On The Edge

Scripture:  Jeremiah 1:4-10,  Psalm 71:1-6,   I Corinthians 13:1-13,  Luke 4:21-30

You may remember that last Sunday, we began to read the story of Jesus’ visit to his hometown congregation, and his first sermon there.  This morning, we hear what longtime radio commentator Paul Harvey used to call, “the rest of the story.”

Last week, we read that Jesus had chosen the first few verses of Isaiah chapter 61 as his text.  Let’s hear those words again:

‘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.’

He told his listeners, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The crowd was on the edge of their seats.  Jesus had preached in some of the surrounding villages, and had healed in Capernaum, and had gotten rave reviews.  The hometown congregation looked forward with anticipation of what he might say to them – and who knows, perhaps he could heal some of their sick as well.

The anticipation didn’t last long.  We might say that Jesus took his sermon in an unexpected direction.  First he told them that he knew they wanted him to heal, as he had at Capernaum.  But, in a roundabout way, he told the hometown crowd that he would do no such thing.  Worse than that, he reminded them of two times when God had bypassed Israelites in need to show his favor on Gentiles – in Elijah’s time, the widow at Zaraphath, and in his successor Elisha’s time time, Naaman the Syrian. 

These stories would have been familiar to the hometown congregation, but may not be as familiar to us, so I’d like to describe them briefly.  The story of the widow at Zaraphath is as follows: Elijah was on the run from King Ahab, and in his travels happened upon the home of widow, where Elijah basically invited himself to dinner.  There was a famine, and the widow was down to her last bit of flour and oil, and she was making what she intended as a last meal for her and her son before they were resigned to starve to death.  Elijah asked the widow to make him a little cake of flour – and with some reluctance, the widow did so.  Because of her act of faith, we’re told that the jar of meal was not emptied, nor did the jug of oil fail, but the widow and her son were sustained by God’s grace for many days.  Later the widow’s son became gravely ill and died – and Elijah brought her son back to life.   Naaman was a Syrian commander – an enemy of Israel, who had just raided the Israelites’ camp – who had heard from one of his captives of Elisha’s healing power.  He came to Elisha’s home seeking healing.  Elisha did not step outside, but sent Naaman to dip in the Jordan river seven times.  At first Naaman was angry because he expected more respect and more attention, but finally he did as Elisha said, and was cured.

The point, for Jesus’ hometown congregation, was that both the widow at Zaraphath and Naaman were Gentiles, non-Jews, foreigners to the nation of Israel.  Worse, Naaman was an enemy of Israel who had just conducted a raid on Israel, and was rewarded with information on how to seek healing.  Even so, despite being foreigners, they responded in faith to Israel’s God, and were rewarded.  The thought of God’s love and grace extending to these people was more than the people at Jesus’ hometown congregation could take.  We’re told that they became enraged, so much so that they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.  But, we’re told, Jesus walked through the midst of the crowd and went his way.

To our ears, their reaction likely seems a little extreme – walk out of worship, sure, but try to throw Jesus, their homeboy, off a cliff?  Jesus had really struck a nerve with his hometown congregation.  Their theology made it very clear that their God was essentially Israel’s tribal God.  They believed that God promised protection and care for them, and vengeance on their enemies – indeed, the Isaiah passage Jesus read includes words about the day of God’s vengeance – but Jesus had left that part off when he read the scripture.  There are plenty of places in the Old Testament that uphold a special relationship between God and Israel.  For God to bless someone outside that special relationship, let alone an enemy of Israel, must have felt almost like God was going behind their back and cheating on them.   And the hometown crowd responded to Jesus almost as a jealous spouse would respond.

The problem of the people at Jesus’ home congregation was that their God was too small and too predictable, that their God’s love was too small and too limited.  Jesus was inviting them to move beyond their tribal claims on God to a more generous view that certainly had Israel at the center, but extended beyond Israel to include persons of faith outside the community.  But this view of God was too big for Jesus’ hometown congregation to take in, too big for them to wrap their minds around it, too threatening for them to tolerate.  And so they hated what they did not understand, and instead of pondering the message literally tried to kill the messenger.

It goes without saying that, had God’s love not extended beyond the Jewish people, none of us would be here this morning.  None of us would be here, and many of us might not know one another.  We have all been blessed because God’s love was bigger than Jesus’ hometown congregation could imagine.  But might God’s love be bigger than we can imagine? 

We are going through a national conversation – not always a civil conversation – about borders and boundaries.  But in this passage, as elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus seems to be interested in building bridges, not walls. 

It is natural to want, as the folks in Jesus’ hometown congregation wanted, that God will bless us and curse our enemies.  But according to Jesus, that’s not how God works.  In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” 

Beyond that, there are numerous passages in the Old Testament calling on people to care for foreigners who live among them:

Leviticus 19:34:  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Exodus 22:21  You must not exploit or oppress a foreign resident, for you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

Also, in Jesus’ description of the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25, one of the points on which the people were judged is whether they welcomed strangers….. “I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger, and you welcomed me, naked, and you clothed me, sick, and you cared for me, in prison, and you visited me.”  We may well wonder how Jesus himself – of suspicious Middle Eastern descent, brown skinned, not speaking English, with no fixed address – would be welcomed in our day.   

To draw lines between ourselves and those we fear is human.  To erase those lines is divine. 

Earlier, we heard from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, the 13^th chapter, the famous “love chapter” of the Bible.    We heard those words from Paul:  “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude…..love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”   The love of which Paul wrote was not about emotion, but about action.  And Paul put no limits on the reach of that love.  Indeed, while this chapter is often read at weddings, it was written to a divided church, with walls of misunderstanding between Jews and Gentiles, walls of  misunderstanding between members with differing gifts, who thought their own gifts were the coolest.   The love Paul described is a love that erases lines and breaks down dividing walls.

As Jesus preached and demonstrated through his own life, death, and resurrection that God’s love has no boundaries, may we follow in the way of Jesus, showing love without limits, in Bridesburg, Port Richmond, and to the ends of the earth. Amen.