Not Your Hometown Boy

Last week the Gospel reading ended with a cliff hanger.

            After the word gets out about him and his preaching and teaching,

            Jesus comes to his home town.

Everyone gathers at the synagogue to see for themselves what he has to say.

 

He reads Isaiah 61 about the acceptable year of the Lord, 

and then declares, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Now this could be taken in two different ways:

            as the Messiah who says, “I’m going to restore the whole nation.”

                        The lands would be returned and the Romans would be ousted,

                        just what the people of Nazareth would want.

OR what Jesus is, 

            that is, the achievement of Isaiah’s promises in the person of Jesus literally.

 

Which way to understand this has to do with one’s relationship with Jesus.

You won’t be available for getting this 

            until you recognize your condition in relationship to Jesus.

 

You need to see your own need in order to be helped.

            And to receive help you must give up – 

give up assumptions about your own adequacy, 

and your own ability to take care of yourself, to make yourself holy.

 

So in these comments that Jesus then makes to the people of Nazareth,

                        in his disassociation from their claim on him,

                        and in his identification with the fulfillment of the prophet’s words,

            it is as though to say to them 

that they have no understanding of who he is,

that they have no spiritual awareness.

 

This was quite provoking.

 

Look carefully at what comes next in the passage.

His fellow townspeople are amazed 

at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

Here’s the hometown boy gone away and now come back, 

            he’s preached a fine sermon,

            and with words that link him to the Messiah, 

the Restorer of the nation.

“Is not this Joseph’s son?”  

They can lay a claim to him as their native son.

Nazareth will become famous as the hometown of the Messiah.

            We’re somebody!  

            We’ve got status; we’ve produced the Messiah.

And so we can count on some preferential treatment in the glorious future.  Right?

 

Hence the proverb that Jesus quotes, “Physician, heal yourself,” 

meaning, “take care of your own.”

This interpretation is born out 

in the examples from the stories about Elijah and Elisha

that Jesus likewise will provide powerful works and healing 

NOT for the hometown folks 

but for foreigners, those outside the covenant.

He shows that the prophet is no longer of that native place,

                        he no longer belongs to just that place,

            and indeed, is then not accepted in his hometown.

Nazareth no longer can have an exclusive claim on him.

 

Isaiah 61 and the acceptable year of the Lord – 

Jesus states, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

And when they take pride in their native son, 

            he then turns on them and tells them that they don’t get it, 

calling into question their whole understanding of the scriptures and the prophets.

 

No wonder they wanted to do him in.

 

Do you see how radical Jesus can be?

 

Jesus working from scripture,

            places his actions and teachings in the context of Isaiah 61.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

He is saying that his basis for his teaching and actions 

is the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.

 

He is demonstrating a radical shift in history

            in terms of the understanding of who the Messiah would be.

We’re not talking son of Joseph of King David’s line anymore.

            Joseph, after all, was not his biological father.

What is the genealogy of Jesus?  This:  “In the beginning was the Word…”

 

He is saying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand, folks,

            here, right here and now, in me.”

The fullness of the Kingdom is fully actual and present in Jesus,

            whether we realize it or not.

 

The people of Nazareth did not.

 

And they were so provoked by the young upstart

            that they wanted to shove him off the cliff.

And somehow the Spirit-driven Jesus simply 

                        walks through their midst and out of Nazareth.

 

In Luke’s Gospel each chapter is intricately interwoven.

To understand more fully what one passage offers,

            we would do well to look at what is going on 

just before and just after the passage.

 

For instance, just look at how many references there are 

to the Spirit in the chapter.

Vs. 1  “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan 

                        (where he had just been baptized)

            and was led by the Spirit for 40 days in the wilderness…”

 

And after the testing by the devil, vs. 14,

            Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.

 

So it seems rather clear then, when he reads from Isaiah 61,

            “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,”

                                    he is speaking the obvious.

 

What comes next in the chapter after the un-pleasantries in Nazareth 

            is Jesus preaching in Capernaum.

And there the people are much more deeply affected by his teaching.

There they are utterly astounded, overwhelmed, struck out of their minds.

 

And the unclean spirits are stirred up just by his presence among them.

They recognize him, and know that they must give way, must leave.

They, these spiritual concentrations of energy, or whatever they are,

            recognize the spiritual potency of Jesus for what it is,

                        in a way that the mind of the flesh can miss so easily,

                                                focused as it is 

on getting things all figured out intellectually, rationally, 

according to our mental constructs of how things are supposed to be.

 

Now, note this:

When Jesus read that passage from Isaiah 61, and then applied it to himself,

            this was not an exclusive statement about himself alone.

 

Jesus represents the truth of the New Creation,

            the first fruits of the resurrection [1 Cor. 15:23]

            in whom all are made alive.

