Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
|
|
|
|
Scripture |
Luke 4:21-30 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.
|
Devotional |
Jesus’ announces that centuries of waiting for God’s blessing have ended. The people of Nazareth expected Jesus to favor his hometown with his mighty works. Surely, he would do more for them than he had done in Capernaum . When, Jesus shares that the scriptures guarantee God’s blessings for all people, not to be limited to Israel , the hometown folk become irate. At first Jesus had seemed to be promising that God’s blessings would be poured out upon them, but he gives examples where Gentiles received the blessings rather than Israel . Suddenly, the people run Jesus out of town. A prophet in our society experiences the same rejection. What happens to the prophet that tells us that the earth is grasping for breath, the poor are dying, and the middle class are encouraged to keep shopping? If, the prophet tells people that you do not have to use your gifts and talents as our consumer society expects. Would he or she be on the noon stage out of town? Our Calling to Fulfill: Wesleyan Views of the Church in Mission edited by M. Douglas Meeks, Meeks asks the question: How can the church simultaneously serve Christ and the world if it lives according to the standards of the world and does not stand apart from the world? But, on the other hand, how can the church serve Christ and the world if it does not stand in solidarity with the world God loves with God’s whole being? How to be in the world but not in it? The Wesleyan response has to do with holding together in tension inward and outward holiness, worship and mission in the world, grace given and grace lived, and preparatory waiting and prophetic act. 1 “We’ve got just enough God to give our lives a kind of spiritual tint without so much God as to interfere with our running the world as we please.” 2 Bishop describes the theology and preaching. “Because of our limp theology, our anthropology becomes too stable, and the purpose of our preaching is adjustment, confirmation rather than conversion. Preaching thus becomes another means of self-cultivation as well as a well-reasoned defense against true transformation.” 3 I believe what Willimon says about preaching can be said about much of our Bible study, Christian education, and devotionals (mine included). We use all these ways to make ourselves feel good rather than transform our lives. Bishop William Willimon invites us: Go with me to a dilapidated ex-warehouse that is today the Church of the Innerchange at the interchange of two major interstates in Alabama . There, in a ministry that ranges from Bile study to paint ball tournaments, the Interchange Church ministers to hard-living blue-collar people. I’m here on Sunday. “Before you speak, we’ll show a video clip,” the pastor told me. (I don’t approve of multimedia homiletics, believing that preaching ought to be done like Jesus did it - stand and deliver without aid of technology.) So just before I speak, a voice on the video says, “Why do you come to the Church of Innerchange ?” A young African American man looks into the camera and says, “I met Pastor Mike. I told him I had a drug problem that I hadn’t been able to shake. Pastor Mike told me, ‘That’s good. It’s a sigh that you know something’s wrong in America . Lots of people aren’t smart enough to know that God intends us for a better world. But drugs won’t get you what you want. Let me show you Jesus.’ I’ve been here ever since. One year, drug free. I couldn’t have done it without Jesus and Innerchange. A young woman, holding a small child, says, “One night my husband beat me so bad that I didn’t leave the trailer for a week. I was so ashamed of how I looked. But the baby needed milk so I put on these sunglasses and a lot of makeup and went to the store. There, at the vegetable section, this woman comes up to me, takes off my glasses, asks, ‘What happened to you, honey?’ “I lied and told her I had been in a car accident. ’A man did this, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘I know what that’s like. Let me take you somewhere where you and your baby will be safe.’ She brought me to Innerchange. This is the family I always knew God wanted me to have.” Through my own tears and inability to get up on my feet to preach, I mumbled, “So, Wesley was right!” 4 “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
1 M. Douglas Meeks, “A Home for the Homeless: Vocation, Mission , and Church in Wesleyan Perspective” in Our Calling to Fulfill: Wesleyan Views of the Church in Mission . Nashville : Kingswood Books, 2009. p. 2 |