Isn't this Joseph's Son?

St. Andrew's Church, Mer Rouge & Church of the Redeemer, Oak Ridge, La., 3 February 2013

Today’s Gospel story (Luke 4:21-20) sounds to me like nothing so much as overheard gossip at a family reunion.. perhaps especially a family reunion here in the deep south, where family pedigree matters so much!

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” the great aunts and uncles cluck. “I mean, the son of the carpenter? Who’d ever have thought he’d turn out like this!”

This lesson is a continuation of last Sunday’s lesson, so we know the context. Jesus has returned home to Nazareth from being baptized by John in the Jordan River and spending 40 days in the wilderness in a meet up with both the devil and God.

In Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue in keeping with custom, stands up to read from the prophet Isaiah—a passage we today categorize as one of “the servant passages”—then proceeds to claim for himself the identity of The Servant as laid out in Isaiah.

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he says. And the hometown community beams with pride. Everyone is amazed that the carpenter’s son speaks so well.

View from "The Precipice" at Nazareth

But… how quickly the clucks of surprised approval from the small-town “family” turn into murderous rage! What in the world does Jesus say in those few intervening verses that his own people go from adoring family to angry mob?

Interestingly enough, all he does is tell them a couple of stories from their very own scriptures!

Who among us has never encountered people who want our Holy Scriptures to say particular things and not others? These are often the same folks who can quote the Bible chapter and verse to support their own preferred points of view—and often prejudices. And they typically are not happy when someone responds with a verse that counters that prejudice.

But, of course, we all have that tendency. We all focus on and know best those parts of the Bible that support our preferred beliefs and points of view, and we all tend to ignore or resist those passages that challenge our biases and favorite traditions.

The stories Jesus tells the locals in the synagogue at Nazareth don’t sound all that shocking or contentious to us. What, after all, is so problematic about Elijah helping the Widow of Zarephath with the miracle of oil and flour that would not run out while her country was in famine?  Or Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy?

Shouldn’t all humankind rejoice when one life is saved? Shouldn’t we be thankful when God’s grace and mercy is extended to another?

But, of course, the fact is, we aren’t! We do not always rejoice in another’s blessing. We are not always thankful for another’s gift from God.

See, the locals to whom Jesus was speaking in the synagogue at Nazareth were all, of course, Jews. And the Jews were God’s chosen people. And they had a deal with God. The Old Testament or Old Covenant we call it.

And that’s all fine and good. But then they made a very human, very understandable in many ways, but deeply flawed move. They got jealous of God! They concluded that because they were chosen and had a deal with God, therefore God could not possibly have chosen anyone else and could not have a deal with any other people.

That is, after all, how human minds work. We love “family values.” We love the concept of “community.” We want to be close to our families. We want to live in tight-knit, supportive communities.

And we like nothing more than being in charge of establishing the criteria for who counts as “family” and who “belongs” in our community!

And that’s precisely where we are most likely to part company with God! We are never quite ready for the expansiveness and inclusiveness of God’s love and grace and mercy.

We want to be God’s chosen, and dang it, we don’t want God to choose those Arabs or Palestinians or Africans or Asians as well.  We want a deal with God—blessings in exchange for good behavior. And we sure don’t want God showering blessings on the illegals, the jailbird, the poor—whom we are certain are mostly lazy and immoral or they wouldn’t be in their sorry circumstances.

Here’s an interesting side-note on today’s Gospel story. Some Biblical scholars think we should not include it in the contemporary lectionary. In other words, they prefer that this story NOT be read in our churches today.

And they have good reason. They point to the fact that a thread of anti-Semitism runs through the Gospels, and this story is part of that thread.

Jesus was a Jew preaching to Jews in their own synagogue in his hometown. And no sooner has he impressed them with his knowledge and skill than he insults them.

You think I’ve come here to be your servant, he says, and you will quote scripture to me to get me to heal those whom you deem worthy of being healed: your families, your community, your fellow Jews.

But I’ve got news for you that you won’t like, Jesus continues, and it comes from your very same scriptures. And the news is, God heals Gentiles too, even when Jews are left starving and dying.

Today we the Gentiles know that we’re chosen too! We’re God’s people too! We have a deal with God as well. We call it the New Covenant or New Testament.

So I think this is a valuable story for us to read today. It challenges us to recognize that we too do not get to turn our chosenness back on God and get angry that God chooses others as well. The challenge for us is accepting that having a deal with us does not limit or prevent God having deals with others.

And perhaps the greatest challenge of all is figuring out who are our “Gentiles.” In other words, who are the peoples we most want God to NOT choose and NOT have a deal with? Who are the people we are quite certain have not earned a place in God’s kingdom?

When we can face and come to terms with our own tendency to construct God in our image and to expect God to use our criteria for entrance into the kingdom, then we can begin to follow—not just believe in, but follow—Jesus into the servant ministry he chose for himself... and calls us to, every time he says, "Follow me."                                                                          

AMEN