and us as we read the story, that Elijah was sent to do a miracle to a poor widow; and then that Elisha did a miracle for Naaman the Syrian. The miracles that Jesus refers to were works that God was doing outside the inner circle, for poor widows, not pious priests; miracles were done for foreign military commanders, not the local observing Jew. Jesus points out that God's work is often done for the outsiders rather than for the insiders.

The people of Nazareth did not take this news, the news of Jesus's sovereignty and freedom, as good news. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that because of God's freedom and sovereignty He will not always act the way we expect or want Him to.

As it turns out, Jesus's sovereignty and absolute freedom make for pretty dangerous preaching. And it ticked off the people of Nazareth enough that they did everything that they could to throw this particular preacher off the brow of a cliff.

***

Our danger, though, is different than Jesus’s danger that day. Our danger is that we cast ourselves as prophets or as messiahs because to cast ourselves as prophets or messiahs is to misunderstand how authority works.

The self-made prophet or would-be messiah who presses buttons, ticks people off, and fulfills some kind of persecution fantasy misunderstands what it means to stand under the authority of the prophets and under the authority of the Messiah. We aren't God; rather, we stand under the authority of God.

We aren't Christians in order to gain some special favour from God, nor are we Christians in order to tick off the world. We are Christians because of our of fidelity to Jesus.

We are Christians because we are faithful to Christ; we know that this Christ - the one who is nearly thrown off the brow of the cliff - is the one who saves us, and only the one who can truly save us is the one worthy of our faithfulness.

This faith in the one who saves doesn't mean we are suddenly able to tell God how to go about His business.

However, our confession of Christ's lordship just might tick people off, and it may very well mean that we are persecuted.

But this will arise because we have entered under the authority of Christ, not because we have put ourselves in the place of Christ.

***

So the question arises: what might it mean if we were to follow this Jesus? What might it mean if we were faithful to the Messiah, that we read about in this story, the God free to do miracles, and free not to do miracles?

What might it mean to follow the God who is placing his priority with those who are outsiders, with the widows and foreigners, rather than the insiders, the people of Nazareth who feel like they can tell Jesus what to do?

What might this mean for us?

It means that we will be less attentive to what we think we deserve, and less apt to order our community vision according to what we perceive to be our own immediate needs.

If we were to take direction from this story and followed Jesus, we would see that our faithfulness to Jesus would lead us to be far more attentive to those who remain outside of our walls.

It would challenge us to turn away from pious entitlement. It would challenge us to be evangelists, a people working to bring those who are outside our community into the saving power of the crucified one, the one present in a church living out what it means to be followers of God, the God who is absolutely free and acts in ways we sometimes don't understand.

Jesus is already visiting people outside our walls, there are all sorts of people wondering about this Jesus guy, they are waiting just outside our door trying to find their way in, trying to find a way to be a part of a community who worships this unpredictable God, a God who is asking great things of us.

Jesus, in this story, is asking us to be better than the people of Nazareth: we are asked us to recognize that we need more than a wonder worker, we need a saviour; we need more than an idol to do our bidding, we need the unpredictable and living God.

And if we need a saviour free to act in unexpected ways, if we need a God free to be God rather than just a miracle-man doing our bidding, how much more will we recognize that this Jesus, this saving God, is not the possession the people of the pew. This saving God is already the possession of the outsider.

The living God - God in Christ, the Messiah - will walk safely through the crowd of his persecutors, whether they be us or the people of Nazareth.

The living God - the crucified one, the resurrected one - his work is among the outsiders.

It is a work of reconciliation, a reconciliation he does for all of us, a reconciliation offered through the church, and through the invitation of the outsider in.

And we invite people into the church, into a reconciling community, not just for the sake of the outsider, nor simply for the sake of the insider. It is for the sake of the God who is free, the God who is sovereign, the God who will change us and transform us: the one God who is alone worthy of our faithfulness.