Worship

Sermon Archive

Sunday January 31, 2010
11:00 am - Saint Thomas Church
Preacher: Fr Fletcher

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 4:21-32

Acceptance and Rejection

We are in Nazareth – the home town of the Holy Family. We are in the synagogue. A passage of scripture from Isaiah has just been read to us, and the reader has sat down. We are expectant. It is one of the great passages of that prophet. What will today’s reader have to say about it? Will he have anything new? The regulars in the congregation will have heard it all before and will probably be settling down for a moment of day-dreaming, or quiet contemplation, while the word float over their heads – like other congregations.

But suddenly, What’s this they are hearing? “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”. And they nudge one another, “What’s this he’s saying. We’ve never heard this before! And then the thoughts turned to who it was that was speaking. We know him. We grew up with him. When we were children we played together; we learnt together; we grew up together. Saint Luke tells us the people’s initial reaction; “they spoke well of him”.

I remember the first time my vicar invited me back to preach in the parish where I had grown up. I was distinctly nervous. People I had shared activities with in the Youth Club and the drama group and the pub and in the general life of the parish, were now sitting expectantly before me. I cannot claim to have had the same dramatic effect that our Lord had. No, they didn’t hustle me out of church and try to throw me into the nearby harbour. Nor, I fear, will they have heard the same authoritative and gracious words as were uttered that day in Nazareth.

Jesus had gone back to Nazareth to the people amongst whom he had grown up, because he wanted them to share in the gifts he had received. They were the people who knew him best. You might have thought that they would have appreciated him most. But a person is rarely a hero to his own relations. A genius is unlikely to be discovered by her friends

The congregation in Nazareth is unsettled by the fact that Jesus is known to them, and then, when he goes on to compare his ministry with that of the great Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha, they are further provoked. Those prophets’ actions - in the story of Elijah, who helped the widow of Zarepta with food during a famine, and of Elisha, who brought about the cure of the leper Naaman - seem to have little connection with one another, until we realize that they are both about Jewish prophets offering help to non-Jews.

So Jesus’ audience was stung by the thought that the prophecy of Isaiah was going to be fulfilled and was going to be of benefit not only to the Jews, who would feel that they had earned it, but also to the gentiles, who not being part of the Jewish nation were outside the covenant that God had made, and had no right to the benefits.

The people in the synagogue saw him as just the son of Joseph. There are people today who see Jesus as just a good teacher of the past with good ideas about justice and love and ethics and peace, but fail to see him as, uniquely, the Son of God, and fail to enter into a personal relationship with him.

It was in last week’s Gospel reading that our Lord quoted the passage from Isaiah and by doing so proclaimed what was to be the programme for his own ministry:
To announce the good news to the poor
To bring release to captives
To recover the sight of the blind and
To bring liberty to the oppressed.

Luke sets this discussion right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as a sort of declaration – this is what you must expect from me.

So, how does he fulfil it? He did bring the good news to the poor, he did heal a number of blind people, but he did not break anyone out of prison. There were many blind people in his day whom he did not heal – those few, he healed as an indication of his power, but also he was making a statement that he had come to change hearts and minds, so that people would not oppress one another – that they would not be enslaved by selfish desires of the world, the flesh and the devil – that those who lived in a world of darkness and sin and ignorance of God’s greatness and generosity would be liberated by the light of the Gospel.

Some people re-acted positively to this and became his faithful followers; others re-acted against it violently – out of fear, resentment, pride, jealousy – and ultimately brought Our Lord to the cross.

If we are being true to our Lord then we have to have the same programme as he had. Times have changed and methods have changed and superficial needs have changed, but the fundamental need of all human beings is unchanged – we still have the need for the Gospel to be preached to us, that we may achieve salvation – not just success in this world; not only justice in this world; not just liberty in this world – but salvation.

In today’s Old Testament passage we heard the call of Jeremiah to be a prophet. The word of the Lord said, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”. Jeremiah expresses his doubts, and then is empowered by God, “I have put my words in your mouth”.

In Jesus’ case the word of God came to Mary through the angel Gabriel. Jesus, too, is known to the Father before he was formed in the womb. We have only the one story of Jesus’ childhood to know whether he questioned his ability, but we do know that he was conscious of his call. Jesus, like Jeremiah, is empowered; in his case with the Holy Spirit at his baptism.

The authority and the inspiration of both Jeremiah and Our Lord come from God – not from below, not from the approval of those around them – but from God. One of the things that were to surprise his listeners was the authority with which he spoke and acted, and he showed it both in his miracles and in his teaching.

Jeremiah certainly had opposition in his lifetime. Our Lord did in his. And we will have it in ours. The only way we will avoid it is by going with the flow, which certainly neither Jesus nor Jeremiah did.

If we are going to be true to the teaching of Christ we must expect to be challenged and we need to be ready. It is not a matter of having pat answers to all possible questions, but having a firm, grounded conviction of the existence and the love of God, supported by our understanding as far as we are able, and accompanied by the same love and care that Christ had for his detractors. May the light of Christ shine out from each one of us that others may be brought to the faith. Amen.