Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Luke 4:21-30;I Corinthians 13:1-13
January 31, 2010

Family Hold Back

I’m not sure why Nazareth had such an image problem. True, Nazareth didn’t make it on Josephus’ list of the 45 cities of Galilee, and its name is missing from the 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud. On the other hand, it was big enough to have its own synagogue, and a lot of off-duty priests from Jerusalem seem to have lived there. There’s no reason to think it wasn’t a nice enough burg – a place to put down roots, raise up kids, and live a perfectly pleasant life. I can think of no obvious reason why Nazareth should be the butt of jokes, but apparently it was.

It wasn’t Two Egg, Florida, whose name makes it easy to make fun of, but neither was it the birthplace of kings or generals. One commentator quips that Nazareth was the New Jersey of the ancient world, but some of you, being from New Jersey, might not find that very funny.

Whatever the cause, Nazareth is the only town I can think of that is singled out in scripture by a David-Letterman-style one-liner. It appears in the Gospel of John. Philip runs up to his brother Nathanael and tells him he’s found the Messiah. It’s a guy named Jesus from Nazareth. Nathanael replies, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" That’s the kind of dig folks from Nazareth must have been used to.

What a stir it must have caused when the rumors about Jesus began to spread round his hometown.

"I heard he healed a man with leprosy. My cousin from Capernaum told me."

"A spice merchant came through here last week. Said Jesus was drawing huge crowds to hear him preach."

"Not the carpenter’s kid."

"Right! Joseph’s boy. You remember him."

"You mean James."

"No, Jesus, the oldest. I hear he’s made it good as a healer and a prophet."

"No way!"

"Way! It’s all over Capernaum."

"I hear he’s coming home this Sabbath. Maybe he’ll preach in the synagogue. I think I’ll go."

"So will I. It beats watching paint dry in this burg."

They must have run out of bulletins early in the synagogue that sabbath evening. It was standing room only. The rabbi, who had taught Jesus his Hebrew, sat beaming on the bema. And what perfect timing! The lectionary text for that night came from the scroll of Isaiah.

Jesus stood up, received the scroll from the attendant, and found the appointed text.

An electric surge passed through the congregation. At last, here’s someone Nazareth can be proud of! A hometown boy made good! The end to Nazareth’s long run of mediocrity.

"All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth."

At any moment, they must have thought, the miracles will begin. The healings, the mighty acts, the wondrous signs they’d heard about. This boy will put Nazareth on the map.

It was at that point, as we all heard, that things started going south in a hurry. Jesus started talking about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, dredging up that tale about how God helped that wretched foreign woman while his chosen people were wasting away with hunger. Then he reminded them how Elisha healed General Naaman, the Syrian, of his leprosy.

The Bible is full of such stories – of God showing mercy to strangers right under the nose of his chosen people, of God’s annoying habit of being God instead of the divine puppet God’s people would prefer.

Jesus must have gone on in that vein for quite some time, reminding his fellow Nazarenes the reason for that old saying, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own hometown." He was still going strong when someone grabbed the rope that was holding the "Nazareth Welcomes Jesus" banner and tied a noose in one end of it. With a growl the good people of Nazareth surged toward Jesus, hustled him out of the synagogue, and would have chucked him over the nearest cliff if he hadn’t "passed through the midst of them" and gone on his way.

The citizens of Nazareth had been hoping for a miracle. As it turned out, it was a miracle Jesus got out of his hometown in one piece.

The problem seems to have been that the people of Nazareth wanted Jesus all to themselves – or at least they wanted for themselves the benefits and blessings he would bring – for themselves and no one else. They wanted him to be "for us," and not "for them." They wanted him to confirm God’s election of the Nazarenes as God’s own people.

Jesus had a different spin on the whole notion of God’s election. For Jesus, election meant that the people closest to him had to wait in the back of the line until everyone else – maybe the whole world – received the blessings he was called to bring. Jesus seemed to be saying to Israel in general and to his hometown in particular, "Family, hold back! Wait until the guests are served, and then you can have your fill."

So they ran him out of town, which was where he had to go, anyway, because it wasn’t to Nazareth that God had called Jesus, but to Jerusalem. As it turned out, the good folk of Jerusalem finished what the good folk of Nazareth started that Sabbath day.

Tom Long says this story embodies a hard lesson for all of us to hear about Jesus.

What is it, do you suppose, that makes us resent that message so much? Is it fear that when we get to the table, there won’t be enough for us? Is our God so small and so ill-prepared that there won’t be enough to go around?

Or maybe it’s a sense of entitlement. We’ve earned our piece of the rock. All those years of teaching Sunday School. All those dollars put into the plate, week after week. All those Sabbath mornings we’ve driven out of our driveways on the way to church and waved to our neighbors in their dressing gowns. Doesn’t that count for something? Don’t we deserve special treatment?

We’re perfectly happy to welcome Jesus to the banquet we have prepared. What gets our goat is that he insists on making it his banquet, his table, his party. He sends us to the closet to fetch leaves for the table and out the front door to fetch in more guests. The table has to be bigger, always bigger, because he keeps inviting people we have already cut from our invitation list.

The most infuriating aspect of all is that, deep down, we’ve always known God is like this. Jonah knew it. That’s why he tried to go to Spain instead of Nineveh. "I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love . . ." (Jonah 4:2). I just knew it!

We know it too. We just don’t want it to get around, lest people get the notion we’re from Nineveh, not Nazareth.

When I was a graduate student in Scotland back in the 70’s, I took a trip down south to England to visit a family from my own hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The Thibodaux family. They had moved to England to work for Shell Oil, which was doing a lot of drilling in the North Sea at the time.

This family lived in a charming English village right off of a postcard – Norman church, bowling green, shiny red phone boxes – the works. And they had more or less adapted to English ways – except for one thing. The father of the family missed his McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce. Not your Texas Pete or your other imitations. The original. The stuff made in New Iberia, Louisiana. He hankered for some McIlhenny’s to put on his kippers and liven up his bubble and squeak.

Mr. Thibodaux went to the local greengrocer and explained his predicament. "I’ll see what I can do," the greengrocer said. Sure enough, a few weeks later, when he was in buying his veg for tea, the greengrocer called him over and said, "Mr. Thibodaux, It’s come!" He produced a bottle of McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce. "I bought a case!" he said.

A few weeks later, running low on supplies, my friend went back to restock. He perused the shelves looking for that friendly red bottle. He couldn’t find it. He asked the greengrocer, "Where’s the McIlhenny’s? I thought you bought a case."

"Oh I did," the greengrocer said. "I’ve got gallons of the stuff in the storeroom. But I don’t put it out on the selves. If I did that, the locals might buy it."

There’s a parable in there somewhere. Grace sitting on the shelf. Love in the storeroom gathering dust. God horded by a church that is afraid to share what it can never earn.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Well, something good did come out of Nazareth and something good was driven out of Nazareth because Nazareth was too narrow, too fearful, too gun-shy from being the butt of all those jokes, too worried that God might turn out to be too much like Jesus for comfort.

They were right to worry about that. And so are we. And what are we going to do about it? Drive Jesus out, or hunt for those leaves to make the table bigger?

Jesus isn’t going to change, but you and I can.

　

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