josephholubsermons
Epiphany 4
January 31, 2010
Luke 4:22-28
Jubilee People 2
Last week’s gospel was the verses
preceding the ones for today, and I based my sermon on them and entitled
it, “Jubilee People.”
This week I also base my sermon on the gospel and entitle it
“Jubilee People 2.”
I have more to say about what it means to be a “Jubilee People.”
You may be wondering about
these buttons I am wearing on my stole.These buttons represent my “hot-buttons.”
Yes, I have a few hot-buttons, and I dare say you probably have
your hot-buttons too - things that
get under your skin
or set you off.
Have you ever
unintentionally
hit someone’s “hot button”, and they became angry or upset, and you were
left puzzled, wondering what you said?
Sometimes we push the hot buttons of others
intentionally
just to get under their skin.
I suppose it’s a way of fighting unfairly.
We all have our hot-buttons, those things that
make us a little crazy!
Our gospel today is about Jesus
pushing a congregation’s hot button - by all appearances
intentionally so!
So what did Jesus say that
ticked them off?
Things were apparently going smoothly at first.
Just a few verses before this Luke says,
“Jesus began to teach in their synagogues and was
praised by everyone.” (4:15)
But something happened, and Jesus obviously hit their
hot-button BIG
TIME, and they got really
angry, really fast, so much so they threw him out of the
synagogue and were going to forcibly throw him off a cliff outside of
town! It was like mob action.
So what set them
off so intensely and so violently?
In last week’s gospel, the first
half of this story, Jesus was in the synagogue for worship where it
was the custom to read from the Torah and the prophets (similar to what
we do with our series of readings). The
scroll was handed to Jesus and after he read a passage from Isaiah, he
declared, “Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
But you see, it wasn’t merely any passage from Isaiah that
he read and declared fulfilled, but it was Isaiah’s description
of the Jubilee Year or
the “year of the Lord’s favor”
as it was called.
According to Jewish Law, in the JUBILEE YEAR, which was to occur every
50th year, debts were to be cancelled, slaves and political
prisoners were to be released, and property and land was to be returned
to its original family owners.
Israel understood this be the implementation of God’s
desire that justice characterize their community life together.
It was a God-sanctioned way to level the economic and
social playing field and erase the great disparities that
had arisen between the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless, the
recognized and the marginalized.
Luke, by telling the story in the way he does, understands Jesus
to be the bringer of Jubilee and that the foundation of Luke’s
community of faith was the ideals of Jubilee as embodied in the
person of Jesus. Much of Luke’s
gospel is devoted to how Jesus lived-out Jubilee and brought Jubilee to
the last and least and those that religion and culture had marginalized.
It is clear that Luke’s vision
for his own community was for them to be a Jubilee Community-in Jesus.
Last week, in part 1 of this sermon, I challenged this
congregation to be and continue to be, unremittingly so, a
Jubilee community-in Jesus.
That’s where our gospel for today
begins. Luke writes,
“All spoke well of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”
So far, so good–smooth sailing.
But then came the hot-button. It
was the next thing he said that immediately got under their
skin.
What ticked them off was that Jesus
expanded and enlarged the conventional understanding of
Jubilee. Jesus expanded Jubilee
to include those outside
of Judaism and Israel - even to Israel’s enemies.
He pushed them to a radical place that was simply too
much for them to stomach, that hit their hot-button and they
went into a rage!
Jesus breached the boundary
that their religion had rigidly drawn as the
limit of God’s grace.
Jesus pushed them beyond their
narrow and confining boundaries
to see that God was present and graciously at work
outside of their boundaries.
The final straw that pushed
them over the top was that he used their own scriptures to
drive his point home! He reminded
them that in the days of Elijah when there was a severe famine in the
land, it was Gentile, widow woman
(That’s a triple whammy of non-personhood in those days!
Gentile
– widow – woman; in those days you didn’t get much lower on the
hierarchical totem pole than that; Gentile,
widow, woman hardly registered as a human being on their
prejudice meter). Jesus
reminded them it was
Gentile, widow, woman
who performed God’s ministry of grace to Elijah.
(1 Kings 17:8-14)
And if that wasn’t enough, just in
case they didn’t get the point the first time, he also reminded them
that in the days of Elisha,
of all the lepers there were in the land, the one and
only leper that was cleansed and healed was not an Israelite, but a
Gentile army commander, an enemy of Israel.
