21Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
Luke 4:21-30
23He 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.’ ” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25But 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, 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They 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. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (February 2, 2025) on Luke 4:21-30.
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So last week, I invited us to pause and hold whatever we were feeling, thinking, or imagining until we listened to the 2nd half of the story we heard from the gospel according to Luke. Jesus had just started his public ministry and began to make a name for himself throughout the region of Galilee. When he returned to the town he grew up in, the synagogue was packed with people he had grown up with. The attendant in that space handed him a scroll containing words from the prophet Isaiah and he was invited to read and preach. When he unrolled the scroll, he read out loud a handful of verses describing what life would be like for the community when the Messiah showed up. At first, those around him nodded and whispered and were excited by what he said. But once his words started to sink in – the promise of good news only for the poor; the hope of realising every prisoner and those who were oppressed; the healing of those who needed to be healed while also kicking off a year of jubilee that would reverse everyone’s economic futures – it’s then when the questions started bubbling up. If we let Jesus’ words remain merely abstracted and spiritualized, then we’re okay with what he said since we all struggle, worry, and long for some kind of relief. The words Jesus shared, though, were also pretty literal. Wondering if we are really poor or oppressed or if we’re pretending to be those things as a way to harm those around us – while also thinking if we really do what our economic futures and those around us to be reversed – aren’t ones we might be so thrilled to have after listening to these words from the son of a carpenter. Pausing to wonder and think what’s really going on can gnaw on us. And when Jesus kept speaking, that gnawing grew into a deep, deep, grind.
Now Jesus seemed to know what they were thinking since he named their expectation that his attention, power, and love should primarily be for the benefit of those immediately around him. This community had, after all, been there while he was busy living his life. Yet the biblical stories Jesus used to interpret Isaiah’s words made them second guess who this Jesus might be. The prophet Elijah’s lived roughly 900 years before Jesus was born. And he worked primarily in what was known as the Northern Kingdom which formed after the kingdom David established broke into two after the death of his son Solomon. Elijah was known as a prophet who performed miracles and who also ticked off those who assumed they knew what God could do. So after one particularly intense verbal battle with the king and queen of Israel, Elijah became a hunted man since God, through him, initiated a famine that lasted three years. At first, Elijah found safety hiding in the wilderness, away from the police and soldiers that stalked him. But when the water in that area dried up, he fled across the border into the land of the Philistines. The Philistines were, at that time, the major political and religious competitors to ancient Israel. And those kingdoms regularly fought wars against one another. The famine, though, wasn’t restricted to only one country and Elijah soon ran into a widow who was about to make the last meal for her and her family. When Elijah drew near, she had no interest in inviting anyone to her table who might take away the limited food she could find. She relented, however, and when she went to make food for her and her kin – God also chose to provide to this non-believer everything she needed to thrive. A generation later, Elijah’s disciple Elisha, found himself in a similar position. Naaman, the commander of the armies of the kingdom of Aram, a nation that regularly fought with and against Israel and Judah, had contracted some kind of skin disease. Naaman wasn’t a follower of God nor was he necessarily the kind of person we imagine should be a part of God’s holy family. And yet after being told by an enslaved woman what God was doing through Elisha, Naaman sought him out and was healed. Both stories show God choosing to act among people we would put at the back of the line when it comes to seeing what God’s love should do. We could, I think, read way too much into these stories by assuming this was God saying that these outsiders rather than the insiders were now God’s chosen family. Yet the stories don’t end with Naamen or the widow becoming the believer they assume they would become. Rather than justifying our own sin by consciously or unconsciously deciding who is God’s people and who isn’t, we can choose to notice what happened before any miracle took place. What we see, read, and hear in these two stories are people – with their God – showing hospitality to those they never wanted to be hospitable to in the first place. Elijah became a refugee who needed help from a woman who thought she had nothing to give. Yet when she gave him a seat at her table, God’s hospitality for her and her family flowed. Naaman, a military leader who won victories against God’s chosen people, needed Elisha to show him the kind of hospitality and care that no army could bring to bear. And when he let himself be vulnerable, Elisha welcomed him and showed what love can always do. God wasn’t simply going to be a God who would only work in the ways we expect. God would, instead, operate through the kind of hospitality that reveals who our God chooses to be.
And so that might be why the community after listening to these words – then tried to toss JEsus off a cliff. After initially being really excited about what this wunderkid might do, they realized he wasn’t there to make their assumptions true. Rather, the God who chooses to do what God chooses to do will never be limited by who we imagine that God to be. Instead, our God will love. And this love will not be idealized or limited to only one community or one kind of relationship or only expressed between the vows couples make to one another. The love God gives is a love we get to share as individuals, as a church, and as a community living in the world. God’s love is often experienced at its best through hospitality. And its within these kinds of relationships where we learn how love really is patient and kind, not envious, arrogant, or rude. It’s the practice of hospitality that invites us to move beyond insisting that everything and everyone must follow our way. Hospitality is where and how we bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. And while hospitality, like love, is always risky – we have a God who, through Jesus, has already shown that hospitality by claiming you in baptism and faith – as a beloved child of God. We, because of Christ, have already been brought into a divine family that extends beyond every border of time and space. And God did this not because we are perfect or special or always look the part when it comes to being faithful or Christian or even a true believer. Rather, Jesus chose you because you really are worth living, dying, and rising for. And so if Jesus can be that hospitable to us, I wonder what it might be like to show others what God’s hospitality truly is.
Amen.