Christ the Outcast

The New Revised Standard Version The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 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?” 23 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.’ ” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 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; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 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. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

We spent time with this text last week, remember? Jesus is visiting his hometown synagogue and speaks a prophetic, but disruptive word, to the people. And again we hear the story — he digs in a bit more, telling of how Israel was without rain during the time of Elijah and the outsiders were taken care of while the many widows of Israel went without.

We hear how frustrated the crowd grew.

We hear how they try to run him out of town and off a cliff. Nice reception, eh?

And instead of moving past this text quickly this week, I want us to pause and ask a different question. How does Jesus do this? How does he subject himself to this, how does he handle disturbing the comforted here at the synagogue? Does he have some kind of impenetrably thick skin, where his critics and would-be attackers don’t get to him? How can he speak so boldly with clearly all that it costs him to do so? We know where this is all headed. We know that in the end, the powers of the world which are disrupted by the truth he speaks will put him to death. We know this costs him and those who love him. So how does he do it?

Today, I want to turn to the Psalm we heard read moments ago to try to unpack the how of all of this. So hold this story in your mind and let’s return to Psalm 71 once again.

Remember, the Psalms are the prayerbook of the people of God. They are filled with expressions of praise and joy, as well as angst and despair. They are the Scriptures’ emotional center, the place where we hear the rawness of human emotion. Remember, as well, that they are written by people who didn’t have it all together. Many of the Psalms are written by King David. David was a righteous king, a man after God’s own heart, they say. But he was also a liar, a murder, and an adulterer. He was messy, an artist, an outdoorsman, a warrior and a musician. He was complicated. And from the depths of his and other leaders of worship in Israel’s emotional center, we get the Psalms.

Let’s hear Psalm 71 again, this time in its entirety:

The New Revised Standard Version Psalm 71

Psalm 71

Prayer for Lifelong Protection and Help

1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge;

let me never be put to shame.

2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;

incline your ear to me and save me.

3 Be to me a rock of refuge,

a strong fortress, to save me,

for you are my rock and my fortress.

4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,

from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.

5 For you, O Lord, are my hope,

my trust, O LORD, from my youth.

6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth;

it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.

My praise is continually of you.

7 I have been like a portent to many,

but you are my strong refuge.

8 My mouth is filled with your praise,

and with your glory all day long.

9 Do not cast me off in the time of old age;

do not forsake me when my strength is spent.

10 For my enemies speak concerning me,

and those who watch for my life consult together.

11 They say, “Pursue and seize that person

whom God has forsaken,

for there is no one to deliver.”

12 O God, do not be far from me;

O my God, make haste to help me!

13 Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed;

let those who seek to hurt me

be covered with scorn and disgrace.

14 But I will hope continually,

and will praise you yet more and more.

15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,

of your deeds of salvation all day long,

though their number is past my knowledge.

16 I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD,

I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.

17 O God, from my youth you have taught me,

and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

18 So even to old age and gray hairs,

O God, do not forsake me,

until I proclaim your might

to all the generations to come.

Your power 19 and your righteousness, O God,

reach the high heavens.

You who have done great things,

O God, who is like you?

20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities

will revive me again;

from the depths of the earth

you will bring me up again.

21 You will increase my honor,

and comfort me once again.

22 I will also praise you with the harp

for your faithfulness, O my God;

I will sing praises to you with the lyre,

O Holy One of Israel.

23 My lips will shout for joy

when I sing praises to you;

my soul also, which you have rescued.

24 All day long my tongue will talk of your righteous help,

for those who tried to do me harm

have been put to shame, and disgraced.

Do you hear the emotion here? Do you sense the heart that is behind these words?

Today, I want to remind us of the work of spiritual formation and devotion in hopes of answering the question — How does Jesus do what he does in the synagogue?

Psalm 71 would have been a part of Jesus’ devotional life. Trained up in the way of Judaism, Jesus would have been trained in reading and praying from the Psalms; very familiar the law and histories of the first five books, the Hebrew Torah; and influenced by the Hebrew prophets, as we hear from the previous reading from Luke where Jesus takes up the scroll of Isaiah.

Sometimes, I think we forget this reality. Jesus didn’t read Paul or Peter or John. His formation didn’t come from studying Augustine or Acquinas, his lens of culture wasn’t shaped by Niehbur or Barth.

I remember when my eyes were opened to this truth back in college. My small group read Phillip Yancey’s book The Bible Jesus Read. Yancey walks readers through the structure of the Hebrew Scriptures and illuminates how they would have impacted the life and ministry of Jesus.

Specifically, the Hebrew Psalms, the Psalter, would have been a key part of the devotional and spiritual formation of religious Jews.