 

So this was not an exclusive statement about himself alone.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.

 

Are you aware of that?

 

Do you see Isaiah 61 fulfilled in your life?

            the poor receiving the good news, 

the blind seeing, 

the captives set free, 

the oppressed released from suffering?

No?

            Are we then like those of Nazareth?                        Heaven forbid!

 

How can we come to greater awareness,

greater recognition, greater realization 

of who Jesus is, 

and how we are in him, 

and that how he is, we are to be also?

 

Luke added something to the Isaiah 61 text: recovery of sight to the blind.

            We are blind, or if not blind, with limited vision.

Our attention is on one thing about Jesus,

            and so we miss something outside of that specific field of vision.

We need to have our field of vision expanded

                        in order to see what we are missing.

 

Want a good way to expand the field of vision?  Try this:

            Read 1 Corinthians 13, today’s epistle lesson.  It’s about love.

But it is not romantic love or familial love, but agaph love,

            that uniting, unitive love that describes the relationship within the Trinity,

            the love that flowed out from the Trinity as Creation,

            the love that unites us with God, 

            the kind of love that can heal us and the world.

Read this chapter over and over as a form of self-examination,

                        and your field of vision will expand.

            

We can ask ourselves if we have gotten too comfortable with Jesus,

            if we think we have him all figured out,

            if we are secure in assumptions about how he acts, 

                                    what he says, what it all means.

 

Then we can see beyond the familiar

            and behold in Jesus the Glory of God, the Light of the World, 

                        the Very Revelation of God

                                                right here in our midst. 

Power Source

 Have you ever had the experience that I have had

            of vacuuming the rug 

            moving around the furniture

            getting up all the dog hair

when suddenly the vacuum cleaner quits and there you are, 

                        standing in silence with a limp cord dangling behind you.

And you realize that you had reached the limits of that cord

            and had pulled it out of the wall socket.

 

Being connected to the power source is rather essential.

            But stretching the limits of that connection 

                        will work us loose from the Source.

You have stay connected, be a part of the power system,

            whether you are vacuuming or trying to live out your faith.

 

In this never-ending pandemic and under the current circumstances

            it may seem that the cord connecting us to the power source

                        is either close to pulling loose or has become disconnected.

 

We are in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

            This isn’t observed as much now as it has been in past decades.

            It’s the week between January 18, the Confession of St. Peter

                        and January 25, the Conversion of St. Paul.

Its origins are with the Franciscans

            and its purpose is aimed at bridging the differences between denominations,

            celebrating what we have in common            

            and appreciating the various perspectives in our shared faith in Jesus.

 

From the I Corinthians reading for today

which continues where we left off last week, we hear these words:

For just as the body is one and has many members, 

and all the members of the body, though many, are one body,

so it is with Christ

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body

--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—

and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 

 

Each of the members of the body is needed.

The diversity among the members is needed.

A body cannot be a true body if it were all one big eye or ear or nose.

 

The image of the Body of Christ – millions of organs and body parts

            many members, differing gifts and ministries, all are needed

Lived out especially in small congregations where we REALLY know

            that we need each other, each and everyone of us.

 

All are needed, 

and we are specifically told 

that we cannot disregard anyone in the Community of the Body of Christ.

The weaker, in fact, are indispensable.

And what is considered to be an inferior part at one time,

            may be most important in our attention at another time,

if that body part isn’t functioning properly.

To give a perfectly gross example, have you ever been constipated?

 

Note that the epistle reading says:

“God has so arranged the body, 

            giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 

            that there may be no dissension within the body, 

            but the members may have the same care for one another.”

 

The life of faith for us individually and as congregations

            is too often fragmented, half-hearted and bland.

 

This seems to be a clear indication 

            that what St. Paul was describing in that 12^th chapter of 1 Corinthians

            is not just a theoretical analogy 

for modeling how relationships within the institutional church should be,

            but it is a very apt insight into an organic reality,

                                    the organic reality of Christ’s Body as creation.

 

So in the Body of Christ, the faith community, 

            all are needed, important, valued and indispensable.

And when one of us suffers,

            that impacts us all and we all suffer.

When one of us is honored,

            that reflects honor upon us all, a joy for all to share.

 

The Meyers-Briggs Personality Inventory is a good example on the practical level

            of the diversity of human personalities and ways of perception.

This extensive research, and the inventory tool it provides, have shown us 

            that any group working together has the greatest satisfaction 

with the outcome of their work 

if the group is diverse in personality types.

If all are the same Meyers-Briggs type, 

then important aspects of their common task are overlooked 

and the resulting work is likely to have weak points.

Such groups working together may find it easy to get their task completed 

            but  often get blind-sided when they present it to others, 

taken by surprise by what they had missed.

Homogeneity weakens a group.            We all need one another.

