"The Good Shepherd" - August 15, 2021

Text: Psalm 23

Like many of you, I watched the baseball game played Thursday night at the Field of Dreams.  I had watched the movie, I had visited the movie sight, and I was pumped about the game.  It did not disappoint – it could not have been more perfect.  Just like in the movie, before the game, the players emerged from the cornfield into center field.

It was interesting that as they interviewed some of the players before the game, they felt like tourists.  One said that they were all glued to the windows on the bus from Dubuque to the ballpark – many of them had never seen so much corn.

Well, Iowa is known for corn.  Corn and soybeans and hogs.  What we are not known for is sheep.  I did not grow up on a farm.  And even for those who did, if you grew up on a farm in Iowa there is only a small chance that you raised sheep.  

Most of us have only a passing familiarity, if that, with sheep, and yet the image of sheep and shepherding is a very common image in scripture.  Jesus is described in the gospel of John as the Good Shepherd.  And the 23rd Psalm is maybe the best-loved passage in the Bible, a familiar and comforting scripture.  We are looking at several Psalms this summer, and it only seemed right that we spend a week considering the 23rd Psalm.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters…

For a lot of folks, Psalm 23 is like an old friend.  And a lot of people who really don’t know a thing about the Bible are familiar with the 23rd Psalm.  But let’s face it: these words were written in a different world.  We can recite the words: “The Lord is my shepherd,” but when you get right down to it, who really wants to be a sheep?

You will find a lot of Psalm 23 re-writes using different metaphors, getting away from the shepherd and sheep image.  “The Lord is my coach…, or “the Lord is my travel agent…”, or “the Lord is my major professor” or “the Lord is my Internet Service Provider.  He giveth me wide bandwidth and protecteth me from spam and viruses.”  The psalm is rewritten in a way that people can better identify with it.  But part of the popularity of these paraphrases is the fact that we would rather think of ourselves as an athlete, or a vacationer, or a student, or a computer user, than a sheep.   

The Good Shepherd leads the sheep to green pastures, but we generally don’t want to lie down in green pastures because, well, we don’t want to stop.  We are on the go; we have things to do and people to see.  We don’t want to slow down; we don’t want to rest.  But the thing is, we will eventually slow down and come to a stop, whether it is our choice or not, and it may not be in a place as pleasant as the green pastures the shepherd has led us to.  

The shepherd cares for us and knows our needs.  Whether we know it or not, we need a Good Shepherd.   

The Lord is my shepherd… He restoreth my soul.  He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake…

Sheep are often characterized as stupid and foolish.  That characterization may not be entirely accurate; some have argued that cattle ranchers are responsible for that ugly rumor, all because sheep do not behave like cows.  Cows are herded from behind, but that will not work at all with sheep.  Stand behind sheep making loud noises and they will just run around behind you, because sheep want to be led.  You can push cows, but you lead sheep.

Sheep will not go anywhere that someone does not go first – and that someone would be the shepherd, who goes ahead to show them that everything is all right.

Now, to throw another animal into the mix: when Susan and I were first married, we had a cat named Mary Ralph.  She was named after a no-nonsense nun, and the name fit perfectly.  She was quirky, even for a cat, and while she was just this little black cat, people were scared of her - with good reason.  I’ve told some Mary Ralph stories before.

Before moving to Ames, we lived in Arthur, Illinois, a small town.  And Mary Ralph started following us when we would go for a walk.  We would have to go back and put her in the house, but finally we decided “what the heck,” and we let her follow us.  So we went for a family walk around the block: Susan and I walking, Zoe in a stroller, our dog Conway on a leash, and Mary Ralph bringing up the rear.  We walked to the end of the street and turned at the Methodist Church, and she was still with us.  We got to the next corner, at the bed and breakfast, and she was lagging behind.  She would eventually make the turn, but then she always had a hard time making it to the next corner.  She would see a leaf blowing in the wind, or a sound would startle her, or there would be a rabbit, or she would have a stare-off with a cat looking out somebody’s window.

I would have to go back and get her to re-focus on the walk, and sometimes I would just have to carry her home.   I was about the only one who could do that – if a stranger tried to pick her up, we might have to pay their medical bills.  This going for a walk with Mary Ralph experiment did not last very long; she was soon banned from family walks.

