Luke 4:21-30
“Hard to Hear”
February 3, 2019
If you want to quickly shut down communication or have people hissing “mind your own business” to the person sitting next to them at Town Meeting, just be a newcomer – otherwise known as a flatlander – who makes a suggestion for doing town business differently, especially if it will mean spending money or hiring somebody or changing the way things have been done since at least your grandparents’ time. During this treasured but increasingly less attended Vermont example of democracy in action, folks are all ears when a respected long-time resident, preferably born here or at least has lived here for the past 30 or 40 years, makes a suggestion that might lead to change. That doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily go along with the idea if it comes to a vote but they’re usually willing to hear you out. Not so for those of us who were not blessed to be born or raised here and who bring ideas from other places, with special form of skepticism reserved for those hailing from New Jersey or Long Island. Uncomfortable truths are rarely welcome and change in small towns like ours can take a long time. You may not be run over the edge of a cliff for the idea expressed like they tried to do with Jesus, but you will certainly feel the energy and previous good will toward you take a nose dive.
Here Jesus is back home among his people, reading from Scripture and everything was going fine when he stuck to the feel-good words of Isaiah that we heard last week where he spoke of freeing captives and giving sight to the blind. Things take a turn when he reinforces the concept of today and right now and reminds them that outsiders like the wrong side of the tracks widow at Zarephath who would be the one to save Elijah and Naaman the Syrian who led an army of Israel’s enemies who would be cleansed because of the intervention of Elisha, well…that was going too far. If God loves our enemies as much as God loves us, where are we supposed to place our trust? Where do we stand if, as writer Anne Lamott points out, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do?”
We are not so different from those in the synagogue who want our Jesus nice, happy-clappy, and sanitized. We are drawn to and love believing in the Jesus who rescues and comforts us, embraces little children and feeds hungry crowds but things can turn uncomfortable pretty quickly when that same Jesus also is the one who challenges us, telling us the truth that is hard to hear, the Jesus who makes us want to close our eyes, put our hands over our ears and start humming because once we really hear the inclusive message of embracing the immigrant, treating the poor, sick, and marginalized with honor, and sharing our abundance, it becomes part of our awareness. We can’t un-hear it. If we don’t like it, our only choice is to ignore it and pretend Jesus never said it or if he did actually say it, he really didn’t mean it that way.
At the heart of what divides us is fear. We live in a world where we lock our cars and our homes out of fear that something we value might be taken from us. This fear signals a brokenness among us and too often anything different about another person or people makes them suspect. Here’s the thing, though… we are all broken and Jesus here is lifting up those who would help or need help and they came from different tribes and different religions. We have taken to demonizing the other in order to build a sense of security. From my years of working with battered women and sexual assault survivors I learned not to fall into the trap of saying that a person was not capable of such abuse or violence because they came from a proper family or were a good guy. To demonize a whole group of people is equal to exonerating a whole group of people. No one should be defined only by the worst thing they’ve done and none of us is free from sin and, still, God’s love is big enough and all-encompassing enough to love us regardless of how we’ve fallen short of some ideal or standard. As Jesus followers how might we continue to embrace all of humanity, writing off no one as hopeless?
A couple of weeks ago in a United Church of Canada congregation there was a fundraising auction for goods and services. The pastor offered to preach on the topic of the high bidder’s choosing, thinking this couldn’t possibly be that difficult and it might prove interesting. A couple of parishioners got together and placed the high bid and the title they proposed for the sermon topic they had bid on proved more challenging than the minister had bargained for. It was, “Would Donald Trump be welcome as a member of our congregation?” It brings home the point regardless of your opinion of our president that sometimes the truth can be upsetting and challenging. Like the crowd that tried to drive out Jesus, do we have trouble facing the truth of God and what God’s love looks like?
Jesus demonstrates that God’s love is not reserved for those we think are deserving. He was merciful toward a woman caught up in adultery. He broke bread with outcasts and sinners. He forgave the friends who deserted and betrayed him. He healed total strangers and engaged in conversations with the ones others thought should be ostracized. Jesus shows us a way to love that isn’t about earning it or buying it or the right breeding or following the straight and narrow. Whatever walls we erect between ourselves and those others are artificial and not based on this basic truth – we are all created in the image of God and we are all beloved. There are times when the truth is upsetting and there are going to be people who bring home the idea of truth that we’re not going to like and find tough to accept. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, there are “people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God.” (Home by Another Way) It can certainly be infuriating to think that the people who frustrate us the most belong to God just as much as we do and may have something to teach us.
Do we have enough generosity to open ourselves to this wide and expansive love of God’s that includes the ones we have the hardest time accepting? What does that look like in action and when will that happen? Are we ready now – to have it fulfilled in our hearing today? Jesus didn’t say someday or tomorrow or soon or in the not-too-distant future. He said today and today is when we are to lift up and live into this truth and we may just have to rely on each other as well as some voices we don’t like listening to in order to glean the truth of God’s vast, unimaginable and inclusive love – for all. Amen.