Read the Lectionary Texts

When his sermon was over, the people of his hometown church wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff!

Not good!

Those of us in the preaching business know all about the criticism you sometimes get when you deliver a bomb of a sermon – a bad or controversial sermon. Sometimes even a good sermon that the people don’t like. There are the anonymous notes, the long emails in which people who have never preached tell you how to preach, the backhanded compliment like my colleague Carl Burke’s  famous, “That was a fine sermon with a number of fine places to stop. And you missed them all!” – or, like the woman who once said to me, “Marty, I never knew what sin was… ‘til I heard you preach.”

But few of us in the preaching profession have ever had a congregation respond to a message by trying to throw us off a cliff!

Jesus is pretty much alone on that one!

Why in the world do you think the people of his hometown church would want to do such a terrible thing to such a good guy as Jesus?

Well, Luke tells us it’s because the people of the First Community Church of Nazareth didn’t like the fact that the people in Capernaum got something from Jesus they didn’t get. Over in Matthew 4 we read that Jesus moved from his hometown of Nazareth to Capernaum and began his ministry there. We learn that Jesus went throughout the surrounding countryside preaching the good news of God’s kingdom and healing broken lives. We discover that Jesus’ fame as a healer spread throughout Galilee and people brought to him friends and family members who were diseased, suffering with pain, possessed by demons, having seizures, even paralyzed people – and Jesus healed them. Over in Capernaum it was miracle after miracle!

But here – in Nazareth, his hometown – his own people got – just a sermon.

And they were ticked off!

Have you seen the recent movie about the folk musician Bob Dylan? Growing up I loved Bob Dylan and his edgy music. His was the voice of the 60’s protest movement with songs like “The Times They Are A-Changin'” But then came an explosive moment in 1965 when Bob Dylan turned the acoustical folk world on its head by bringing out electric guitars and amplifiers. It was at the Newport Folk Festival. The audience hated it! Folk music and electric guitars were incompatible to these acousti-philes! Dylan was booed off the stage. It was reported that the legendary folksinger Pete Seeger became so enraged over Dylan’s electrification of the music that his face turned purple and he tried to tear out the electrical system!

That’s what happens sometimes when people don’t get what they want, or expect. They boo you off the stage.

Or throw you off a cliff.

And yet, what Dylan did in 1965 was to introduce a revolutionary new genre of folk-rock music that Americans eventually came to love.

What Jesus was offering the people of Nazareth was revolutionary, too. They just didn’t know it. They wanted the miraculous. They wanted the healings! But Jesus wanted to give them something else – something better.

But the congregation got mad.

They tried to throw him off the cliff.

Sometimes we live in these little “boxes” where we can’t see anything more than the box we’re in. You put a new kind of food in front of a small child, and they’ll say, “I don’t like that!” They’ve never tried it, mind you, but they don’t like it!

Inside the box we are safe and comfortable. Outside the box we are unsure and fearful.

And there is no bigger and comfortable box than the Church.

There’s a cool song about this:

(sung to tune of “I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad”)

I want a church, just like the church, that I was brought up in!

How I loved it so, good ol’ status quo, where action was a sin!

A good ol’ fashioned church with fellowship!

The Easter crowds we had would make you sick!

Oh, I want a church just like the church that I was brought up in!

I don’t understand why we don’t sing this little song in our church. Don’t you think this Tellico Village church box would be so much better if it could only be more like my church box back home!

Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s human nature to live in the little boxes of our own personal experience.

What does your “church box” look like?

Some of our church boxes have denominational brand names written all over them. If it doesn’t say “Methodist” or “Baptist” or Presbyterian” or “Whatever”, people can feel pretty uncomfortable and unsure.

