Prophet Motive

Luke 4:21-30

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

January 28, 2007

One of the blessings of being at the seminary is that pastors are able to come together and share some of the things they are doing in other churches around the United States. It really is interesting to hear some of the things that happen in other congregations and denominations. For instance, while we were there one Methodist minister got a call from his bishop in which the bishop notified the pastor that the pastor was being transferred to another church that needed his conflict management skills; so, when he left the seminary on Friday, he was heading to a different church and a different parsonage. Sometimes my fellow pastors are trying new technologies, like the small-town Baptist minister who had a parishioner donate a projection and screen system for use in their sanctuary, and the minister told of the adjustments that the congregation was going through as a result. Sometimes new things don’t work out, like the minister who installed sanitary hot air hand dryers in the restrooms, only to take them out a month later. I asked him why he did took them out so quickly. He confessed that the dryers worked well enough, but he took offense when he walked into the restroom one day and saw a sign above one of the dryers that read: "For a sample of this week’s sermon, please push the button."

Alas, it is true indeed: A prophet is not honored among his own people. . . I don’t think we’ll be installing those hand dryers in our restrooms any time soon!

It is good to be once again in your presence. I am grateful for the gift of these two weeks of study, as it gives me an opportunity to engage in other kinds of work and learning and fellowship. As grateful as I am for the time away, I am always glad to be back among family and friends and in the presence of people who are special to me. It’s good to be back.

I am also grateful to Rhett Talbert for filling the pulpit last Sunday. I know it was good for him to reconnect with so many of you who were formative for him in his early years of ministry. Before I left for Austin, I gathered together all the materials I would need to prepare for today’s sermon, based on the assigned lectionary text for today. After I had spent a good bit of time and study in preparation for today’s sermon, I learned that Rhett also preached on this passage last week. Hopefully, today’s sermon won’t be overly repetitive of what Rhett said last week.

As we pick up the reading in Luke’s gospel this morning, things have gone well for Jesus in the synagogue. He has just delivered an impressive reading of a scroll from the prophet Isaiah, and the gathered congregation responded well to what they had heard. They are filled with praise for Jesus, if not a bit of surprise, seeing as how they know his family of origin.

So why does Jesus suddenly turn against the people? Why does Jesus by all appearances decide to infuriate the people by taking a position that criticizes them and honors the outsiders, the filthy Gentiles, the trash of the world? Why is Jesus not content simply with preaching, and instead intent on meddling?

Things were going well, until Jesus said, "No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown." That’s when things changed for Jesus. That’s when the people began to move from wanting to throw a banquet in his honor, to riding him out of town on a rail.

I think it is the moment that Jesus ceases to become the hometown hero, and he takes on the role of prophet.

What is it about the prophet that turns our world upside down when the prophet speaks? What is it that makes the people want to cover their ears when the prophet opens his mouth?

Jesus said, "No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown." There is a sense that familiarity breeds contempt. After all, the people knew that Jesus wasn’t born into a high-society family. The people knew that Jesus’ father was just an ordinary carpenter, so do you really question their surprise at his eloquence?

Let’s face it: when we know someone who is ordinary, we are unable to conceive of them in the extraordinary. Both George and Jeb Bush spent several of their childhood years in Midland, Texas. Do you think that any of their teachers ever imagined that the boys with the mischievous grins and the propensity to act up in class would ever become governors and the President of the United States? Familiarity breeds contempt. We are simply unable to conceive of people in the extraordinary when we know them in the ordinary. No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.

But there’s more to it than that. The dynamics that lead to people rejecting the hometown prophet go far deeper than the contempt bred by familiarity. For you see, there is also a sense of betrayal, if the prophet is doing what God has called the prophet to do. It is the place of the prophet to break out of the role of being friend, and into the role of delivering God’s word to a people unwilling to listen. It is the place of the prophet to take the softness out of God’s word, and to make it sharp and clear--and even offensive--to those who long since have become dulled to its hearing. And so when Jesus says, "No prophet is welcome in the prophet’s hometown," it’s as if he is saying, "You’re not going to like what I’m about to say. . ."

The prophets’ words cut deep, not because they predict the future, but because they take what we know and they turn it on us and force us to hear it again and again, even--especially--if it is something that we don’t want to hear.

And so the prophet is at times looked upon as a traitor among the prophet’s own people. For it is the prophet’s job to speak out against the very people who have been friends and compatriots. There is a sense of betrayal when the prophet speaks against the hometown folk. The prophet tells us what we probably already know to be true, but we don’t want to hear. We don’t want to hear, because hearing it means we’ll have to make some changes in our lives and in our world.

