Community Church Sermons

The Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Year C - January 28, 2000

"Love Beyond The Circle"

Luke 4:21-30

Whatever you do, DO NOT try this at your home church. Especially if this is your home church. Getting mad over a preacher’s sermon is one thing. I can see stomping your feet, or pulling out your hair by the roots. Or writing a nasty letter. Or even throwing a rock through the preacher’s window with a note that says, “Get out of town!” But grabbing your preacher by the scruff of the neck, dragging him out of church, and trying to throw him head first off a cliff…now that’s just going too far! Don’t you think? No really, …don’t you think?

Nonetheless, having lodged my objection to this kind of outrageous congregational behavior, I do want to say that I think I can understand what the people of Nazareth were thinking that Sabbath morning long ago. And I think they deserve some sympathy.

After all, the people of Nazareth – Jesus’ hometown - are waiting for Jesus to perform miracles among them, just like he did in Capernaum. He has become a local celebrity – the Tiger Woods of Nazareth. And you know how it goes. If Tiger Woods is in town, you want to see him hit some golf balls. And these folks want Jesus to hit a bucket or two of miracles.

So there they are, waiting for the miracle show to begin. But it doesn't. Instead, Jesus sort of says, "Sorry folks, no miracles today." And the crowd becomes angry. They can't understand why he would perform miracles among outsiders and not among them, his relatives and boyhood chums. He tries to explain it by reminding them of two Old Testament stories in which God provided healings for Gentile people - passing over those in Israel who had the very same needs. And the point Jesus is making is that God's love is for everyone, not just the hometown crowd. But the folks just don’t get that kind of reasoning. Throwing Jesus off the cliff makes more sense. So that’s what they try to do. Fortunately, Jesus escapes and gets away.

Now, as I read these verses, it strikes me that the people of Nazareth may be misunderstood. The impression you get is that they are the bad guys, wanting special privileges for themselves, not wanting to share with others, acting as though they are more deserving than everybody else. And trying to throw Jesus off a cliff does not help their image!

But, as I meditate upon this story, I begin to see something vaguely familiar about these people and their concerns. I begin to see myself. I begin to see many of the church people I've known over the years. I begin to see some of you.

I remember dedicating a baby once whose birth was nothing less than miraculous. And as we celebrated that morning, sprinkling water over the miracle child and joyfully welcoming him to the family of God, I happened to glance out into the congregation. My eyes caught a certain married couple, and when I saw them, my heart sank. His eyes were cast down to the floor. Her eyes were brimming with tears. And, in that instant, I remembered. Just a few weeks earlier, the three of us had stood in a cold, wind-blown cemetery, praying over the tiny casket of their little one who had died shortly after birth. We had all prayed for a miracle then, too. But their miracle never came.

I like to tell the story of the church organist in my first parish. He was a seemingly hopeless alcoholic. Those of us who loved him tried to help him as best we could. But nothing seemed to work. I think we were probably enabling him as we tried to treat him like we thought Christians should. Finally, we had no alternative but to fire him. But we continued to pray our hearts out for him. And then, one day - by some grace of God - he began to turn around. He went into detox. Started attending AA meetings. Began the process of recovery. Today, he's back playing organ at that church. And he leads AA meetings, and has helped many other friends of Bill W. begin the road to recovery. It is a wonderful answer to prayer!

And yet, I can tell you of other families I know who have been praying for years for their alcoholic spouse, or child, or parent, or friend. Only to see them slide deeper and deeper into the grip of addiction.

The newspaper reports about a plane crash in which a passenger "gets a feeling" at the last minute, and doesn't board the plane. "It's a miracle!" she exudes. "God intervened and saved me. He must need me to do something for him! I will dedicate the rest of my life doing God's work!" . Meanwhile, the widow of the man who took her seat on the plane wonders why God warned that passenger, and not her husband - who had plenty of God's work to do as the father of four little children.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

We people of faith don't like to talk about it too much. We Christians often evade thinking about it. I think because it scares us. And rattles our faith in God. But every one of us here knows that one of the realities of life that befalls both believers and unbelievers is that, for every miracle in Capernaum, there is another story of a needed miracle that never came to be in the life of some beautiful person in Nazareth.

So there they are, lined up with their crippled children, and their cancer-ridden husbands, and with the debilitating demons of their everyday lives. Can you picture them there, pressing to find a seat in the crowded synagogue? They have heard the reports about the wonders Jesus has performed in the lives of others. Surely, he will do the same for them!