We can all be a little like Mary Ralph in that we have a hard time following.  And at times it probably appears that Jesus is trying to herd cats more than lead sheep.  We don’t necessarily like being led – we might like the idea of setting off on our own, charting our own course.  We can feel like the grass is greener in other pastures.  But we are at our best when we follow the Good Shepherd.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd who came to show us how to live.  And Jesus does not ask us to go anywhere that he has not already gone.  The Good Shepherd restores our souls and leads us in the right paths.

The Lord is my shepherd.. yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy road and thy staff, they comfort me…

Sheep can scare pretty easily.  And they have a real knack for getting lost.  We might think that the image of sheep is a terrible picture of what we are like.  But the fact is, we may be more lost than we think.  We can be lost in a relationship that’s offered more hurt than love, in a job that leaves us depleted and spent.  We can be lost in the guilt of not being good enough or smart enough or successful enough for someone whose judgment cuts deep.
Some of us have gotten lost in battles against declining health.  We can be lost searching for meaning and direction.  We can get so lost that we lose sight of who we are and who we were created to be.
And we can surely get lost in grief.  Many of us have passed through the valley of the shadow of death.  We have experienced hurt and sadness and disillusionment.  We have lost loved ones.  For me, that has been very recent.  We have all traveled through that deep valley.  In such times, we need to know that like a Good Shepherd, God is there with us.

The Lord is my shepherd… Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.  Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup overflows.

A ten year old boy named Brian was in trouble with his parents.  He was banned from electronic devices and was not a happy camper.  He was sulking and not much fun to be around.  As it happened, that same evening there were guests over for dinner, and the group was big enough that a separate kids’ table was set up.  

It had not been smooth sailing with Brian, so in a nod to their son and effort to include him, even though he was over at the kids’ table, Brian was asked to give the blessing for the meal.  Everyone bowed their heads, and Brian prayed: “'God, I thank you for this table which you have prepared before me in the presence of my enemies.  Amen.”

I read that somewhere but I’m not sure it actually happened like that.  But for sheep, it is pretty obvious what it means to
have a table prepared in the presence of enemies.  The enemies may be wolves, coyotes, mountain lions.  Assorted predators.  Sheep can be very vulnerable.

For us, it may not be so obvious, but we surely face enemies.  The enemy might be illness or poverty or addictions or anxiety for the future.  The enemy might be bigotry, racism, injustice.  And sometimes, we can be our own worst enemy.   

We live in a time in which enemies seem to be glorified – in other words, we want to make people into enemies.  Simply because they have a different opinion, simply because they see things differently, we think of them as enemies.

Whatever else it means, for God to prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies means that in those frightening and troubled times that we face, God goes before us and God stands beside us, giving us courage and strength.  

The Good Shepherd loves all of the sheep.  And here is the thing – here is the really hard thing: that includes those whom we think of as enemies.  That includes those whose lives seem to stand against what Jesus stands for.  That includes all those who are lost.  Like that one lost lamb, God’s desire is to bring them back into the fold.  God’s desire is for love to win.  We are called not to hate our enemies but love our enemies and pray for the power of God’s love to transform our enemies – even as God’s love transforms us.

The Lord is my shepherd …surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The notion that goodness and mercy are following us is a nice sentiment, a hopeful thought, but if they are always following us, like maybe at a safe distance, maybe 100 yards away or so, what good does that really do us?  Well, digging a little deeper may help to understand the meaning here.  Instead of just “follow,” the sense of the word is really closer to “pursue.”  Imagine goodness and mercy pursuing us with dogged determination.  We cannot get away from God’s goodness and mercy.

No matter how far we may feel from God, goodness and mercy are there.  When we face trials and tribulations, we are pursued by goodness and mercy.

When we are worried, when we are filled with anxiety, when we feel inadequate, when we feel that we are not up to the task, there they are: goodness and mercy.

The 23rd Psalm is a psalm of confidence.  It reminds us through rich images what it is like to live a life of trust in God.

And it tells us that God’s presence, God’s companionship, can transform every situation.  There will still be dangers.  There will still be deathly valleys, there will still be enemies and challenges.  But we do not need to fear.  God is always there.  And trust and confidence in God leads to a life of peace and joy.  