And had Jesus stopped at that point, everything would’ve been fine. Because the words conjured in the minds and hearts of the people a hope of national salvation and prosperity. That’s what they heard, because that’s what they wanted to hear--that the end of Roman rule would be fulfilled in Jesus. But Jesus takes these words from Isaiah, and he makes the people listen to the truth that they didn’t want to hear: that the good news of which he spoke is not about national salvation for their own private enjoyment, but it is good news that is meant for the whole world.

And to make his point, Jesus reminds his congregation of two stories from their own Scripture. He tells the story of Elijah feeding the Gentile widow and her son, and he tells the story of Elisha healing a foreign leper named Naaman. And in the blink of an eye, the message that the people had received with joy had been transformed into a message that literally turned their stomachs.

As the friend and hometown hero, Jesus ascends the pulpit in the synagogue. As the prophet, Jesus showed them the scandal of the gospel, namely that the salvation promised to the Jews was also being promised to the Gentiles. To a people who wanted God exclusively to themselves, Jesus made it clear that God is bigger than that. Much bigger. Big enough to embrace people the Jews despised.

The kingdom of God is bigger than we think. And you can be sure that it’s bigger than we want it to be. That’s where we don’t want to hear the prophet’s voice. Not so much when we somehow find a way to include ourselves among the people of God, but when the voice of the prophet tells us that we have to be even more generous in our vision of the gospel. Because you see, the good news for the poor, the recovery of sight for the blind, the release for the captives, the freedom of the oppressed --these things are promised for people well beyond the list of whom we would normally include. The scandal of the gospel is that the Lord’s favor is so large as to include all sorts of people, even people who happen not to be like us. Not only does it mean that the kingdom of God is bigger than we think it is, it also means that the kingdom of God is bigger than we really want it to be.

How grand is the gospel according to you? Is it big enough?

As the ice settled across many parts of Texas a couple of weeks ago, the seminary was closed for two days. And so a few of us who were students stuck at the seminary were sitting around the lounge watching the weather reports. Jim Wallace, a pastor from Abilene, told a disturbing story about something that had happened just the day before. Abilene is an Air Force town, home of the B-1 bombers at Dyess Air Force Base. A captain and his family had recently re-stationed to Abilene. Rather than live on base, the family chose to buy a house in a nice neighborhood in town. As the ice storm made its way through the area, there was a harsh beauty in the ice-covered grass--until you saw that someone had walked into the yard of this Air Force captain, and with their footsteps they wrote out the letters N-I-G in the ice-covered grass. You see, the captain and his family are black, and it seems that someone thought that the neighborhood wasn’t big enough for them.

How big is the gospel according to you? Is it big enough? If the gospel isn’t big enough to include some of the people you most despise, maybe you need to take another look. Because the truth is, if you don’t find the gospel to be offensive, then maybe you really haven’t heard the gospel in its entirety.

Flannery O'Connor tells about offensive grace in her short story titled, Revelation. The central character is Mrs. Turpin, and she is sitting in a doctor's office waiting room with her husband. Mrs. Turpin passes time by classifying each person in the waiting room according to her ranking system. She looks at people who she classifies as white trash, village idiots, pathetic lunatics, or "normal" people like her and her husband, Claude. In her mind, Mrs. Turpin thanks God that she is not a "white-trash, a [Negro], or ugly." She engaged in conversation with some of the other people in the waiting room. Aloud, she thanked God for her sweet disposition, pitying people with bad dispositions. At one point she deplored people who were ungrateful, and she crowed about her grateful heart. "If it's one thing I am, it's grateful... Oh, thank you, Jesus; Jesus, thank you!"

At that point, Mary Grace, an awkward pimply-faced college student who had been reading a book had had all the self-righteousness she could bear from Mrs. Turpin. Mary Grace threw her book at Mrs. Turpin, striking her above the eye. Then she climbed across the coffee table and started strangling Mrs. Turpin's neck, yelling, "Go back where you came from, you old wart hog."

Dazed from the experience, Mrs. Turpin and her husband left the doctor’s office. At the end of the day, Mrs. Turpin was looking out across her farm, and she had a vision. She saw hordes of people going through a field of fire toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of Negroes in robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and her husband, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She could see in her vision that even the virtues of this group were being burned away.

How big is the gospel according to you?

Jesus said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,. . . to proclaim release to the captives,. . . recovery of sight to the blind,. . . freedom to the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." When he says that, does it offend you?

It ought to. Amen.