March 27, 2022
Caldwell Presbyterian Church
Rev. John Cleghorn
Luke 4:14-30
I wonder. I wonder, up there on the brow of that hill in Nazareth, if Jesus could see all the way to Jerusalem.
Sure, it was a distance of 65 miles. But sometimes, on really clear days, one might see that far. I wonder, if on that day, when the angry mob was about to throw Jesus down, he could see from that hill to the cross that awaited him at Golgotha.
The day sure hadn’t started out that way. No, it began with all sorts of feel-good and warm fuzzies. As Luke tells it, it was the Sabbath. So Jesus had first gone to the temple. There all the church elders and scribes would have been sitting around, perhaps praying or reading scripture.
Someone handed Jesus the scroll of the prophecy of Isaiah. Was that choice a test, a challenge for this man attracted crowds wherever he went? Or maybe it was favor to help Jesus make a good impression. After all, you can’t beat Isaiah for bringing the word.
Whichever, Jesus took it in stride. He turned decisively to that text that so many of us here at Caldwell love to hear. You know it, God’s word to the prophet to proclaim good news to the poor and freedom for those in captivity, whatever that captivity might be, that God brings sight to the blind and lets the oppressed go free. To proclaim the Lord’s favor in a hurting and broken world.
That’s good stuff, isn’t?
Oh, and how proud the people were of Jesus. Scripture says all spoke well of him, all eyes were fixed, FIXED on Jesus.
“You know that’s Joseph’s son,” one exclaimed in those admittedly patriarchal times. I guess they forgot about Mary.
“You bet,” another may have answered enthusiastically. “That’s our boy. He turned out all right.”
Jesus could have moonwalked out of the temple that day. He’d hit it out of the park. He made all those nice people at the synagogue feel good about themselves and their faith. He chose a great scripture and read it beautifully. All the people nodded. Maybe someone shouted, “Amen!”
Yes, everyone felt great afterward, even if they had no intention whatsoever of actually doing what Jesus had preached about that day. Whether they knew it or not, they were following the circular path that the prophet Eli Kleinmann drew for us on the cover of today’s bulletin. Take a look. See how it goes round and round, how it follows the same lanes and goes nowhere but round and round?
Yes, that day in Nazareth, the good people of the synagogue were satisfied. They were ready to go have refreshments on the lawn, share chit chat, maybe talk about March Madness, go home and maybe take a nap.
Jesus could have just left it there. But no! Someone came up to Jesus to tell him how proud they were. “We know you’ll do all those good deeds and look after all those needy people here, just like you have in other places. And we sure do appreciate it.”
That’s when Jesus really started to teach them. The nice people of the synagogue figured Jesus was one of them, an insider in the IN crowd but not one, mind you, to cause too much trouble or say the wrong thing.
But they apparently didn’t really know Jesus that well. He wasn’t about to leave things there. As with Justin’s sermon last Sunday, Jesus went from preaching to meddlin’. He reminded all the good people of the synagogue of a couple of other stories from scripture. They both told how God, in other times, had by-passed the insiders, the “good people.” Jesus seemed to tell these stories to make a point that God chose the least expected people to favor, that God zigs just when we are sure God is going to zag.
Jesus’ message was clear and to the point. “Don’t be too self-certain, you good people of the synagogue. God just may not choose you to do the work. God may choose the ones you least expect.”
You can imagine how that went over. Not well. And all of that, friends, is how, Jesus wne from local boy made good to being chased by a mob up a hill where they “good people” were ready to shove him tumbling down.
As our theme for this Lent reminds us, God has a knack for doing that – for making a new path just when we get to know the old one. God does that. God goes with the new versus the old, the unexpected rather than the predictable. The Lord challenges us to do the same. Take the road less travelled, the one with bumps, sharp turns and narrow passes.
That’s the way it goes with the mystery of this God we choose to follow, the Holy One who seems to prefer the uncomfortable over the comfortable, the scandalous instead of the sure thing.