We have a Good Shepherd.  Amen.

"Making an Entrance" - August 8, 2021

Text: Psalm 100

Longtime Cyclone fans remember coach Johnny Orr.  Johnny was a highly successful coach at Michigan and surprised everybody by coming to Iowa State, which had not been to the NCAA tournament in 40 years.  He was a real character and had some great teams here.  I wasn’t here in those years, but I was at a Cyclones game in 2013.  Iowa State was playing Michigan.  Johnnie Orr was the all-time winningest coach at both schools.  Shortly before tip-off, Cyclones coach Fred Hoiberg, who had been one of Johnny’s star players, entered the arena floor with Johnny.  The band broke into the Tonight Show theme, as they had when Johnny was coaching, and he raised his fist, as he had done years before.  There was pandemonium.  It was quite an entrance.  (And the icing on top was that we beat the Wolverines.)

We may not be a star athlete or famous coach or celebrity singer or famous politician, but we all make an entrance in one way or another.  Usually we don’t give it much thought, and most of our entrances are not especially memorable.  Although if we are going to something like our high school reunion or a big wedding – or maybe own wedding - we may give more than the usual amount of thought as to what we wear and how we carry ourselves.  

I bring this up because our text this morning actually has to do with making entrances – and it involves considerably more than what we wear or how we walk.

A few weeks ago we began looking at some of the Psalms.  We started with Psalm 1 – a wisdom Psalm that told us that the person who delights in God’s word and follows God’s way is like a tree planted by water – they will grow and thrive and bear fruit.

We took a detour for a couple of weeks, but last Sunday, as we met together with our friends from First Christian and Ames UCC, we looked at Psalm 139, which tells us that wherever we go, God is there.  We cannot run away from the love and the presence of God.

This morning we are looking at one of the most familiar of the Psalms.  Psalm 100 is a great Psalm of Praise; one writer said that this has probably been sung and chanted in temples and syangogues and churches more than any other Psalm.  We sang a version of this Psalm that was written in 1561 by William Kethe.  The tune was written by John Calvin’s musical composer, Louis Bourgeois, with a tune name Old Hundredth, a tune we most often identify with the Doxology.

Choir anthems aside, we may not sing Psalm 100 a lot, but we hear it a lot.  We often use it as a Call to Worship.  Our banners today were made by kids in Music Camp a number of years ago – I think maybe our very first Music Camp - and this is the scripture they put on the banners: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord.”

This is a psalm of praise that was likely used as something of an entrance Psalm as worshipers entered the temple.  There was an outer court of the temple, an area where people gathered and visited and where you might convert your Roman currency to temple currency – this is where Jesus had his little run-in with the moneychangers.  This was an outdoor courtyard – kind of like our narthex except bigger and better and outside and it surrounded the entire temple.  OK, it really wasn’t very much like our narthex at all.

So there was an outer court, and then for worship you would move into the inner court, or the temple proper.  Psalm 100 was an entrance song that people might sing as they entered the temple for worship.  “Come into God’s presence with singing… Enter God’s gates with Thanksgiving and courts with praise.”  Psalm 100 was used and up to this day continues to be used as a hymn, a prayer, as a call to God’s people to prepare and enter into worship.

But this is not simply a worship element – a kind of plug-and play component that is good for getting a worship service started.  Psalm 100 is packed with meaning – maybe unexpected meaning.  This Psalm has something important to say both about our worship and about our lives.

First – and you might not catch this, I usually don’t – this is actually a deeply political statement.  In fact, I thought about giving this sermon the title “The Politics of Praise” but I thought that might scare you.

Everything is so politicized these days – why do you have to go and politicize a Psalm?  Well first, don’t blame me – blame the Psalmist.  Where do you find a political statement in these words of praise to God?  Well, let’s think about these words again.  “Know that the Lord is God.  It is he that has made us and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”

Why would you need to say “the Lord is God”?  Isn’t that redundant?  I mean, who else would be God?

