Jesus is My Homeboy

I grew up in an ELCA church called House of Prayer in Escondido, CA. It was my senior year in high school when I was offered the chance to preach as a part of our annual youth Sunday. The story is not for today, but it is the first time that I ever preached and I will say that it was that experience that led me to realizing that God was calling me to be a pastor. At the end of each service, it was an interesting experience as people thanked me for my message and made comments about how much I had grown up since I had first come to the church and what a ‘fine job’ I had done.

Fast forward 8 1/2 years later, the call committee at a church I was interviewing at in California asked to hear me preach as a part of the interview process. The pastor I grew up with and the congregation of House of Prayer agreed to allow me to preach one Sunday so the call committee could hear me give a sermon. I still remember that I gave the sermon on the text about Jesus calming the storm. I also remember after both services seeing people that I had not seen for several years who came up to talk with me and I still received those same comments as I did the time I preached 8 1/2 years earlier. People talked to me about how the remember me in Sunday School class, or they remembered me when I was an acolyte. They remembered me coming to Vacation Bible School and how I used to date one of the girls that went to church.

There were also conversations about how proud people were of me and wanted to know how I was doing and how my family was doing as well. My mom had moved closer to the coast so she wasn’t attending that church anymore other than to visit on occasion. But I couldn’t help but notice how many people still viewed me as the little boy who the third of the four Weinberger boys who grew up in this church.

When that happened, it really struck home to me why the ELCA strongly discourages pastors from seeking a call at either the congregation that they served at when they were on internship and the congregation that they grew up in or worshipped at for part of their life. This text that we have today also really drives home that idea as well, and I feel I have a greater understanding of what Jesus was talking about because of these experiences.

Today’s text is a continuation of last week’s text where we heard the story of how Jesus preached on the scroll of Isaiah and how that scripture was fulfilled in their hearing. And now we hear how everyone spoke well of him and were amazed at everything that came out of his mouth. They were truly and genuinely impressed that Joseph’s son who was supposed to be a carpenter had become such an incredible rabbi and maybe even prophet.

Why then does Jesus seem to go on a tirade about them and in the end get kicked out of town and almost driven off of a cliff for it? At a casual glance we might assume that it is because people were commenting on the fact that this prophet is Joseph’s son and and he should be a carpenter not a rabbi and healer. But our text says that all spoke well of him. So the two lines of aren’t opposing views. They are a continuation of a thought by the people. So Jesus wasn’t being put down because he was in my mindset that people were too busy seeing me a the hometown boy come back to preach. Jesus likely had another concern on his mind.

One thing that I think we understand about the culture and society of that time is that there is a strong familial tie. The break we see from that with Jesus is that he is now a prophet and a healer and a preacher. He isn’t the carpenter he was supposed to be. The other part of the tension he that we don’t understand is that in a small town like Nazareth there wasn’t just a familial tie but there is also a tie and a bond to the town that a person grew up in. So I believe what the people in the synagogue were going for when they were praising Jesus is they wanted him to stick around. They wanted their home-grown prophet to stay in their home town. It was his family and his social obligation. The people weren’t chastising Jesus, they were trying to woo him to make him stay.

Which is why Jesus says what he says in the following verses. He calls them out on them wanting him to stay, but then talks about different prophets in the Old Testament that went and took care of those who were not their own and he specifically uses examples of not just people who were not in the prophets hometown, but of people who weren’t even Jewish. Elijah was sent to the widow with the boy and they all survived the famine. and Elisha healed Naaman from Syria instead of any leper in Israel. Jesus in essence rejects their attempt to place Jesus in a box and restrict him to doing ministry just in Nazareth and as we will see, Jesus too, goes outside of Israel to share the good news that God loves all and wants all to be in a relationship with him.

Jesus cannot be confined to a town or a people or a place or even placed into a box where we can predict and see what is going to happen next. Jesus is called to share the good news of God. That good news is the news that we heard about in last week’s gospel reading. Jesus is here to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. That is what we learned about last week. and this week we learn that all of that good news is going to be spread out into the whole world. This isn’t news meant just for the people of Nazareth where Jesus grew up, it isn’t meant just for the the people of Capernaum, and it isn’t meant for just the people or Israel. This news, these healings, all of it is meant for the whole world to hear, to see and to experience.

Who do you think is in need of hearing the news that God has to share? Who is it that needs to know that Jesus is there for them? What parts of our community do not know that God is on their side and by their side each and every day of their lives? Where can we go in Kingman to let people know that God isn’t kept to the confines of the walls of this church or any church, but that God is alive and active in the world and is ready for a relationship with them? Jesus fulfills that promise and we are invited to be active participants in that sharing.

The news that Jesus is for you, Jesus is for me, and Jesus is for this whole world. Jesus is all in all.

Amen.