Luke 4:21-30

Well here we are, just having listened to one of the wackiest stories in the whole Bible. Jesus, after establishing a fine reputation throughout the province of Galilee, comes home to the city of Nazareth where he was raised. He gets a chance to preach in his hometown synagogue. His family is there. His friends are there. Everyone is there.

He reads from the prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Then Jesus rolls up the scroll and sits down to teach.

And the next thing you know, the crowd seizes him, carries him out the doors, brings him to the edge of town, and tries to throw him headfirst off a cliff!

Now, its not often that a congregation attempts to murder its preacher. Usually, a nasty but subtle comment as we go out the door is sufficient. Like the woman who came through the line once and said to me, "Reverend Singley, I never knew what sin was… till I heard you preach." Her comment was so backhanded that, for weeks, I thought it was a compliment.

Oh sure, people who take you to task for a word spoken - or misspoken, people who fall asleep and snore during the sermon, people who never come back to church again - these are the normative hazards of preaching.

But attempted murder? That's rather…well, extreme, don't you think?

Although I do remember one occasion where that might have been a viable option. A few years ago, there was a person who preached at one of our worship services at the national Community Church Conference. She started out with a pretty good joke - always a good thing to do to loosen up the crowd - about what do you get if you combine a Jehovah's Witness and a Unitarian? Someone who goes door to door with absolutely nothing to say!

But from there, it went straight downhill. Fast. She went on and on and on and on. Like the Energizer bunny. If there was any substance to what she was saying, it was lost on the audience when the fifteen-minute sermon turned to thirty, and then to fifty, and then to an hour and fifteen minutes. She just kept going, and going, and going…

Well just about the hour and thirty minute mark, the person next to me - an elderly, very gentle, very saintly Christian woman - poked me in the ribs, leaned over and whispered, "My God, I think we're going to have to kill her!"

Have you ever felt that way?

About me?

Well, it wasn't that Jesus' sermon was too long, because as we noted last week, this is probably the shortest sermon in history. "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." That's it! That's the whole homily!

So it must have been something else that made the congregation want to kill the preacher.

In verses 23 through 28 of Luke's fourth chapter, we are given some clues as to the reasons behind this attempted murder of Jesus. Luke reveals some snippets of his conversation with the synagogue crowd, and they point us toward the problem.

There's more involved in this conversation, of course, but just these two comments reveal the source of tension between Jesus and the people of Nazareth.

It’s the them and us syndrome.

In his ministry in Capernaum, Jesus performed some amazing miracles. This is where the man with the withered hand was healed…where the four friends brought the crippled man and lowered him through the roof so Jesus could touch him and send him home carrying his pallet. This is where the 5,000 were fed with just a few loaves of bread.

But here, in Nazareth, his hometown, there is…nothing. Mark's version of the story tells us that Jesus performed few mighty works there.

I think the people of Nazareth must have been feeling like I used to feel when I'd ask my son Peter to mow the lawn and he'd resist and refuse to do it. And then I'd see him over at a neighbor's house mowing their lawn! Likewise, my children always resented having to shovel snow at their own house, but by golly, if anyone else needed snow shoveled, they'd be right there!

The them and us syndrome.

And then Jesus goes and exacerbates the problem. He points out how God through history has defied this human sentiment to favor us over them.

Don't you remember the old story of Elijah who went on God's behalf and relieved the suffering of a Sidonese widow during the great drought, Jesus asks? Well, weren't there widows in Israel who were suffering at the same time? But God didn't send Elijah to the widows in Israel, but rather to that one widow in Sidon.

And Luke tells us when Jesus had finished with these comparisons, the crowd was filled with rage.

Now you and I may not experience it as rage. But there is deep within each of us an almost cancerous kind of sickness of the same sort suffered by the people of Nazareth. And its something that Jesus wants to reveal to us so that we can be healed of it, and grow and experience God's power. Remember that Mark says that Jesus did not do many mighty works in Nazareth. And Mark goes on to explain that the reason is because of their unbelief.

Well, what was it that they did not believe?

They believed in God. These were devout Jews, after all. They believed enough in Jesus to invite him to preach and to expect miracles from him. They were enchanted by the hometown hero.

What then did they not believe?

Why, they did not believe in the full breadth of God's love!

Do you?

The current state of affairs in our nation's capitol has brought up memories of the Watergate scandal. You may remember that one of the villains of that story was Charles Colson whose misdeeds landed him in federal prison for a considerable period of time. I'm not sure if it was before he went to jail, while he was there, or after he was released that Colson experienced a conversion and gave his life to Christ. Since that time, he has been involved in a prison ministry of some notable success.

But many people are still skeptical. How many times do we hear of people who do rotten things going off to jail only to find God and claiming they've changed? Even after all these years of Colson's important ministry, there are still people who doubt that its for real.

Because they do not really believe in the far reaching inclusiveness of God's love, and God's adamant desire to reach those who everyone else has given up on.

It is reported that Karla Faye Tucker who is on death row and will be executed on Tuesday has been touched by God's love and has given her life to Christ.

Do you believe it?

You see, there is some insidious power at work within us that draws a distinction between good people and bad people, worthy people and unworthy people, our kind of people and those people over there!

But God knows no such distinction. God's love stretches as far as the eye can see and even beyond! God's love seeks out not the found, but the lost!

One of the most shocking moments in my own ministry came a number of years ago when a local funeral director called asking me to conduct a funeral that would be held at the deceased young man's home on Friday night. The funeral director told me he had called all the ministers he usually used, but none of them were willing. I was new in town and at the bottom of the list. He said he was desperate. I suggested that my colleagues probably didn't want to get tied up doing a funeral in someone's home on a Friday night. That is a rather unusual setting and an inconvenient time.

"No, its not that," he said. "Its AIDS. The young man died of AIDS. None of your clergy colleagues want to touch it. He didn't belong to any of their churches. There's just the man he was living with, and his parents who've flown in from Chicago. They don't know anyone here. I'll understand if you don't feel you can do it."

Isn't it amazing how even we who preach the Gospel sometimes don't truly believe in the love of God, especially when it comes to sharing it freely with THEM - the ones who don't live like we do, believe like we do, think like we do, act like we do.

And yet, on that Friday night long ago, I sensed the presence and power of God's love in a way I'd never experienced before. If no one else in the whole world could love the distraught companion, if no one else could bring grace to these poor parents all alone in a strange city and bearing the unfair burden of the fact their son had died of AIDS….God could.

And did.

Do you believe in the expansive, inclusive, far-reaching love of God?

You see Jesus is teaching us in these stories from the Gospel that faith begins not when we believe God loves us, but when we come to believe that God loves THEM!

The poor. The captives. The blind. The oppressed.

And its really only when we learn how much God loves them, that we can even begin to discover how much God loves us.

Dear friends, come to the table today and believe. Here is his body broken for the poor, the hungry, the needy, the lost. Here is his blood shed to forgive the worst of sinners.

Eat this bread. Drink this wine.

And celebrate God's love for them…and us!