That is exactly the point.  These are powerful words because in the ancient world – which is not really all that different from our world – ultimate power was often thought to belong to the king or some other ruler or authority.  “Know that the Lord is God,” we say.  Not the king, not the empire, not the powers that be, not The Man, not market forces, but the Lord is God.

“It is God that has made us and not we ourselves.”  We have myth of the self-made person.  We talk about pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  That was never true anyway, but as someone once said, somebody has to give us boots in the first place.  We are not self-made; we depend on each other, and as this Psalm reminds us, it is God who has made us and not we ourselves.

Where does our ultimate loyalty and trust lie?  If it is in our family or clan or social group or our identity as Americans, or in or own strength or intelligence or wealth or good looks, or if it is in an institution, even wonderful institutions, even the church – we will find ourselves disappointed.  Because they are not God.  Only God is God.

And so is this is a powerful statement about ultimate power and ultimate loyalty.

The other thing that really strikes me about this Psalm is what happens when we live a life of praise – when we go all in on giving thanks to God – not just in worship but in everyday life.

Kenneth Samuel went to court to settle a landlord-tenant dispute.  The judge referred the case to arbitration.  He wanted the two parties to work it out with the help of an arbitrator.

So Samuel showed up for the arbitration.  He entered the room with details that supported his claim and was pretty much convinced that a mutual settlement was impossible.  The two sides just had a completely different view of things.  The arbitrator entered the room and said that after reviewing the case, she believed that a mutual settlement could be reached.

Samuel thought to himself, “Yeah… right!”  But then the arbitrator proceeded to have the two parties talk about what common interests they shared.  Both sides kept bringing up points to support their side of the argument, but the arbitrator kept bringing the two back to what interests they had in common.

Three hours later, to Kenneth Samuel’s great surprise, they had signed a mutually agreed upon settlement.  Samuel wrote,

I entered the arbitration room with anger and doubt.  The arbitrator entered the room with hopeful expectation.  Thankfully, the hope she brought into the room overcame the doubt I brought into the room.  What we bring to the issues of life sets the tone for what we will receive.

He is absolutely right.  The guardedness or openness we bring to a relationship sets the tone for how that relationship will develop.

The cooperation or competition we bring with us to a work environment sets the context in which we do our jobs.  It can make all the difference.

The open-heartedness or closed-mindedness we bring with us to church goes a long way toward determining what we will receive from the worship experience.    

Samuel said, “It is difficult to enter a situation and find fulfillment if within ourselves, if we’ve already exited the room before we even enter.

I know that on Sunday mornings, some of us are exhausted from a long week.  If you are like me, there may be so many last-minute details to attend to on a Sunday morning that we may not arrive in a great frame for worship.

Mindy and Emma and Patricia and Joe can attest that there were many weeks of Zoom worship where we would have some kind of technical meltdown seemingly right at 9:40 am, from the computer crashing to the internet going out to having no audio on Zoom, and my focus was so much on the mechanics of it and the technology of it that really entering into worship was not easy.  

I know that some of you at home have been on Zoom calls all week and the prospect of yet another one on Sunday morning is not necessarily exciting.  Or maybe none of these things are going on, but nevertheless we can enter the sanctuary, or the virtual sanctuary, without a lot of thought or anticipation about it one way or another.

Kenneth Samuels learned from an arbitrator that what we focus on can make all the difference.  When we are focused on praise, we are open to God.  As Paul put it, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

We are not talking about coming to church with a put-on, plastic-y smile.  We are not talking about fake optimism.  We are not talking about optimism at all.  We are talking about a life that even for all of the absurdity and craziness and injustice and pain around us chooses to focus on the love and faithfulness of God.

Psalm 100 points us toward a different way of living – a thankful, joyful, powerful way of living with gratitude.  

“Enter into God’s gates with thanksgiving, and into God’s courts with praise; be thankful unto God and bless God’s name… For the Lord is good, with steadfast love that endures forever, and faithfulness to all generations.”  Amen.

"Like a Tree by the Waters" - July 11, 2021

Text: Psalm 1

I was in Wal-Mart the other day, heading toward the pet supplies, when I noticed the song playing on the PA system.  It was “Just What I Needed” by the Cars.  A new wave, punkish group that I listened to in college.  I had the 8-track.  There is no way a retailer would have played The Cars on their PA system back then, but all these years later it has become shopping music.  (That’s how you know you are getting older.)  Well, it’s an energetic, catchy song, and I ‘m sure that is what they are looking for.  You won’t find a lot of songs in minor keys being played while you are out shopping.