I think I’ve shown some of you this, but this is a Psalter. It is a book of just the 150 Psalms of the Hebrew Bible, the same Psalms you find in the middle of the Scriptures you find here in the pews. The Psalter, or the book of Psalms, can be prayed through as a devotional text, a centering, emotional, real accounting of what it means to know God and be God’s people amidst struggle, amidst joy, and in the face of confronting evil and the powers of the world.

Ok, why all of this back story?

Well, if we come back to this question of “how did Jesus stand up and say these things?” we can begin to unearth an answer by remembering what formed him.

I’ll put it another way. When we see the anguish and rawness and hope and emotion of the Psalms, we realize that our own experiences are not so different from Jesus’. He knew the realities of human emotion. And he was able to lean on the Psalms as a steady point, a formational device, prayers that spoke to his and our condition.

The New Revised Standard Version Prayer for Lifelong Protection and Help

1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge;

let me never be put to shame.

2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;

incline your ear to me and save me.

When you speak up, you expose yourself to critique, anger, and even violence. Where is our center, where is our refuge, where is our stillpoint?

Going on:

The New Revised Standard Version Prayer for Lifelong Protection and Help

3 Be to me a rock of refuge,

a strong fortress, to save me,

for you are my rock and my fortress.

I love this piece, from verse 6:

The New Revised Standard Version Prayer for Lifelong Protection and Help

6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth;

it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.

My praise is continually of you.

Let’s jump down to vs. 12-16 then:

The New Revised Standard Version Prayer for Lifelong Protection and Help

12 O God, do not be far from me;

O my God, make haste to help me!

13 Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed;

let those who seek to hurt me

be covered with scorn and disgrace.

14 But I will hope continually,

and will praise you yet more and more.

15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,

of your deeds of salvation all day long,

though their number is past my knowledge.

16 I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD,

I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.

In the face of violence and criticism, Jesus’ stillness and resolve does not come from some sort of self-aggrandizement or assurance in his “rightness.” No! It comes from God, the steady refuge and help in times of trial. God has been with Jesus and will be with Jesus. Even in the places where we know we have sinned or departed from God, we also hear in this passage how God’s faithfulness is with us from our birth and our returning to God means returning to refuge and safety. God is for us and has always been for us.

So again, I ask, how does Jesus do what he does?

Jesus has developed an inner stability that is not his own, but is placed in the loving hands of God.

Where do you call home? What makes it feel that way?

At my grandmother’s memorial service a couple weeks back, I was struck by something my Uncle Dave shared. He stood up and with great vulnerability and sweetness, shared that he and his brothers had been army brats growing up. They had traveled so much that the definition of “home” was hard to pin down. But what he knew was that where his mother was, there was home. His mother, my grandmother, was the steady, still place of home, a refuge.

So sweet, so powerful.

And do we see how this is for us? If we are to step out and speak up and stand with in times of trial, or if we are to speak truth to power, or if we are to be alongside the oppressed and the hurting — we need to know where our strength and our home is.

If I look back on all that we have faced together in these last couple of years, I have to reflect upon my own sense of home. The times when I have felt the most untethered, the most full of despair, have been the times when I have forgotten my home. I’ve forgotten who I belong to and where my help comes from.

On the flipside, the times of greatest assurance amidst all the struggle have come from when I can remember that God is my refuge and my strength, my everpresent help in struggle.

When that clicks back into place, all we want to do is smile and sing praises, right? When we remember who we belong to and where our home is, then we can do the hard things.

Christ is an outcast in this text. He’s kicked out by his own people.

And yet, through this, he can sustain being an outcast because he know where his heart belongs. He can say difficult things as the hometown boy and get himself into trouble. Because he has found this inner reserve, this place of quiet and stillness in the emotional center of his devotion to God.

Today, as we reflect on where we have been and where we are going, I want to invite us to root down in these Scriptures as a stillpoint, a place of refuge and steady footing.

We will face many more challenges together in the days to come. We will be tested. We will want to step back from proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor and instead, stay silent. But by remembering, by returning and recommitting to being held by these loving arms of refuge, we can find our strength to carry on.

Want to think about a simple way to get at this: Read a Psalm every day. One a day. It’ll take you about 3 months to get through the whole Psalter. And in it, you’ll hear of the immense feelings and struggles of humanity and you’ll remember that God knows your struggles and humanity as well.

I’ll close with Psalm 71:19-21

Psalm 71:19–21 (NRSV)

Your power 19 and your righteousness, O God,

reach the high heavens.

You who have done great things,

O God, who is like you?

20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities

will revive me again;

from the depths of the earth

you will bring me up again.

21 You will increase my honor,

and comfort me once again.

Amen.