Offended by Grace

One of the challenges of raising children is dealing with the rivalry between siblings for mom and dad’s affection. I remember when my sister and I were growing up, if she got something and I didn’t – or I got something and she didn’t – one of us would take it as evidence that mom or dad loved one of us more than the other, that one or the other of us was mom’s or dad’s favorite. When we were children, kid sister and I fought like cats and dogs over stuff like this. Of course, as adults my sister and I get along very well – which comes in handy, since we now have to cooperate on looking in on our mom as she has become increasingly frail with the passage of the years.

When I was reading over our Gospel passage for this morning (Luke 4:21-30), I couldn’t help remembering, however vaguely, how my sister and I used to squabble. We are continuing from where we left off in Luke’s gospel last week, when Jesus, soon after beginning his ministry, came home to Nazareth to preach in his hometown synagogue. Remember how he was handed the scroll from Isaiah, and he read these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then, as the congregation gazed intently on him, Jesus declared: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. We’re told that the congregation was amazed at these gracious words from Jesus. But their mood soon will change.

Jesus went on: you’ve probably heard about the miracles I did in Capernaum, and wonder why I’m not doing any here in my hometown. When Jesus quotes the proverb, “Physician, heal thyself,” scholars tell us that in his day, this didn’t imply that the congregation thought Jesus himself needed healing, but rather that he should stick to helping his own first, take care of his hometown first, and then heal elsewhere if time permits….sort of like our saying about the shoemaker’s children going barefoot. Jesus goes on to say that no prophet is accepted in his own hometown. And then, as precedent for his seeming neglect to do miracles for the people who knew him when he was growing up, Jesus then goes on to give examples of occasions when God’s mercy was showered, not on the children of Israel, but on foreigners – the widow at Zarephath in Sidon to whom Elijah was called, Naaman the Syrian who was healed of his leprosy. The crowd’s reaction seems extreme – overcome with fury, they were about to throw Jesus off a cliff. What on earth got into those people?

The peoples’ fury came from their interpretation of the Isaiah passage Jesus read. They read the passage as God’s good news – good news for them. They read the passage as saying that God wanted to bring good news to the poor – to them – proclaim release to the captives – to them – recovery of sight to the blind – to them – to let the oppressed – them – go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor – favor to them. As I mentioned last week, there’s an additional phrase in the Isaiah passage that Jesus omitted – the day of vengeance of our God – that was the one part of the Isaiah reading that Jesus listeners would have thought applied to people other than them. In other words, they interpreted the Isaiah reading as a promise that God would rescue them and smite all their enemies. Had Jesus preached the text along those lines, his listeners would have continued to be proud of their hometown boy made good, and everyone would have gone home happy and none of this likely would have made its way into Scripture. But Jesus took on the risky task of proclaiming God’s good news – not for them, but for those they considered foreigners and even enemies. Bad enough that Jesus mentioned Elijah’s being sent to a Gentile widow, but his lifting up the healing of Naaman the Syrian was intolerable – the folks at Jesus’ hometown synagogue had about as much affection for Syrians as many people in America do for those from Syria and for Muslims in general today – that is to say, not a whole lot. The folks at Jesus’ hometown synagogue expected the Messiah to destroy their enemies, not to minister to them. Jesus informed them otherwise, and they became so enraged that they wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff.

As the title of the 1940’s book by Thomas Wolfe tells us, “you can’t go home again.” When we’ve left our hometown for a time and experienced the wider world beyond the familiar world in which we grew up, if we return to the place of our origins, it can be jarring, for us, and also for those who knew us back when. Jesus surely found that out, to his sorrow. He sought to bring the members of his hometown synagogue along spiritually, to show them a wider vision of God’s love than they’d previously considered. Rather than responding with praise to God for, in the words of our hymn, the wideness of God’s mercy, they responded with murderous rage at Jesus. What Jesus taught as Good News was heard by his hometown synagogue as Bad News.