I’m sure there is a whole industry built around shopping music, because music is such a big part of life.  But the way we interact and participate with music has changed dramatically in the last 100 years or so.  At one time, music was something that people did – you sang or you played, we ourselves made the music.  This all began to change with the invention of the phonograph and by now, for most people music is something we listen to.  It is more of a commodity, a product, something that we collected on albums and then cassettes and CD’s and something we can now just stream when we feel like listening to it.  

One of the few exceptions to this is the church.  In the church, music is still – mostly – participatory.  We all take part in it.  Everyone is encouraged to sing whether you are a great singer or not.  And you don’t have to be a pro to be in the choir or play your oboe or trombone in an ensemble once in a while.  One of the really difficult things about this past year is that it is hard to sing hymns at home by yourself on a Sunday morning.  Music is a community effort.  

Music has always been an important part of the church, and before that, the temple and synagogue.  In scripture, we find songs and hymns in a variety of places, but especially the Psalms.  The Psalms functioned as the song book of the temple and for much of history, as the song book of the church.  

The Psalms are somewhat unique in scripture.  We think of the Bible as God’s words to us, and it is, but when we come to the Psalms, they are just as much our words to God.  We read the Psalms and we find the whole range of human emotion – from love to rage to joy to fear.  We find expressions of anguish and guilt, of despair, of anger, of hatred even, as well as relief, and trust and confidence and hope and love.  The Psalms are poetry that was often and still is often set to music.  We will come across those Psalms that begin with instructions to the choirmaster or the musicians.

We often use Psalms as Calls to Worship or responsive readings.  Snippets of the Psalms find their way into our hymns.  But we less frequently consider the Psalms as texts for preaching.  We will be doing that over the coming weeks, looking at several of the Psalms, and we are starting today with Psalm 1.  It functions as an introduction to the psalms as a whole.  (Now there are 150 Psalms in all but don’t worry, I won’t be doing a 150-week sermon series.)

Psalm 1 is part of a group of Psalms that would be categorized as Wisdom Psalms.  It sets the stage for the whole collection of Psalms by saying that if you are smart, you will be willing to learn and to immerse yourself in the word and the ways of God.

“Happy are those who do not take the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the Lord.”

Now we may have a pretty good idea of wickedness and what it is to take the advice of the wicked.  And walking in the path of sinners – that is speaking to behavior.  Don’t follow the ways of those who are just going to get you into trouble, who are going to lead you into sin.  But to me, the heart of what this Psalm is about is this great phrase “don’t sit in the seat of scoffers.”

What a fantastic word: a scoffer.  A scoffer is one who mocks or jeers or refuses to heed the truth.  A scoffer is a person who will not learn, who is not open, who refuses instruction.  And you might notice that the scoffer is sitting.  “Don’t sit in the seat of scoffers.”  Not up and about, not involved.  At least the regular sinners have a path that they trod upon, but the scoffer just sits there and refuses to participate, refuses to hear the truth, refuses to learn and grow.

That is one way of living.  Over and against that is the way of the righteous.  They are like trees planted by water.  They are deeply rooted.  Like the song says, they will not be moved, and they can grow and produce fruit.

We lost a tree in the derecho last August.  Actually, on Friday before the storm on Monday, the city removed a dying tree near the curb.  And then in the storm that Monday, two trees were badly damaged and we had to take out the maple in the front yard.  So this spring we wanted to plant another tree in its place.  We have a honey locust in the front yard that is getting pretty big so we were looking for a smaller, ornamental tree.  

I went to get a redbud and as it turned out, in the aftermath of the derecho there was a big run on trees this spring.  They had a bunch of redbuds with sold tags on them.  There was only one left, and it would be several weeks before they could deliver it, they were so backed up.  So I got Bob Parrish with his truck to help bring it home, and I planted it.