(2 Kings 5:1-27)
Hot button pushed – volcanic eruption! –
blasphemy! - throw him out of the synagogue – get him out
of town - and while you are at
it, throw him over a cliff!
I get it!
I get why they
were so angry. Jesus threatened
the most basic and fundamental premise of their religion – that
is, their identity as
mediators of God’s grace. Like
most religions always end up eventually being and doing,
including Christianity,
Judaism of Jesus time functioned
as and saw
themselves as a
“gatekeepers” to God’s
grace . Gatekeepers! They
made sure that no one had access to God without meeting
all the necessary requirements.
That’s why they became so enraged.
That’s why Jesus was perceived as such a threat.
That’s why they wanted to throw
him off a cliff. Jesus had
just declared right in their pretty little faces, that as far as God is
concerned, there are no outsiders, nobody is excluded from the
grace of God.
You see, what’s at stake here
for us, is nothing short of the
grace of God. The
grace of God is at stake,
I believe the question that
emerges out of this
story for us is
what kind of grace do we base our lives of faith upon;
what kind of
grace do we proclaim to the world;
what kind of
grace do we embody in our own lives at work, at play at school, at home;
what kind of
grace do we promote in this community of faith – a
counterfeit kind
of grace – or- an authentic
grace as embodied and expressed in the life and ministry of
Jesus?
What kind of
grace are we grounded in – are you grounded in?
Counterfeit grace is what I call
“gatekeeper grace.”
What do gatekeepers do?
Well, they make sure that only the people with the
right credentials
get in to whatever it is that is happening on the inside.
The assumption is that everyone
is an outsider, and you need credentials to get inside.
Gatekeepers broker a transaction to gain access.
Is that what a Christian is?
Is that what a follower of Jesus is -
a gatekeeper?
Is that how we define ourselves?
Is that what a Jubilee Community in Jesus is all about –
being gatekeepers?
To put it bluntly,
Counterfeit grace always has a
“but” in it.
Counterfeit grace loves
“buts.” It’s a fact.
“You are loved,
but…” “You are
accepted, but…”
“It’s all about grace,
but…” “You are
welcome here, but…” “You can come
in, but…”
Authentic grace removes the
“buts.” Authentic grace
is “but-less.”
Counterfeit grace is like when you are surfing the net
and you come to a website that is offering something
“free” –
BUT - all you have to
do is leave you credit card # or fill out the survey -
but it’s free!
Counterfeit grace says that we are all outsiders
and we must do
something to gain access to God; a transaction must be brokered to get
in: profess the right set of beliefs, doctrines or dogmas; conform to
the communities’ mores and values, whatever.
Authentic grace has no such restrictions.
Authentic grace has the audacity to say the opposite:
you are already in.
Counterfeit grace tries to convert you to a religion
or a specific religious expression as the genuine one; the
“real McCoy.” (“we’re the real
thing, everyone else is a fraud”)
Authentic grace transforms a person in love that
takes unique expression in each unique life.
Authentic grace supersedes and transcends all
the limitations, restrictions, qualifications, “ifs, ands and buts” we
hook on to grace thereby killing it and turning into a counterfeit.
Jesus pushes our
hot-buttons
and challenge us anew
to be a JUBILEE PEOPLE
who are not gatekeepers
of grace who restrict it and confine it, but rather proactive,
lavish spreaders and broadcasters of grace; a Jubilee people who
announce to the world that
grace is the default setting; that relationship with God is already there - a Jubilee people who see that their purpose and
mission is to help people become aware of it and to nurture it -
not to broker it; a
Jubilee people who deeply embody grace in their community life in the
ways we treat each other, and welcome the stranger, and reach out in
compassion and advocacy to last and least of the world.
I close with a quote from pastor and
author Spencer Burke,
“(Life) is not about acquiring grace—you’ve already got it, and
you’re (immersed in it and are) safe and secure.
You don’t have to spend energy trying to grasp grace; it
is time, instead, to find new ways to live in it (and embody it and
share it).”
Amen.
1 Spencer Burke, "A Heritics Guide to Eternity", Jossey-Bass 2006, p. .70 ( ) = my insertions