Being Honest

Luke 4:21–30 NRSV

Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “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 he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Listen to the hometown prophet So what’s a prophet? Isn’t this guy one of us and aren’t we owed the truth he brings and the easy road?

All of this occurs within a social system. A sermon, a reading from the ancient text of Isaiah, a reflection in the synagogue. All of these things occur within a social system, where there are layers of meaning, coded and agreed upon. In such a context, every word with social and historical and present-day implications. How Jesus reads this Isaiah text and how Jesus addresses it’s meaning in there moment — there is nothing neutral or ambiguous about what he’s doing. Jesus is bringing the prophecy of Isaiah into the hear and now, the moment, and giving it real-world implications.

This is honesty, living in community.

If we’re paying attention, we note that this passage picks up immediately where last week’s left off. In fact, so that we don’t break the narrative paragraph, it makes better sense to include vs. 20-21 in both readings.

Luke 4:20–21 NRSV

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Because from here, we can engage the next portion of the text as if we were the rapt listeners in the synagogue ourselves. We’ve just heard Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah. Hear it once more, for full context. Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah.

Luke 4:18–19 NRSV

“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.”

Great. All’s going well at this point, right?

Let’s proceed, then:

Vs. 22

Luke 4:22 NRSV

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Oh boy, I have loved going back to preach at some of my former congregations over the years.

I felt so proud of being asked to preach at Calvin Presbyterian Church in Shoreline, back when I was in the early part of seminary. I grew up there, my parents were married there, my grandparents were all members there. I think my very first sermon was preached there, back on a youth Sunday many years ago.

So I’ve liked going back to previous churches to preach. It’s a homecoming and, like Jesus, I get a little bit of that buzz from being known. Oh, that’s Jim and Sandra’s son? That’s our boy?

Vs. 22 again — all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

The people love it when the hometown kid gets up to share a familiar word of hope, right?

Now, if we just left it there at the end of the reading, with everyone paying attention and grateful for Jesus’ words, then everything might be ok.

Just tell us the good news and make us feel ok about ourselves.

Remind us that there is goodness in the world and that we’re on the right side of history.

Tell us about our fabled past. Help us to imagine God’s goodness pouring out upon us.

But that’s not how this ends. You see, the thing about reading Scripture in the context of a worship environment, you see, it’s not benign. It cannot be neutral. Especially a reading from the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew people. While Isaiah is surely a prophet of hope, Isaiah still is a prophet and prophets, while they do bring hope, also bring their truth with a heavy dose of disruption. Prophetic truth does not allow its hearers to remain where they are. Prophetic truth moves us. Or it should.

And when it does move us, it is meant to move us towards greater justice and healing, hope and reconciliation. The truth, as we remember from last week’s reading, sets us free. Prophetic truth liberates.

Let’s go back to that moment of fixation upon Jesus. The hearers have great respect for what has been spoken to them.

And of course, this is Scripture is not simply read. In faithful adherence to the tradition of the synagogue, the text must also be wrestled with. Jesus gives a Midrash, an interpretation of the reading.

Midrash, by the way, is the term used to describe the exploration of the Scripture, in community. The midrash was and is a process of pulling apart the text, working with it, applying it and wondering about it. We might also use words like exegesis or simply study. It’s the idea that a text needs to be sat with, mulled over, rolled around a bit, so that the layers of meaning and application become clearer.

Jesus begins his sermon, his midrash, by giving an example, quoting an ancient proverb:

Doctor, cure yourself.

Medice, cura te ipsum.

This was a well known, ancient proverb. A brief search yields that scholars date this saying back to at least the 6th century BC.

Jesus uses the saying as an illustration device. He knows that the hearers in Nazareth are going to be the first to line up and say — Ok, let’s do this Jubilee thing, can we go first? Help out the hometown crowd, Jesus.

This is an important theme in Jesus’ ministry. The insiders, the people who know him or claim him as their guy, they want to have privileged access to his message. We see this elsewhere in the Gospels, even with Jesus’ own family. There’s the expectation of access.

We get that, too.

So when Jesus continues on with his teaching, his brutal honesty rings dissonant with that expectation.

And it has to. The text demands to be read honestly and to do so requires self-examination and even critique.

So, y’all expect the doctor to heal you. Or you’re saying that since the doctor is here, you should be the first to receive treatment.

Jesus goes on: “And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” Jesus pre-empts what he expects will be their request — heal us like you did elsewhere.

I find myself curious at Jesus’ words here in vs. 24. They read like yet another ancient proverb, like Jesus is quoting another saying. In a brief bit of study, I don’t see that this is another famous quote, but it is something that the Gospel writers all hit on through their storytelling. And this assumption of rejection for the local prophet stacks up with Jewish history — prophets were not typically very popular people.

Why? Because prophets tell the truth.

Now, the Isaiah message is more or less hopeful. But how Jesus teaches it and applies it to his context is so important.

He goes on to use two examples of what the good news of the Spirit of the Lord brings, both examples of God’s providence in the face of famine and suffering. First is from the time of the prophet Elijah, where unfaithful Israel endures a great drought and famine. Elijah, the prophet, was sent to an outsider, the widow of Zarephath. Similarly, rather than healing the many lepers at home, Elisha heals a Syrian man, an outsider.

The prophetic truth that Jesus is laying out for his hearers is this: While the word of the Lord goes out for all people, calling all people to justice and liberation, it will only be some who actually heed the call and receive the good news.

Preaching in a familiar context, going home again, it’s fun. It makes me think of a musician, playing for the hometown crowd. You bring out the hits, you banter with the familiar folks.

But that’s not what Jesus does. Jesus, instead, makes his hometown crowd uncomfortable.

The hearers in the synagogue know what’s going on when they hear his explanation. They know that he has placed them squarely in the seat of the ones who miss the point.

And they don’t like that.

As a preacher, I’ve never been chased out of town and led to a cliffside by an angry mob. I suppose I haven’t preached an honest enough sermon yet.

Admittedly, I want to be like Jesus in this moment. I want to say the thing that is going to disrupt you enough that you pay attention. We need to wake up! I don’t want to start a riot, but sometimes I do wonder if what we say in this context matters enough to move you. What would it take? Is there anything in the good news of Jesus that would make you uncomfortable enough that you’d want to “put it down?”

Share your wealth? Leveling down to be truly “with” the poor? Being told that you have to choose between God and Country, you can’t have both?

Or are our pressure points more subtle? No grumbling in the kingdom, no pettiness, no judgement of misspellings or grammatical errors. The way of Jesus disturbs and dismisses such paltry complaints in its pursuit of complete justice.

Living faith in Christ out requires loving, other-focused action. Being a part of the liberating work of Christ requires us to look outside ourselves and learn to be the hands and feet of Christ for our neighbors and our enemies.

We must let ourselves be completely changed by this love. We cannot stay the same, we cannot stay in our comfortable bubbles. Love must act. Why did the prophets help the outsiders? Because they had living faith. Their needs were met not because they belonged to the right group or they said the right prayers or had the right skin color or ethnic background. No. Jesus is telling us that the ones who will receive the good news are the ones who have faith, not the ones who deserve it, not the hometown crowd.

If Jesus came and read this text to us and preached a sermon, would we be able to receive it?

Truly, Jesus reads the scroll and preaches from a place of deep love. He would not take up this task with the people of his hometown if he did not love them.

But sometimes, love has to say hard things. Love moves mountains, makes change, and can realign a whole community. Love is disruptive, because it moves us to a new way of being.

1 Corinthians 13:1–13 NRSV

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Amen.