It’s a nice little tree.  But you know, we looked out a couple weeks ago and it wasn’t looking so great.  It has been hot and windy and the tree had not developed deep roots.  The tree was droopy.  So I got out the hose and watered it.  I’ve been watering it regularly.  Those who delight in the law of the Lord are like well-watered trees that grow and flourish, while those who follow the advice of the wicked are like that young tree wilting in the heat.

Psalm 1 points ahead to the whole collection of Psalms and says, take heed.  Listen.  Be open.  Be willing to learn.  If you meditate on God’s word, you will be happy.  You will be blessed.  You will grow.

Now the problem presented by this Psalm is that it goes again a lot of what our culture values and teaches.  Our culture says that happiness is found in self-fulfillment.  If you can do what you want to do, you will be happy.  But this Psalm lifts up happiness as delighting in God’s ways, not in simply pleasing ourselves.

And then prosperity is a goal for many of us, and we know what that means.  It means wealth, it means accumulating things, it means attaining what we want.  But that is not the way this Psalm sees it.  If we delight in God’s ways – and presumably live by these ways – then we are by definition prosperous.  And God’s ways involve caring for our neighbors, caring for those in need, caring for God’s creation, not simply caring about ourselves.

Time and again in the Psalms, we find complaints and laments and anguished cries that the wicked seem to prosper while the righteous face suffering and humiliation.  It’s like 14 years in a row, the Jayhawks win the conference while the righteous are forced to suffer.  It ain’t right.  So, the Psalmist defines prosperity in a different way.  And the Psalmist takes the long view on prosperity – that the righteous are rich in what matters most, and that this will be seen, this will be made plain in due time.

Maybe most surprising is the understanding of righteousness itself.  We tend to think of righteousness as following the rules and doing the right thing.  In other words, righteousness all about me.  But according to the Psalms, righteousness is a matter of being connected to God and connected to one another.  It speaks of “the congregation of the righteous.”  It is about knowing that God is there.  “The Lord watches over the way of the righteous.”  Righteousness has to do with our connection to God and to the community.

It is easy to read something like Psalm 1, a beautiful piece of poetry, and feel smug about things.  Thank God I am among the righteous, and look out sinners, God is coming for you!   It’s kind of like that New Yorker cartoon that shows two dogs.  One is saying to the other, “It’s not enough that we succeed.  Cats must also fail.”

We can read this Psalm in a moralizing way, in us vs. them, wise vs. foolish, saved vs. unsaved, blessed vs. cursed terms.  But I’m not sure this is all cut and dried.  The Psalmist lays it out in a kind of either/or way, but I’m not so sure that there really are two kinds of people.  Martin Luther said that the Christian is at the same time saint and sinner.  I’m not sure we can so clearly count ourselves on one side or the other, certainly not of our own doing.

Instead, it may be more helpful to see this as a reminder to ourselves of how we are called to live.  We can live in a way that seeks to get ahead, to accumulate for ourselves while we ignore the needs of others, that wants to not just succeed but see the cats lose.  But in the end that way of living is not very satisfying.  Instead we can choose to live the way of the righteous.  It is the way of Jesus, who said that the heart of living by God’s law was loving God and loving neighbor.

Now, it won’t be easy.  We will see folks who live by another set of standards and seem to prosper.  And we ourselves will have plenty of stumbles along the way.  But in the end, this is the way, the only way, that really leads to blessings and happiness.  Which makes it something worth singing about.

Jim Taylor is a Canadian journalist and writer.  He reflected on the Psalms and said that the problem we face is that the world has changed in 3000 years.  It is not so much that the language of the Psalms is a problem; it is the images and metaphors in the Psalms that can be a challenge.  We don’t live in a time of warrior kings and invading armies and sheep and shepherds.  So he wrote a little book called Everyday Psalms in which he paraphrases the Psalms using language and images of today.
 
This is his take on Psalm 1:

Happiness can’t be captured.
Like a wild bird or a bouncing ball,
It is always just beyond your grasp.
It is not found in fads or fashions,
nor in climbing to the top of the heap.
Happiness comes from immersing yourself in God.
Instead of struggling to stay on top,
Yield yourself to the deep flow of God’s universe.
You will not drown,
You will be swept along by forces beyond your imagining.

