[Propertalk] Fw: PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2B

[Joe Parrish]

Subject: PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2B



PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 (7 of the 70 plus preaching resources available at GoodPreacher.com for this Sunday):

PASTORAL IMPLICATIONS: Luke 4:21-30

Luke recounts in this passage a dramatic reversal of fortune for Jesus who suddenly is no longer the darling of the Nazareth crowd; Jesus becomes instead the goat. In fact, Jesus so alienates the homefolks that they want to stone him by throwing him onto the rocks below a precipice. Such a punishment is usually reserved for blasphemers and adulterers.

The question the text begs is this: How do we account for such murderous rage on the part of Jesus’ once friendly neighbors? First, Jesus self-defines. Self-definition is a family therapy term that expresses a certain posture of over-againstness or self-differentiation from the prevailing family system. The system’s reaction is most often acute. In fact, family therapists call it an “acute phase” where the system tries to pressure the person who is defining herself in opposition to the system to return to her “normal” position. The renegade member has disturbed the homeostasic equilibrium of the system and must be either recouped or expelled. If the offense is significant to the group’s cohesiveness or identity, then expulsion is the only option.

Further, by stealing the crowd’s criticism that he is not performing miracles in Nazareth as he did in Capernaum, Jesus defines himself not as a miracle-worker, but as a messiah. He also criticizes their hometown resistance to his prophetic mission as the reason for his not being able to do miracles. This self-definition in itself is enough to provoke censure and expulsion, but Jesus courts disaster by allying himself with outsiders who received God’s favor as non-Jews. In so doing, Jesus has wounded the Nazareth crowd narcissistically, i.e., at the core of their being, at how they represent themselves to themselves, at the level of their self-image.

Such narcissistic wounding is unforgiveable. Their narcissism, their self-elevation and self-inflation as God’s chosen people, is punctured by Jesus’ skillful use of the stories of Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephtah. For the elite there is little value in being God’s chosen if you cannot see yourself as specially endowed and favored. The only recourse is psychological annihilation (murder). The people of Nazareth could well have chosen to shun or ignore Jesus, to declare him a pariah, and to ostracize him along with the lepers, the dispossessed, and the non-Jews. But apparently, their wound is so deep that only murder will heal their injury. Possibly, because they do not have ecclesiastical sanction for murdering Jesus, they allow him to pass. Clearly this story represents a foreshadowing of Jesus’ eventual trial and death.

>From a pastoral perspective this passage may serve as a cautionary tale for the church and its prophetic ministry. Our culture tends to tolerate many Christian denominations’ claim of exclusive entre to God through Jesus Christ. For some reason the cultural despisers of religion do not flinch at this ideologically extreme statement. Probably this is because it is voiced by people who are able to compartmentalize their lives into worldly endeavors to secure themselves and those they love and religious practices that produce conforming cogs for the machinery of private enterprise. As long as religious or Christian people fit with the culture in terms of its consumption goods and its involvement in leisure activities, the non-religious culture deigns to accept faith assertions as quaint, archaic, and/or irrelevant. which they plan to throw him.

The preacher might work with the insight that this text records one of the first acts of Jesus’ ministry, yet it also anticipates the end of his earthly life: he will be rejected by his own people and some will desire to kill him. The text anticipates his resurrection in the curious yet powerful final verse that indicates how little power people have over him, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” Where does he go? Because of their rejection of him, because they are offended that God’s saving grace is for all people, he goes from his own people to take his message to the Gentiles. He is able to escape because he remains “filled with the power of the Spirit” (4:14).

Revelation is always two-way, it must be given and it must be received. Revelation that is not received is not yet revelation. The Word continues to go where it will be heard and received. Many of us would love to be able to control God, to have God save those we think should be saved, love just the loveable, and forgive only the forgivable. Yet God is sovereign and God’s ways are not ours. Those people who are least worthy of being saved are included in those God came to save. Those who are least loveable because of how they behave or what they have done, remain precious children in God’s sight, worthy of redemption. Christ died not just for what is forgivable, but for what is seemingly unforgivable.

It is easy for us to be like the people of Nazareth, offended that the grace of God might extend to some we might consider as unworthy. Still, we need to remember that at one time we were the unworthy, and the word came to us and abides in and with us. Even our rejection of the Word does not preclude what God can do.

Paul Scott Wilson


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