Are church folk today so different? American Christianity, at least in many churches, is very much about drawing lines, who’s in, who’s out, who’s loved, who’s hated. While the trend may be slowing and changing, for the past 30 years or so, the churches that have prospered are those that draw sharp lines between the saved and the damned, who proclaim God’s love and bounty and longing to shower prosperity on their members, and God’s desire to rain down fire and brimstone on sinners – defined as those who are “not their members”. For the folks in the pews, a prosperity gospel in which God not only allows, but actually blesses their McMansions and gas guzzling cars and a general lifestyle of conspicuous, wasteful consumption. And not only that, but the folks in the pews get to salivate at the prospect of God sending their enemies to hell, of being raptured away and getting to look down from heaven as God turns their enemies into crispy critters. For folks in many churches, it’s not enough that God love them – it’s also a critical part of their faith that God hate the same people they hate. In the time of the early church, nonChristians used to remark, “See how these Christians love one another” and we may remember the song, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love,” but in many churches, the folks outside the church doors will know them, not by their love, but by their hate.

But the annoying thing about God is that, no matter how sharply and boldly we draw boundary lines around God’s love, God insists on coloring outside the lines. The same God who covenanted with Israel is the God who heals Israel’s enemies. The same God who offers salvation through Jesus Christ is the God who still seeks to save those who want nothing to do with the church. And like squabbling siblings jockeying for their parents attention, the church is quick to proclaim, “God loves us; God doesn’t love you,” forgetting that, whatever our labels, “us” and “you” are all members of one human family.

A few years ago, the United Church of Christ took a different approach. The national church broadcast advertisements proclaiming our church’s welcome to everyone. The ads were a little edgy – edgy enough to be rejected by major networks such as ABC and CBS. They satirized the exclusion practiced at many churches by showing a church with bouncers and a velvet rope, or a church with pews equipped with ejector seats, with which the ushers could eject anyone they didn’t want. If a prosperous, upper-middle-class family showed up, welcome in. If a single mom, a gay couple, a person of color, someone with a handicap showed up, out the door with them. Kick ‘em to the curb. The ads ended with the UCC’s message of welcome to all. Contrasting reactions to the ad by church folk and non-church folk were fascinating. The church folk – including many UCC church folk - said that the ads were too harsh: no church really has bouncers trying to keep people out or ejector seats to toss them out. The non-church folk basically said, “oh yes, you do: many churches indeed have bouncers and ejector seats, it’s just that you in the church have lived with them so long that you just can’t see them." Not literal bouncers, but hostile, dismissive attitudes toward folks who aren’t part of the club accomplish the same thing – keeping “them” – however defined - out.

Now, no mistake – God loves us, each of us, infinitely. God created us, Christ died for us, and the Spirit never leaves us. But God gives us that love to pass on, not to keep to ourselves – we are to be channels or pipelines for God’s love and grace, not storage tanks. Our epistle reading from I Corinthians 13 gives us a compelling picture of what this love looks like: “love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth; love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This passage is often read at weddings, but Paul did not intend this as an idealized portrait of love to be held closely between spouses, but rather the very practical, every day love and concern and caring that church members are to share with one another, and with the world.

Proclaiming this expansive love of God is risky. It’s not the kind of message that builds megachurches, at least not today. It is the kind of message that will make our more fundamentalist brothers and sisters want to throw us off a cliff. But maybe God can use this inclusive love to change lives for the better, one at a time. I’m reminded of the old poem by Edwin Markham that some of us may remember: “He drew a circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in.” And we here at Emanuel Church, few though we are, still do what we can to continue to draw ever wider circles to welcome our neighbors. And as our numbers slowly increase, the circles we draw will become wider, more inviting, to a neighborhood, a city, a world starving for God’s love.

Jesus found that he couldn’t go home again. In the words from John’s Gospel, “he came unto his own, and his own received him not.” His vision of God’s expansive love was just too threatening for the folks in his hometown synagogue. But through his teaching and ministry, his life and death and resurrection, the Christ who couldn’t go home again built a spiritual home for each of us, for those who have grown up within the church’s embrace, and for those who came to the church later in life, seeking a loving spiritual home that the world couldn’t offer. May we at Emanuel, who have found a spiritual home here, continue to put out the welcome mat and open the door wide and go out into the highways and byways and invite those seeking a spiritual home. For those who find their way here, may we respond with what the UCC calls extravagant hospitality, as we share with them the gracious words, “welcome home.” Amen.