Foam on the surface blows about;
Driftwood piles up on sandbars;
People obsessed with themselves end up as rotting debris on rocks.  But the current rolls on.

To find happiness, let yourself be carried away
by something stronger than a social eddy.

“Not Just a Hometown Prophet” - January 17, 2021

Text: Luke 4:16-30

video

Ken Chafin was my preaching professor in seminary – just a wonderful guy.  Ken had us read textbooks on preaching, he lectured about preaching, and we had to write a sermon outline every week.  But the best – and the scariest part - was preaching labs.  

We all had to preach several sermons in front of our peers.  The class not only formed the congregation; for each sermon, several other students filled out evaluation forms.  Some in the class were pastors of churches while some had never preached a sermon in their life.  And for the record, the inexperienced preachers by and large were better - they hadn’t picked up bad habits and were more open to learning.  My memory is that we were all pretty generous in our evaluations, knowing we would be evaluated too.

I know some of you have taken a preaching class, but one way or another, we all have some experience having our speech evaluated.  Our scripture for today is Jesus’ inaugural sermon recorded in Luke.  He has just started his ministry – Luke devotes just a couple of sentences to it, says that Jesus was getting rave reviews from everyone, but basically this is the beginning.  He is at his hometown congregation, and they are evaluating his sermon. Let’s join them, with our evaluation sheets in hand.

Synagogue worship was fairly informal compared to worship in the temple.  There would prayers, reading scripture, comments on the scripture, and almsgiving.  On this day, Jesus was invited to read the scripture.  He was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

Now it takes a while to find a given scripture in a scroll.  It’s not like turning to a page in a book.  He unrolls the scroll, and he reads from Isaiah 61: “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.”

Then he rolled up the scroll – again, this tool awhile - and gave it back to the attendant.  This functioned as a big, dramatic pause.  There was great anticipation.  And when he spoke, this is what he said: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Wow.  This was powerful.  People commented on how well he spoke, how proud they were.  They marveled at him.  “Isn’t this Joseph and Mary’s boy?” they asked.  Then Jesus continued.  But rather than wow the crowd with a moving, inspirational sermon, Jesus says, “No doubt you are going to quote to me the proverb, “Doctor, heal yourself.”  Take care of your own people, your own town.  And then he said, “You are going to want me to do here in my hometown the things I did in Capernaum.  Well, I know that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

What?  Jesus seems to be going out of his way to antagonize the people of Nazareth.  The great preacher Fred Craddock said that the opening of a sermon is like driving a bus.  As you start off, you’re just trying to get everybody on board so that they will take the trip with you, and so you want to connect with the hearers.  Unfortunately, Jesus had not read Fred Craddock’s book.  

Jesus goes on to remind the crowd of instances in which God’s favor is shown not to good Israelites, but to Gentiles.  Remember when there was a severe famine, and Elijah went not to one of the Hebrew widows, but the widow at Zarephath and she was the hero of the story?  Or remember when there were many lepers in Israel, but the leper who was healed was Naaman the Syrian?”

What is Jesus thinking?  It is one thing to be provocative; it’s another to be stupid.  What’s the use of having a hometown Messiah if it’s not going to benefit the hometown?  Where did Jesus get off?  

Why did Jesus seem to go out of his way to offend his hometown congregation?

Well, there are a couple of possibilities.  There is this quote from the poet Maya Angelou.  She said, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”  Jesus could not be the prophet he needed to be – he could not be the savior he was called to be – if he just told the home folk what they needed to hear.  And so to truly be free, to truly be Jesus, he could not be tied to his hometown.

There is maybe another reason.  The scripture Jesus read was basically his purpose statement.  And it pointed to the idea of Jubilee and the Jubilee year – every 50 years, debts were to be forgiven, indentured servants were to go free, land was to be returned to the original family.  Jesus was about healing and release and recovery and reconciliation.  This was Good News for the poor, the troubled, the oppressed.

Maybe the people in Nazareth were relatively privileged.  Maybe they were not in need of his ministry in the way the people in Capernaum were.  He was not going to make a big production just for the sake of impressing the home folks.  