 

Roland Allen, an Anglican priest who lived from 1868 to 1947, 

            was a missionary in China and Africa.

One of his primary statements gained from his long experience is this:

“Within any gathered community of faith there are members present who,             with the gift and empowerment of the Holy Spirit, 

can provide the needed ministries for the life and work of that community.”

In other words, with the Holy Spirit at work in us, we have all we ned.

 

The question then is how to live in unity in the Body of Christ – 

            it’s not something we seem to be able to do very well.

 

Have you noticed that at the beginning of this pandemic 

            we were more willing to observe a stay at home order and to wear a mask.

The urge to help in times of disaster indicates 

            this basic, natural and fundamental connection among humans as one body.

It is at times like this that we KNOW in our bones

            that we’re all in this together.

 

Now this realization may not last very long

            before once again people become competitive, 

            or start pointing fingers at each other 

                        blaming, accusing, judging, and all the many ways

                                    in which we divide up the Body of Christ

                        or rend asunder our organic unity in the realm of God’s creation.

 

But one thing that I would hope that people would notice

            in all that we have been through in the last two years,

one thing to draw our attention to is our own extremely fragile condition.

 

And so the Body of Christ, the community of all those for whom Christ died,

            is an organic whole.

 

So then the  question - how to live in unity in the Body of Christ – 

consider that we could just trust the Spirit for how that gets worked out in us.

            If we could just stay connected to Jesus 

            and trust that he will lead us into all truth on the matter,

                        he being the Truth himself.

 

Jesus is the Power Source. 

            

In the Gospel for today Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit,”

            comes fresh from his desert retreat after his baptism

            and comes to Galilee, to Nazareth,

                        where he goes to the synagogue  and reads from Isaiah 61.

He proclaims the Year of Jubilee 

            proclaiming liberty

                        the time to have family lands, forfeited due to debt, returned

                        the time to free all slaves, 

those who have sold themselves into slavery 

in order to meet debt obligations,

                        the time of forgiving debts.

Jesus,

his very presence 

as well as his words, and deeds that match his words, 

            brings good news that the listening heart responds to with a leap of joy.

He brings good news to those who recognize their need and poverty of spirit.

 

His very presence releases the captives, 

            those bound in all sorts of ways,

            captive in relationships, 

            captive within their own ways of being bound up inside,

finding liberation.

He brings recovery of sight to the blind,

            to all whose vision and perspective is clouded 

                        and obscured by all the misconceptions, ignorance, 

            and false assumptions,

clinging desperately to illusions.

Jesus sets free the oppressed,

            all the ways in which we perceive ourselves as victims,

            no longer caught in the victim roll,

            but now released for action

in the year of the Lord’s favor,

                        the time of grace that God would have us enjoy.

 

Jesus, the Light of the world, 

            the Word in the beginning with God,

            the Word who is God, creating by a Word,

the Source of all life,

the Power Source for our life together in his Body.

 

Check your connection.  Stay plugged in.

Listen to Mary

 Let me tell you a story – a true story.

This happened 50 some years ago when I was a college student.

            In the Roman Catholic Church the Second Vatican Council had just occurred.

I heard about it through the campus ministry gatherings

                        from a Catholic campus minister.

Vatican II, called by Pope John XXIII, was a tremendous breakthrough

                        for the Catholic Church.

One of the biggest outcomes was the switch from the Latin Mass 

                                    to Mass in the language of the people.

At that time I happened to hear a guest speaker relate his experience of Vatican II,

            and he said something that I have never been able to get out of my mind.

 

His name was David du Plessis, a Pentecostal minister from South Africa.

He was a Pentecostal "observer" at the World Council of Churches in 1954 and 1961, 

       and along with other denominational representatives was invited 

 to serve as a Pentecostal observer at the Second Vatican Council.

                        You might expect him to be quite a misfit in that setting!

 

He shared about a conversation he had in a private audience with the Pope.

In this meeting he shared with the Pope 

            that even though their faiths differed a little, 

            they did have one thing in common.

He said, “We both believe in doing whatever Mary tells us to do.”

            He was referring to John, chapter 2, of course, 

                        to the words that Mary spoke

                        that inaugurated Jesus’ public ministry in his first act 

                        which was, of all things, turning water into wine.

 

She said to the servants, “Do whatever Jesus tells you to do.”

The Pope and the Pentecostal preacher were in total agreement theologically             on this point:  Heed Mary’s words; do what Jesus tells you to do.

 

In John’s Gospel we see the first sign of Jesus, 

of the Kingdom of God at hand, 

in a story in which the setting is a wedding.

 

But the wedding is in the background, an underlying, subliminal message,

            in which something else very profound is being expressed.