Some of our church boxes are built upon doctrines and ideas that have formed our religious worldview and are difficult to break away from even after the rest of the world has passed them by. My barber friend fervently believed that if the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for him! And when the pastor of his church suggested people should use a bible translation for Bible study that they like and can understand my barber’s reaction was, “If you let people bring their own Bibles to church, the next thing you know they’ll be bringing Playboy Magazines!” Hmmm. I didn’t exactly get the logic behind that observation but he had scissors in my hair and I wasn’t about to challenge him. But do you see? The problem he had was being able to take even a little peek beyond the “church box” in which he’d been raised.

I know someone whose “church box” is full of hurt and anger because of something that happened at their last church. So now they want nothing to do with the church. The church is full of hypocrites, they say. I don’t know what it was that happened, but it has left a terrible taste in the mouth of this person and whenever they think of church all that bad feeling comes up. How sad that they live in that box, and can’t see beyond it.

Someone else lives in the “church box” where there is no forgiveness. If you commit a sin, you’re done – out of the game. Their’s is the experience of being judged, condemned and rejected. They live with constant guilt in that little box, and cannot break free.

Many people in our day live in the box of, “Church, faith and religion are all about me.” We want a faith that makes us feel good, gives us easy answers, protects us from disasters, answers our prayers, helps us control life, and gives us what we want and think we need.

And that brings us back to the church people of Nazareth.

In their little “church box”, they wanted Jesus to do stuff for them – heal them, take care of them, perform miracles for them, answer their prayers just like he had done for the people over in Capernaum. But Jesus had something else in mind for these Nazarenes, something far more important and wonderful. But they couldn’t see it because they were stuck inside that dark little box of “it’s all about me.”

The primary tension in the life of faith it seems to me is the tension between receiving and giving – being blessed, and becoming a blessing.

In Nazareth, the people wanted to BE healed.

But Jesus was calling them to BECOME healers.

Here’s the gist of the sermon Jesus preached that day:

“God has anointed me to help poor people, to care for prisoners, to help disabled people find their way, to fight for freedom for those who are oppressed, and to tell everyone everywhere that God loves them, forgives their sins, and welcomes them home.”

And then Jesus said, “Today, this scripture is made real in your hearing, in your lives, in your church right here in Nazareth.”

“This is our job together, fellow Nazarenes!

Let’s get going!”

It was God’s will that the folks in Nazareth move from being receivers to becoming givers, from seeking their own healing to becoming healers. In other words, Jesus was inviting them to be a church dedicated to serving others rather than catering to themselves.

But they were stuck in this box of “it’s all about me.”

In E.M. Forster’s wonderful short story, “The Other Side of the Hedge” a young man has been running along the same hot and dusty road nearly every day for the past 25 years. The road is very narrow and bordered on either side by a brown crackling hedge. It is thick and impenetrable, blocking out any sight or sound of what lies on the other side.

But, one day, the man stops and sits down to catch his breath. Suddenly, a cool puff of fresh air touches his cheek. It seems to come from a place in the hedge where the branches have thinned out. He moves closer to the hedge, and sensing an opening, the young man pushes through the branches and thorns. And then, in a miraculous moment, the young man emerges into a new world. He sees a land of exquisite beauty with blue sky, brilliant sunshine and cool waters. The earth rises grandly into the hills, and beech trees line the meadows, and everywhere there are flowers! The air is filled with songbirds, and the young man who, for twenty-five years, has run the same dreary path nearly every day, discovers a brand new world – on the other side of the hedge.

What do you suppose lies on the other side of the hedge – or maybe better said, “outside the box” – of your faith, or of our church?

What do you suppose God has in mind for us that we haven’t seen yet?

Do you think God has called us together just to bless those of us who have already been blessed beyond measure? Or might it be that God has called us together and made us who and what we are to bless those around us who need blessing?

Have we been created simply to meet the needs of those of us who already have more than we need? Or has God made us to meet the needs of those who ARE in need?

Has our church been brought to life for those of us who already have a church home, or have we been assembled to welcome those who haven’t yet found a loving Christian family?

Are we here to receive? Or are we here to give?

The people of Nazareth – locked into their little church box – came down on one side of that question.

What about you?