This story might give any of God’s people pause. Including us. Just when we are certain we are God’s chosen ones, that we are God’s A-team. After all, we supported the White Privilege Conference and we’re working so hard to learn the ways of anti-racism. We volunteer at Room in the Inn and we want to build affordable housing right here on the campus. We’ve fought so hard for LGBTQ equality. We march in all the parades and even a few protests. We’re even exploring solar energy for the church campus.
We are the good people, right? Right?
But … what if?
What if Luke includes this story just to keep us from being too comfortable, too self-certain?
What if God looks at all we do . . . and yawns. What if God were to say, “All that’s a good start, but ….”
Or maybe not “but” … but “and.”
“Yes, you read a lot of books … and you don’t study the Bible enough … and you could pray more.”
And what if God didn’t stop there.
“Yes, you good people of the church, you do good things for those on the margins … and you can do more with your children at church to teach and show them the way of God’s love and justice.
“Yes, you like to hang out and agree with each other … and you can do more to build bridges with those who hold different opinions, political and social views.
“Yes, you just know that Jesus is on your side … and maybe you are also at risk of getting a little complacent … a little insulated … a little self-righteous.”
Wait just a minute! God wouldn’t say that about us!
Surely, surely not us, we might say. Don’t interrupt us, Jesus, when we are on a roll, when we’ve got things all figured out.
What is it that our Lenten devotion calls us to do? Make a new road to Jerusalem this year – not by going through the motions, not by walking in the same footsteps as every year – but by walking it? Find an undiscovered way to the cross and beyond. Make new footprints to bring new life to our walk with God in Christ.
Maybe it’s a good time, church, to turn back to the first day’s reading from our Lenten devotion. Do you remember? It read, in part:
“So, we will walk with Jesus this Lent, keeping in mind that faith was never meant to be a destination, but a journey – a never-ending, creating and re-creating, dying to the old and rising … to the walk with Christ.”
So you may be asking about now: What does it mean for you to make a new path? What is it that I am suggesting?
To be sure, I am not saying we should veer off from what God commands in Isaiah that we are to participate with God to bring good news to the oppressed, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed. There is still more than enough of that work to go around.
And ….
And, maybe Luke slides this story about Jesus’ very-good-very-bad day in there to remind us that humility and self-awareness of part of our discipleship, every bit as much as taking on the strong man and standing up to the empire.
And hear me now: If you come to me later and ask me what specifically I am talking about in your particular life … if you ask me to prescribe what your new path should look like … well, you’ll be out of luck. That’s the preacher’s prerogative, after all, to poke and prod and make you think. That’s what Jesus did with the in-crowd that day in our story.
If you think that is an unsatisfactory answer, well, let’s talk more sometime. We’ll walk the path together.
What Luke seems to say is on that day in Nazareth the good people of the synagogue were going to kill Jesus for even suggesting they weren’t necessarily God’s chosen ones, God’s preferred people. But just as they took him to the brow of the hill to throw him off, scripture says, Jesus slipped through them. He went on preaching, teaching, challenging, poking and prodding those who rejected him and those who followed him.
In closing, let me come back to the entry for today’s scripture in the devotion we are following about Making the Path. It cites the meaningful witness of activist Lilla Watson. She worked to support the aboriginal people of Australia in the 1960s. The good white people of that nation, you see, had just begun to awaken to all the ways they had oppressed their darker-skin siblings. And they were doing what white people do. That is, they were going to the dark-skinned people and asking, “Now, how can we help?” (We do that, don’t we? Yes, we do.)
Watson’s famous response was this: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mind, then let us work together.”
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mind, then let us work together.”
A good question for us in this Lenten season of finding new paths is this: How do you need to be liberated this lent?
Maybe it is us, each in our own way, who need to hear Jesus read Isaiah’s words about being released from captivity and being freed from oppression. Maybe we can think about our lives and ask Jesus where do we need liberation in our lives?
Friends, it’s only a few weeks now to Holy Week. We can almost see the cross from here.
What kind of captivity keeps us from walking the path God wants for us? How can we be liberated in new ways to see that our lives are inevitably bound up with others? How can we be freed to live full and free lives to know the peace and do the work of almighty God?
Amen.