 

The imagery of marriage comes up frequently in the Hebrew scriptures

                        in the Prophets especially,

            for speaking about the relationship between God and God’s people.

 

In today’s reading from Isaiah 62              

God’s love for the people of Jerusalem,

            for those called into Covenant relationship with God, 

            is described in the language of a bride and a bridegroom:

 

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord…

You shall no more be termed Forsaken…

but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…

for the Lord delights in you…

…as a young man marries a young woman…

…as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,

so shall your God rejoice over you.”

 

This is a very intimate way to describe relationship with God,

            so loving, and with the idea of becoming one flesh.

This passage is not just for the people of Jerusalem, 

but for all called into covenant relationship, 

all brought into adoption as sons and daughters of God.

 

The wedding imagery is the most beautiful and intimate of ways

                        for expressing God’s love for us.

 

Back to the main point.

In John’s Gospel there is a series of “signs,” seven of them. 

Each are signs of the Kingdom of God at hand, 

each of them a story describing 

what the spiritual practice of salvation is about,

and in this story, the setting is a wedding and the sign is turning water into wine.

 

Isn’t it a little odd that this first sign of Jesus’ ministry

            is not his preaching and teaching, 

such as in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel 

with the Sermon on the Mount.

            It is not healing offered to all sorts and conditions of suffering,

but it is an occurrence “behind the scene,” so to speak,

            in the kitchen, 

and only the servants know what has happened.

 

The steward in the wedding party knows nothing 

about where the wine came from, 

and doesn’t know of any connection between Jesus and the wine.

 

He just knows quality when he tastes it, and tells the bridegroom,

            “Hey!  This is good wine!  Better than we had before!”

 

But first let’s look at what is going on between Jesus and his mother.

 

Did you ever wonder about what may seem like a harsh remark?

            “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”

Who is Jesus talking to?  His mother!  Is that how you talk to your mother?

 

Or you might ask, why is Mary telling Jesus about the wine running out?

 

What does Mary know about Jesus that the others don’t?

What are her expectations of Jesus?

 

She knows first hand, from the time in the womb, 

            that the One she could call her son is also her Lord.

 

She expresses faith in her Lord

            acting on her experience of him,

            calling upon his compassionate and generous heart 

in the midst of this very human situation 

of impending social catastrophe.

 

And Jesus responds, 

not by acknowledging the family relationship between them,

but with a response that is characteristic

            of a Teacher or Rabbi testing a disciple.

 

Mary, the mother of our Lord, we could say, was quite possibly

                        his first disciple.

            She believed before anyone else.

 

Mary passes the discipleship test.

She continues expressing explicit trust,

            and she actively engages in drawing others into the same trust.

 

What servant in such a situation would dare take water to the head of the feast, 

passing it off as wine?

But they comply, and so they are the ones who then know 

            the incredible transformation that has occurred,

            the act of creation of the Spirit hovering over the water 

in those 6 stone jars.

 

If I could be present in this story, where would I picture myself?

 

How about this: 

            Identify with the stone jars holding the water.

The water becomes wine, not our action.

            The fermentation process occurs.

The bubbles arise – Living Water/Life/Spirit/Breath

The stone jars are not responsible for the change.

Then the water-become-wine is poured out,

            and taken away for others to drink

                        and to exclaim in their discovery,

            “This is good wine!  Better than we had before!”

I would say that this is a good analogy 

            of what real evangelism could accomplish.

 

The Epistle reading for today from 1 Corinthians 12

            lists a whole variety of gifts of the Holy Spirit 

                        that, like water turned into wine, work in the disciples,

            their own abilities transformed and expanded spiritually,

                        equipping them for a ministries poured out to others

                                    who receiving them and know whom they came from,

                        recognize what is good and life giving

                        and are themselves brought closer to the Bridegroom of our souls.

 

Water into wine.                        The first sign.

 

Later at another feast,

            Jesus would take wine and pass it to his disciples

            and tell them to drink,

and then he would say, “This is my blood,”

            blood of a New Covenant, a new marriage between God and humankind.

 

Revelation 19:6-9 brings full circle this wedding imagery from Isaiah

            in the marriage of the Lamb with the Bride, the Church, the Faithful.

Here Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the bridegroom at his own wedding

            in this spiritual marriage with all his disciples,

where his own sacrifice, his life blood poured out on the cross,

                        is the wine at this table,

and the love in this marriage is none other than the agaph love of God,

            that unitive love of “I in thee and thou in me.”

 

May our prayer, as we come to this table week by week, to drink of his wine,

            be an openness of heart to realize this great love

            and a willingness to be like those stone jars, those vessels

                        to be filled with the Spirit’s gifts 

                                    to be poured out for others.

May our hearts be glad.  

And may we always remember to heed Mary’s words:

                        Do what Jesus tells you to do.                        Amen.