Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 4:21-30

Tonight the LA Rams and the New England Patriots are playing in the 53rd SuperBowl and for the last two weeks, the excitement has been building for the hometown fans of these two teams. But it’s not just the diehards who are choosing sides. You also have the people who think the New Orleans Saints were robbed of their chance to play and want to see the Rams lose, and the people who want the Rams to win because they don’t want New England to either take home another trophy or tie the Steelers’ record for SuperBowl wins. The divisions run deep and each side thinks the other is the losers.

Hearing today’s gospel lesson, we see that this instinct to choose sides and create an “us” and a “them” is as old as the hills.

The gospel reading picks up in the middle of a story where Jesus has returned to his hometown of Nazareth and he has just finished reading during worship at the synagogue. For his reading, he chose these words from the prophet Isaiah:

18 “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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

After he concluded his reading, Jesus sat down, saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And at first, everyone responds positively and admires him. And, it’s clear from the reaction of the crowd that when Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor, they think that they are on the winning team.

But then he continues teaching, explaining what God’s word is for them in that particular time and place, and rooting his lessons in the scripture of their faith and ancestors.

First, Jesus recalls one of the miracle stories of Elijah. Elijah was a Jewish prophet who “lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the ninth century BCE.” We hear his stories told in First and Second Kings. [i] Elijah argued with the people who wanted to worship the Canaanite god Baal, defending Yahweh’s claim to be God alone, to the exclusion of all idols. [ii]

In First Kings Chapter17, Scripture tells us that there was a famine and no one had enough water or food. The word of the Lord came to Elijah and he left Israel and traveled to Zarephath, a town in the Gentile, or non-Jewish, region of Sidon which is Lebanon today. And when Elijah got to the town, he went to the house of a Gentile widow and he asked her to cook for him. Like everyone else, the woman had very little but she took the little bit of meal and oil that she had and she cooked for him, and when neither the meal nor the oil ran out, she cooked for her son and for herself that day and for many more days, and they survived the famine.

The second story that Jesus recalls happened during the time of Elijah’s successor, Elisha.  We get this story in Second Kings Chapter 5. The northern kingdom of Israel had been attacked repeatedly by the Assyrians, and in one of the Assyrian conquests, a girl was taken into the household of Naaman, the general of the Syrian army. When the general contracted leprosy, the girl told him about the prophet Elisha and eventually the general was invited to come and see him in Israel. When Naaman arrived, Elisha never even came out to greet him though; instead, Elisha sent word to him to bathe in the Jordan River. Naaman scoffed at the prophet’s instructions and was almost too proud or stubborn to follow them, but one of his servants persuaded him to do what he had been told, and he bathed and was healed.

With these two stories, Jesus reminds us that the kingdom of God is never “ours” alone. The year of the Lord’s favor is for everyone. God’s love for the world crosses boundaries and borders, regardless of whether they are constructed by religious institutions, society and culture, or for political or legal reasons.

And that’s when people get angry.

But Jesus never promises that the gospel is easy. Later in Luke Chapter 6, he will teach :

32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.  33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.[iii]

The boundary breaking character of the gospel, especially as we hear it told by Luke, cannot be ignored, even, and maybe especially, when it angers people.

This past Friday was the fifty-ninth anniversary of the beginning of the Greensboro sit in when four young black men from North Carolina A&T took seats at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter and refused to leave when they were denied service. After their action, sit-ins began happening in cities across the South and by the summer, restaurants began to integrate. All these years later, it’s easy to sum up the events of that summer in a sentence or two, but you can be certain that on that February 1, 1960  and in the months to follow, people were filled with rage at the ones who were saying that separate was not equal. The instinct to choose sides and create an “us” and a “them” is as old as the hills.

Sadly, all these years later, it wouldn’t be difficult to pull examples out of our headlines that illustrate how we continue to choose division over unity, hate over love, and “us” over “them.”

But the Good News is that despite our human nature —
the sinfulness and brokenness that turns us in on ourselves —
God doesn’t stop crossing boundaries or borders.

To each of us who thinks we are beyond redemption,
God steps over that imaginary line and says,
“No. You are mine.”
“You are loved.”
“You will live.”

And to the person against whom we want to rage, out of anger or fear, the person whom we want to put outside God’s love and mercy,
God steps over that imaginary line, too, and says,
“No. You are mine.”
“You are loved.”
“You will live.”

Our challenge today isn’t to be Monday morning quarterbacks, wondering how we would have responded that day in the synagogue, whether we would have been filled with rage with the crowd or followed Jesus as he passed through the midst of them.

Our challenge today is to see where we have built boundaries and borders in our lives here and now; where we have created divisions that have no place in the kingdom of God, and to see those whom we have tried to place outside God’s love and mercy. For those are the very same people whom we are called to love.

With these stories, Jesus invites us to choose again,
to choose unity over division and to chooser love over hate.

Let us pray…
Reconciling God,
Thank you for sending Your Son Jesus to show the world how vast your merciful love is;
Forgive us when we forget the Good News that You love us, when we cannot love ourselves or others.
By Your Spirit, give us courage to love as you first loved us.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.

[i] “Elijah,” Enter the Bible by Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/oldtestament.aspx?rid=31, accessed 2/2/2019.
[ii] “Elijah”, Fausset's Bible Dictionary on BibleWorks 8.0
[iii] Luke 6:32-35