Cliff Hurlers
Luke 4:21-30
by Jim Westmoreland
William H. Willimon(1) tells a story by Flannery O'Connor. In O'Connor's short story, "Revelation," Ruby Turpin sat smug and self-satisfied in the doctor's sterile waiting room as she evaluated one-by-one each person seated before her. Ruby judged herself to be superior, by more than a grade or two, to everyone there, especially superior to that poor, unkempt, teenaged wretch seated across from her reading some questionable psychology book. Ruby thought it sad that the girl's parents had not trained her to be polite, had not groomed her more attractively. Ruby would do that if she and Claud had a daughter. Perish the thought of having a child as scowling as this one. The girl's name? Mary Grace.
As for ugly Mary Grace, she had her eyes fixed on the book until, without warning, she fixed her steely eyes "like two drills" upon Ruby, making Ruby squirm under the directness of her stare. Ruby chattered on about the relative superiority of poor blacks over "white trash," poor whites who lived no better than Ruby and Claud's pigs.
With that, the disturbed girl hurled her book across the waiting room, cold cocking Ruby in the head. Ruby fell to the floor, with the girl on top of her, showing her teeth, hissing into her ear, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!"
Flannery O'Connor wrote, "It was the violent, shocked beginning of Ruby's grand redemption, the catalyst for her repentance and her heavenly vision. . . . "Grace changes us and change is painful."
Since the first of the year, we have looked at some of the first things in Jesus' life. We have thought about Jesus' call, his first teachings, his first miracle, and his first sermon. Today, for the first time, we will hear of the effects of his teaching on people he knows well. Sometimes, we can only hear what we want to hear. We tune the rest out, or quickly dismiss. But, sometimes, we hear what we don't want to hear. What do we do then?
Word had traveled swiftly through the little village of Nazareth. The hometown teacher who had created lots of talk and speculation wherever he went, was coming home. This was their boy. Rumor had it he was going to be the guest rabbi at worship on Sabbath night. The story about Jesus of Nazareth was that He had been doing miracles and teaching with authority. Everyone planned to be there. People that he grew up with; the friends who had admired his carpentry, his first teacher, an old rabbi who had taught him the Shemah; his brothers and mother, they were all going to be in attendance.(2)
Everything had started well when all of a sudden the worshiping crowd became a rioting mob that was taking their hometown hero up to hurl him over a cliff. What happened?
Well, when the time came, Jesus stood to read the scripture, and then he declared that the one who was to proclaim good news, the one they had been longing for, was in their midst that day. They were amazed at the clarity with which he spoke, he was so eloquent. But, then they began thinking about the rumors surrounding Jesus' birth, they began thinking about how he had disappeared that day after his bar-Mitzphah, and they began whispering, "Isn't this Joseph's son? Isn't this the boy we have known from the time he was a baby?" Implied in the question was, "How can he be the one to fulfill this promise?"
Things became very tense very fast. Now a wise preacher would have sensed the tension and backed off. Perhaps a seminary trained rabbi would have realized that the people were not ready for the message he had prepared, and saved that teaching. But Jesus was not a seminary trained rabbi, nor what might have been called a "wise" preacher. Instead, Jesus sensed the tension but refused to become tense and anxious himself. Instead of doing the prudent thing, and let the situation cool off, he raised the bar, by refusing to share their anxious moment, he made them more anxious.
"No doubt you will say, 'Do some of the things you did in Caperneum, show us your tricks.' Well let me tell you something, it won't happen. No prophet of God is ever accepted in his home town." When he said this, the people really became uneasy. Was this any way to impress the home town crowd?
Jesus then said, "It is time to open the doors to outsiders." When Elijah was in midst of the famine, who did he go to with the good news for the poor? There were widows all through Israel, but he went to a Gentile woman in Zaraphath. What about Elisha? To which downcast people did he proclaim freedom? The country was full of lepers, who had been cast out of decent society, a disease that was destroying some communities. But the only one he healed was Naaman, the leper from Syria, a military officer in the enemy army."