For whatever reason, Jesus lays out in no uncertain terms that he is not just a Hometown Prophet – that his ministry will have a far greater scope.  The people had heard that he put on a good show in Capernaum, but he was not about show.  
So of course, the crowd became enraged.  They did a 180 and mob mentality set in.  The punishment on the books for false prophecy was death.  They chased him to the edge of town and intended to throw him off the cliff there.  Luke does not tell us how exactly, but Jesus was able to walk away.

So: Check your evaluation sheets.  What kind of grade does Jesus get?  From the crowd, he gets a big fat “F.”  

There were good reasons the people in Jesus’ hometown reacted so strongly.  First, there was the problem of familiarity.  They knew Jesus—or they thought they did.  This was the kid they had watched grow up, the boy who had worked with his father in the carpenter’s shop.  Who was he to think he could just come in and tell them the way it was?

Jesus’ words were harsh, but if it were someone else, they may have been a little easier to digest.  But having known Jesus for years, they could not recognize him as a prophet.  Certainly not as a messiah.

I wonder if we sometimes have that same problem.  Jesus can be too familiar.  Too much of a pal, too much “our” guy.  Have you ever noticed all the paintings of Jesus that have him as a blond, blue-haired white guy?  Have you noticed that we tend to attribute to Jesus good middle-class American values?  Making him somebody who could probably serve on the board of the Chamber of Commerce?  (No offense to those of you who may be on the chamber.)  Familiarity can blind us.  Jesus is a friend, yes, a friend who is always with us.  But Jesus is not our lackey.

Maybe the bigger issue was resentment that Jesus had taken God’s favor to others – others whom they didn’t care for.  Capernaum, where Jesus had already had success, had a strong non-Jewish population.  That was one thing.  But then his stories about the widow of Zarapeth and Naaman the Syrian were completely uncalled for.

It galled them that Jesus had used their own scriptures against them, turned their own tradition against them.  They wanted a manageable Messiah.  They did not want someone barging in to remind them of a part of their own tradition that they would just as soon forget: that God’s favor extended beyond the confines of Israel.

At the root of it all, they were offended by God’s grace, grace toward those of whom they did not approve.  

And here again, we can be like the folks in Jesus’ hometown.  We can feel under siege, like the good people of Nazareth.  The world feels out of control, and we want God to be on our side.  Like the people of Nazareth, we can be offended by God’s grace, which actually embraces those who are different from us.  

We want a predictable messiah.  What we don’t want is a savior who will challenge us and maybe even change us.

In his sermon “The Drum Major Instinct,” preached just a few weeks before he was killed, Martin Luther King, Jr.  closed by speaking of how he would want to be remembered.  King says not to mention his awards and honors, which in the end are shallow and not really important.  But he says,
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.  I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.  I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.  I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.  And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.  I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.  I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

He was referring to Jesus’ words from scripture.  Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoners, proclaiming good news to the poor.  What this all adds up to is offering God’s grace to folks who are on the outside, grace to those on the margins.  Then, as now, that can anger people.

As it was for Jesus, as it was for Martin Luther King, Jr., faithfulness can be costly.  King was assassinated in 1968, but there was another tragedy in the King family in 1974.  Martin Luther King, Sr. – Daddy King – was preaching at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  The church was in the midst of worship when gunshots rang out.  A gunman missed King.  But the church organist was struck and killed.  The organist was Mrs. King.

Colleagues from around the nation came to support the King family, including Gardner Taylor, known as the Dean of African American preachers.  Taylor recalled the way the Ebenezer Church members pulled together with its singing hymns of faith, led by the choir who had experienced this great loss, yet gave testimony to its abiding faith.

Taylor visited with King Sr. that week.  He recalled:

Midst the tall Georgia pines, in the King family home, touched with the strange stillness of death, I sat with Martin Luther King, Sr., on Tuesday evening.  He bit his lips and said, “They killed Martin, [my other son] A.D. is dead, and now they’ve killed Bunch [his wife’s nickname]. “  He stopped awhile.  Then he said, clutching my hand, “A.D.’s third son came to me the other day, and he said is going to preach [he was called to ministry].”  Then he looked at me and said, “They won’t be able to kill us off.”  

Jesus’ inaugural sermon did not earn high marks from his hometown congregation – but I have a feeling that Jesus wasn’t in it for the grade.  Amen.