Pastor Ray found it difficult to reconcile this with an individual's response to the current national dialogue about the direction our country is moving. Should you really abandon the dialogue with those who are not receptive to your ideas when they refuse to hear you? He asked for a show of hands on who has engaged in a social media back and forth with someone holding a different idea than yours. Most hands went up and when he asked how those back and forth threads were going it was clear no minds were being changed by this back and forth.Another topic in the sermon was how God works through what we perceive to be our weaknesses. The gifts God gave each of us are sufficient and he particularly works through the things we wish we could do better. We all have those things together with the specific gifts God grants for each of us. When we work together, we have should have what we need.
This is certainly one way in which today's Gospel was pertinent to what is happening right now in the world around us.
In continuing the posting these reflections each Sunday I find I now approach the lectionary as like one of the initial readers of a Charles Dickens serial novel as it was published weekly. I appreciate each piece of the story and how one piece enhances or modifies the previous pieces.
The verses that grabbed my attention in today's Gospel were:
On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.
The Nazarenes are astonished by the wisdom of Jesus and take offense at the same time. Luke 4:14-30 provides the details of why they took offense and what Jesus said. Luke records Jesus reading Isaiah 61 1 2 in the Nazareth synagogue from a scroll, "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, rather than following the synagogue's expectations of providing traditional textual commentary (with all eyes are fastened upon him), Jesus simply starts by saying "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing". A family member, friend or neighbor speaking with this kind of authority must have been somewhat disconcerting.
When Jesus is asked to do in Nazareth what he did in Capernaum, he instead reminds them how the prophets performed in the times of Elijah and Elisha "I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed; only Naaman the Syrian.”
The Nazarenes responded in a completely expected human way. They took offense. They were furious. Shouldn't God cleanse and heal everyone? Instead Jesus gave them examples of how God put the marginalized and the foreigners ahead of those who should have been preferred - his own people.
Makes me think of the groups of people I feel an affinity towards Today I read this Gospel as a veil lifts for me. I see this country differently because a different view of life is being fulfilled.
I live in an America that now is routinely incarcerating foreigners at the U.S. southern border. Our duly elected government classify them, like always, as immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers (although these distinctions make no difference in terms of immediate action). When any of the undocumented foreigners arrive at our border, regardless of their classification, they are incarcerated. Those who have families are given their choice - be deported with your children or be deported without them.
I read this Gospel as what was described above is justified by our government by claiming these actions are biblical. I read this Gospel as our government blames the foreigners arriving at our borders for the incarceration the U.S. is "forced" to make. I read this Gospel as the president, the administration and many other fellow citizens argue this is like it has always been only now the laws are enforced in the way they always should have been enforced.
At times the administration claims they are just enforcing the law, after all. They are just “trying to keep us safe.” They also argue, at times, this is an effective deterrent to stop people from arriving at the border. They say we no longer have a choice because of a border crisis and state this zero-tolerance policy polls well with most Americans as long as families are not involuntarily separated. Does public safety really rely on locking up children or asylum seekers?
I read this Gospel as last week the American president addressed his supporters. He mocked a 92 year old past president's visionary slogan of "A Thousand Points of Light" and compassionate conservatism by saying "Thousand Points of Light, I never quite got that one. What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out? And it was put by a Republican, wasn't it?"At the same time many of his supporters scold those that disagree with the president without, what they deem to be, proper civility.
Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail,
First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season".
Jesus did not coddle the Nazarenes in the synagogue. In his direct actions he defied their assumptions and expectations. Just as they challenged his identity he challenged theirs and defies who they thought he should be. They felt what he had done in Capernaum he should do for his neighbors, friends and family because he was a Nazarene.
Today's Gospel teaches me that my spiritual Achilles' heel is civility. I don't want to be rejected so I follow expectations and yield to social pressure to not be part of a change in the world around me. After all, who is to say that change is the right change?.
Rejection sets in motion an unraveling of identity. Rejection causes a questioning of the self, then a justification of the self to validate who you are through all the external forces that clamor for attention and loyalty. In these moments there is a longing to trust and believe in what makes you feel loved. These moments are when unconditional acceptance and love for who you truly becomes critical.
Rejection is hard to slough off with an, “Oh, well. That’s their problem” or a, “That’s ok, I’ll just move on.” Jesus knows this. Jesus has experienced this. Rejection eats at the soul, even a soul that knows better. So, Jesus goes first. That is what Jesus does for us.
I am afraid he would be amazed at my unbelief as well.
OS - Is there something missing?
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