LUKE 4:14-30

14  Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.

15  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16  When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,

17  and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

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."

20  And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

21  Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

22  All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?"

23  He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'"

24  And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.

25  But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land;

26  yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

27  There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

28  When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

29  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

30  But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

There are times when it isn’t easy to love someone.  A mother probably felt that way one morning when her four year old son came running out of the bathroom with tears in his eyes. When the mother asked him what was wrong he held up his toothbrush. “I dropped it in the toilet,” he sobbed. “Don’t worry,” the mother said. “We’ll just throw it away and buy you a new one.”  Much to the mother’s surprise the little boy stood there with a puzzled look on his face, he then ran back into the bathroom. A few seconds later he came running out of the bathroom with her toothbrush in his hand. “Mama,” he said. “We better throw this one away too ’cause it fell in the toilet last week.”

There are times when you just don’t want to love someone.   How about you?  If you’re like most people you know what that’s like. Jesus knew what it was like.  He saw it first hand when he went to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth.  After Jesus read that passage from the prophet Isaiah things got ugly, really ugly.  So let’s go back bit and take a closer look at what happened that day.

Remember now Jesus was the one who chose the passage that he read from Isaiah.  Luke tells us that after they handed him the scroll Jesus unrolled it and found the place where it was written: "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."

Those words were just what those downtrodden people needed to hear, especially when Jesus sat down and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  In their minds it meant that the messiah had finally arrived and was going to bring an end to all of their sadness, suffering and sorrow.

Things were looking up but then Jesus added a P.S. to his message that made them angry.  It made them so angry that they wanted to throw him off that cliff.  It all started when Jesus mentioned the widow of Zarephath and a Syrian general by the name of Naaman. I’m paraphrasing here but what Jesus basically said was, “Do you remember the widow of Zarephath?  Do you remember how the prophet Elijah performed a miracle that kept her alive during that terrible famine?  And do you remember Naaman, that Syrian general and how the prophet Elisha performed a miracle that healed him of his leprosy?  When the people in the synagogue heard that they got all bent out of shape.  They were furious because the widow of Zarephath and Naaman were both foreigners and they were convinced that God’s love was only for respectable and reverent Jews.  They couldn’t believe that God’s love was also for people who weren’t Jews like them.

What happened that day in the synagogue would be like Jesus walking into this sanctuary and saying, “Guess what everyone?  I just performed a couple of miracles that healed a terrorist in Afghanistan and a tyrant in North Korean.”  Would you be okay with that?  Or would it trouble you a little?

When you look at what happened that day in the synagogue it brings you face to face with a very simple put challenging question.  The question is this: Who is the Lord challenging you to love? 

Could it be the sister you haven’t spoken to in a couple of years?  No? Everything is good with your family?

Well then, maybe it’s the Hindu family with all those children making a ruckus in the restaurant.

Or how about the gay couple sitting behind you and holding hands in the movie theater?

Or the strangers who showed up for the Christmas Eve service and had the audacity to sit in your pew?

Here are a few more for you.

How about those illegal immigrants who are doing those menial jobs that no one else wants to do or the welfare mother who has five children with four different fathers or the ACLU lawyer who complained about the baccalaureate service at the high school?

Many years ago Bill Gates wrote some “Rules for High School Graduates.”  One of those rules has to do will people who don’t get a lot of loving during their teenage years.  It’s Rule #11 on his list and it goes like this:  “Be nice to nerds.  Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” 

What was true then is also true today.  Nerds today don’t get a lot of love from their classmates.  After all, how could God love someone like that?  How could God love a Hindu family with unruly children, or a gay couple in the theater or those strangers who had the audacity to sit in your pew, or those illegal immigrants, or that lazy welfare mother or that pain in the posterior ACLU lawyer?  Indeed how could God love a Syrian general or a widow from Zarephath?  

That’s the thing about the love that Jesus practiced and proclaimed.  It isn’t always cozy, comfortable or convenient.  It isn’t always what you would call a warm and fuzzy Barney kind of love.  By the way I have to ask.   Do preschoolers still go crazy over Barney the dinosaur?  Do the still sing the Barney song?  You know.  It’s the one that goes like this:

I love you. You love me.        We are friends like friends should be.

With a great big hug and a kiss from me 2 you.        Wont you say you love me 2.

The love that Jesus practiced and proclaimed isn’t always cozy, comfortable or convenient.  Rev. Neil Parker learned that lesson when a fellow minister got called out of town for a family emergency and asked him to celebrate a wedding for him.  The minister who stepped in to do the wedding had his misgivings when he arrived at the farm where the wedding was scheduled to take place.  As soon as he turned into the driveway he found himself surrounded by a sea of motorcycles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  When he walked into the farmhouse he was introduced to the parents of the bride and the groom.  They waited downstairs while the bride was upstairs getting ready.  Looking back on that eventful day the minister wrote, “It didn’t take long (for her to do that); jeans and a black T-shirt needed little more than a few flowers in the hair.  The groom was introduced to me as ‘Bear…’  Bear outweighed me at least two to one.  His beard was thick and bushy, his arms were heavily tattooed.  Bear didn’t say much.”  After checking to make sure the license was in order the minister went out to the field and announced that the wedding was about to begin.  Immediately all 140 guests got on their bikes and road them with “almost military precision,” into the field where they formed two rows facing each other. The roar of their engines echoed across the valley.  Then as the bride walked down that unusual center aisle each biker she passed switched off his engine.  After all the engines were stilled you could have heard a pin drop as she shyly walked up to Bear who was now standing there with tears in his eyes.  Gathered around them was a congregation made up of their families and members of the Sober Riders, each one a recovering alcoholic and each one a biker.  “Each one was bowed in prayer as we entered a holy moment.  The bride had given me only one instruction for the service.  ‘Make sure you have a sermon,’ she said.  ‘These people want to hear a word from God.’  ‘These people.’  Her people.  And for an afternoon, my people.  I stood in the middle of the field, in a congregation of T-shirts, jeans and tattoos, in front of a groom and a bride who knew exactly what they were doing and why, in a cathedral of fence-posts and Harleys, and together we gave thanks to God.” 

(A 5^th Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul, pp.258-260) 

It’s amazing how loveable people who are “unlovable” really are when you get to know them. Maybe that’s why Jesus is always pushing us to expand the boundaries of our love.  He knows that when your love is limited you also end up cheating yourself.  Amen.

Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes

February 3, 2013