Jesus was inviting the people of his home town to open their eyes to the whole spectrum of God's love. The Jews of Jesus' day were not unlike us today. They had a box that they placed God in. God could only show his favor to Israel, they thought. They also thought that, regardless of what they did, that God would preserve them and make them to prosper. The only people that God would bless were the circumcised, the descendants of Abraham and those Gentiles who had adopted their methods of worship and prayer. Their box did not include widows from Zaraphath or lepers from Syria. Their box was only for people like them.
There are many ways that Christian people can close the doors to others in our day. Maybe we have determined who can receive God's favor and who can not. Maybe, we close the door to people who come from different parts of the world, people who understand communion or baptism differently than we do. Sometimes, we close the door to people of different economic classes, or to people who struggle with specific sins that we cannot understand or forgive.
How willing are we to cross barriers and lower barriers to make people who are different from us to feel welcome? What cultures are there in Owensboro that do not need the Good News of Jesus Christ? Or are we to go to all people? Are there any to care about the Hispanics in our community? The Asians? The Muslims? When we make our building available for people in the community, is there any among us who could be more involved or interested in who they are and what they do?
When churches start trying to reach other people and grow, the tendency is to look for people just like us. Hopefully, we are not excluding anyone, including people like us. But, if we only think of people like us, what happens when the people that God starts giving us to reach are different than we are? Does our openness and friendliness remain? Or does it become more distant, fearful and cool? Will we close our eyes and hearts and refuse to respond to the ministry God gives us. Will we be like Peter when he had the vision of the animals lowered on the sheet and was told to eat and he said that he did not eat any unclean animals (according to the Jewish law). Sometimes, we can think of the church as a safe house that is meant to protect us who are on the inside from those who are on the outside. And, we can become anxious when we try to turn our concern from the inside out.
On that day in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus entered the scene, and their box of "what God did and how He should do it" could not contain Jesus' message. It was not adequate. It was too small, and Jesus was exposing its narrowness. Jesus called on the people to preach the good news to all the poor and to open the eyes of blind people where ever they were found. He invited them to declare that all who are captive in any prison can find freedom, and He lifted up outsiders who were downtrodden.
This incensed the people of his home town. Their box protected them from this kind of people. There was no room in that box for Jesus and his radical ideas. In their anxious rage they grabbed him, they threw him out of town, and then they pushed and shoved him and were ready to hurl him over a cliff, when Jesus, unwilling to accept their anxiety and fear, simply walked away. The scriptures do not mention Jesus visiting Nazareth again. But, the synagogue remained a "safe house" because the "would-be" cliff hurlers had driven Jesus out of town. The irony is that they had they become "safe" from the power of God!
Barbara Brown Taylor, who is the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College, and the Adjunct Professor of Christian Spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary, a very popular and respected writer, preacher and teacher, wrote, "What we have lost . . . is a full sense of the power of God - to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hopeless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them up side the head with glory."(3)
Her imagery is vivid! . . . the power of God sneaking up on us when we are thinking about ourselves, on what we are going to eat, and smacking us on the side of the head with glory! It is kind of jarring imagery, isn't it? Maybe even shocking!
God has a vision for each of us as individuals and for us as a church. It involves us welcoming others into the kingdom. It involves being sent outward, rather than staying inside.
If I had my choices though, I think that I'd rather get God's message and glory with a shock, or "smack up side the head" as Barbara Brown put it, than to get defensive and mad and reject it and try to hurl Jesus off a cliff?
This week, after we leave this sanctuary, what will we do? Amen.
Century Christian Church, January 21, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
1. William H. Willimon is a Bishop in The United Methodist Church, currently serving in North Alabama. He is best known as a theologian, writer and former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. Story taken from Pulpit Resource, Vol. 35, No. 1, Jan - Mar, 2007, p. 20.
2. From a sermon titled "Enlarge Our Borders," author unknown.
3. Barbara Brown Taylor, "Miracle on the Beach," Home by Another Way, Boston: Cowley, 1999, p. 38.