“The World’s Praise or Christ’s
Challenge”
Luke 4:21-30
The distance between the world’s praise
And the
world’s scorn is not very far.
Just
ask our President who was very popular
Just
four years ago and now is being
Second
guessed by Democrats and
Republicans
like.
Just
ask a celebrity like Michael Richards or
Mel
Gibson, both of whom were very popular
Until
they each made racially charged
Comments.
Just
ask the
Who
was a sports media darling one month ago
And
is now struggling to win a game,
Let
aloe get any positive press.
When you are dealing with the world’s acclaim
You can
be on top of the world one minute and
Despised
and ridiculed the next.
It
is that fleeting.
Our scripture lesson shows the same thing happening to
Jesus.
One
moment the text says:
“All spoke well of him and were amazed at the
gracious words that came out of his mouth.”
The next moment “all the synagogue was filled with rage.”
The text says that he simply told the
truth.
People
were trying to figure out
where his
eloquence came from:
“Is this not Josephs son?”
And
Jesus anticipated the direction of the inquiry:
“No doubt you will quote ‘Doctor cure yourself’.”
Jesus went on to say that prophets are
not accepted
in their own
home town and told the story of
Elijah who
was sent to a gentile widow and
Elisha who healed a Syrian leper, Naaman.
Jesus
spoke of God’s grace that available to
Foreigners
as well as and sometimes even before
The
chosen people, the Israelites.
That
is what got Jesus thrown out of the synagogue
And almost stoned- the breadth of God’s grace.
Now we can understand how a person can
go from popular
To
scorned when he has started a costly war,
Made
racially insensitive remarks, broken the law,
Or lost several basketball games.
But
it’s harder to understand how Jesus can
Get
in trouble for being too inclusive.
Jesus
had taken the words of Isaiah on himself
“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 bring
relief to the captives,
And recovery of
sight to the blind,
To let the
oppressed go free,
And proclaim the year of the
Lord’s favor.”
People seemed to like what Jesus had to
say
When
they thought he was talking only about them.
When
Jesus broadened the poor, captive, blind
And
the oppressed to include other people
Then
they were upset.
How
could this be.
A recent movie, Freedom Writers, give a glimpse into this.
It
is the true story of a young teacher, Erin Gruwell,
Who
started teaching in an urban school at 24.
She goes to work at Woodrow Wilson High
in
She is young, naïve and gets the worst
students
and a barely
passable classroom- Room 203.
This was
during the Rodney King riots and the racial
tensions of the O.J.
Simpson Trial of 1994.
The senior teachers in the system smiled
at her naivety
And
the students took bets at how long she would last.
The
teachers classified her students as losers:
“unteacheable, at risk teenagers.”
Many
were gang members.
The
experienced teachers had written them off
And
were simply waiting for them to drop out
So
that the upper level classes would be
Easier to control.
Well
She
listened to their pain and discovered that they
Were
held captive in the poverty and violence
That
was all around them and they were blind
To
each other stories and to the stories of
hope and redemption
in the world.
She helped them to see and appreciate
each other,
And
she introduced them to the Diary of Ann Frank
Even
as they were writing their own diaries of
Hope
in the midst of despair.
She introduced them to Holocaust
Survivors
and they
started to realize that they weren’t alone.
There were other teenagers in another
era
Who lived in fear of their
lives because of race.
And they
started to realize that this one adult
Actually heard them and believed in
them.
And a curious thing happened.
The
more success
The
more she was despised and rejected by
the administration.
The
more she lived out Jesus words:
“bring good news to
the poor, release to the captives,
recovery
of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free”
the more resistance
she got from her supervisor.
Why do we resent people who succeed
where we have failed?
Perhaps the answer is in the question.
We
think another person’s success points to our failure,
Instead
of recognizing that God uses
Differently
gifted people for different ministries
We
think if we can’t do it
It
can’t be done.
And we fail to acknowledge and believe
the boundless
nature of the grace of God.
We
believe that if another group of people
Share
in the bounty of God that there will
Not
be enough left for the rest of us.
These two unfortunate elements of human
nature were at work
In
Jesus encounter with the religious leaders and people
In the synagogue in
The people were excited by Jesus message
when they thought
That
he was talking exclusively to them.
When
they discovered that this good news
Was
there for the people of
As
well as the people of
They
threatened to throw him
Off a cliff.
Ironically this was one of the
temptation that Jesus
Had endured in Luke 4:9
Satan
said to Jesus:
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself
down
from
here, for it is written, ‘He will command his
angels concerning you, to protect you’ and ‘On
their hands they will bear you up, so that you will
not dash your foot against a stone.’”
The crowd’s intent to throw Jesus down
from a high place
Was
not a threat but rather a temptation for Jesus.
They
could have thrown him down,
and God could
have raised him up
and all the
people would have praised him
but
that was not his intent.
His intent was not to gain the world’s instant
popularity
But
to slowly change people’s hearts and minds.
And
that is our challenge today as we encounter
This passage of scripture from Luke.
We
are constantly tempted to make our world
And
to imagine God’s grace narrower and narrower.
We
are tempted to let the culture critique our faith
Instead of allowing
Christ’s witness to change our life.
That’s why we work so hard to reach out
beyond the walls
Of
Covenant and the community of
To
share God’s word
and encounter
God’s Spirit
Throughout the whole world.
Sometimes the world appreciates us as it
does
when we send
mission groups to
and sometimes the
world scorns us
as it
did when reached out to Muslims after 9/11
or raised questions about the
So when we question ourselves, and we
must ask questions
we must
shift from
What
does the world expect of us
To
what is God doing in the midst of us.
We must ask not what is popular
politically or even religiously
But
what is true to our faith, our scripture and our God.
Sometimes we will get it right
And
sometimes we will get it very wrong,
But
we keep trying and we know
that when we are
wrong as the people
in the sysnagogue in
That
Jesus does not yell at us in our ignorance
Or strike us down for our failings but
Jesus will still be walking in our midst
leading us to the
next challenge
and teaching us
the fullness
and abundance
and breadth
of God’s grace
revealed in
Jesus Christ.
Amen