But there are no miracles that day. Not one. And the people of Nazareth are so disappointed that they explode in rage and try to push Jesus off a cliff. Most of us don't go that far. We just push God out to the edges, or sometimes right out of our lives altogether.

May I ask you this morning, "Aren't you and I a little bit like the people of Nazareth?"

If you know the experience of disappointment with what seems to be God's unresponsiveness to your deepest, most desperate prayers, I want you to look and listen carefully at what Jesus did and said that day. For there is an important message here.

First, Jesus understood their disappointment. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "the old proverb that says 'Physician, heal thyself.' I know you want me to do for you what I did for the people of Capernaum." You know, sometimes in the church, we make it seem that the only people who truly belong in the inner circle of God's favor are those whose lives have been touched by some dramatic experience of God’s power. Answers to prayer. Miraculous interventions. Those who can testify to God personally directing and telling them what to do. Those who can bear witness to God's visible blessings, like making money show up in the mailbox just before the mortgage is foreclosed, or opening up the parking space along a crowded street, or saving you from a terrible disaster or illness by some divine intervention.

But Jesus knows that most of us - like the people of Nazareth - live outside that circle. And his awareness of our deep anguish over the unfairness of it all is quite remarkable. The first thing to learn about Jesus today is that he understands how difficult it is when prayers seem to go unanswered, and needed miracles do not come. And, of course, Jesus experienced the same thing in the garden of Getrhsemane.

Then, there's a second observation about Jesus. He responds to the disappointment of the people by reminding them of the inexplicability of life. His stories of the Sidonese widow being blessed by Elijah while many other widows in Israel seemed to be passed by, and about Namaan the Syrian leper who was healed by Elisha while thousands of lepers in Israel were not, serve as powerful illustrations of how unexplainable life is. Life is much larger than we think, and beyond our grasp to control it. And the mysteries of how and why and when God acts defy our ability to comprehend. Oh, that we could always make life go our way! Oh, that we could make life fair! Oh, that we could tell God what to do, and he would do it!

But we cannot. Jesus is teaching us that both life and God are a lot larger and far more mysterious than we can possibly understand. And disappointed will be the person who thinks that faith will make either life or God smaller, or more understandable, or able to be controlled.

So Jesus understands what it's like to live outside the circle. And he acknowledges that life cannot be bent to any person's need or purpose.

And then comes our third observation about Jesus. And it is not one the people of Nazareth can appreciate that day. For, even as Jesus understands them, and points out that life is hard, he nonetheless stands among them! And he says, "The Lord has sent me to proclaim the good news! God is at work bringing hope to the poor, release to the captives, new vision to those blinded by hurt, freedom for those oppressed by life. He has sent me to tell you that God loves you who dwell outside the circle, and has not abandoned you!"

More than an itinerant faith-healer who is here today and gone tomorrow, Jesus offers himself to those whose prayers are not answered, those whose miracles do not come, those who are disillusioned and disappointed and disenfranchised by life's unfairness.

He is the living sign that God has not abandoned you! He is the sign that all things will eventually work for good for those who trust God to do it.

And here, Jesus introduces us to a brand new kind of faith.

George Everett Ross explains it this way:

"I have come to understand that there are two kinds of faith. One says if, and the other says though. One says, 'IF everything goes well, if my life is prosperous, if I'm happy, if no one I love dies, if I'm successful, then I will believe in God and say my prayers and go to church and give what I can afford.' The other says though. 'THOUGH the cause of evil prosper, though I sweat in Gethsemane, though I must drink my cup at Calvary - nevertheless, precisely then, I will trust the Lord who made me. So Job cries: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him.""

Faith is trusting God, no matter what.

Stephen Ministers, as you go forth to serve, you will primarily walk among people who have been pushed outside the circle. People whose prayers have not been answered in the way they hoped. People whose personal losses and tragedies have left them disappointed in God.

I charge you to love those who live beyond the circle. I challenge you to be the living sign that God has not abandoned them, that God is still at work in the world, and that the day will come when they will see the result of what God is doing.

And members and friends of this congregation, whose lives are filled up with unanswered prayers, few real miracles, and great disappointment: I invite you to take hold of Jesus, who suffered in every way as we suffer, and who died just like we and our loved ones die. And yet, though it seemed like all was lost, God did not abandon Jesus. Instead, he was hard at work in the background of life's incomprehensible complexity, making it possible for Jesus to be raised from the dead, and lifted to life in the highest.

Jesus trusted God, no matter what.

And now, Jesus comes among us, proclaiming the same Good News. He looks at each and every one of us living on the outside of life's circle. And he says today the same word as he said of old, "Come, and follow me!"