Each Week Fr. Scott's sermons may be read here on line.
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany – January 31, 2010
Like most families with young children at Christmas, last month the parents of this one started their day early but, unlike most families with young children, this one started their day exercising, something beyond the comprehension of just about every other parent who has struggled out of bed at the crack of dawn on the 25th of December as their offspring clamor to tear into their presents.
But this family is not like too many others. President Obama and his wife Michelle indeed kicked off their Christmas Day in Hawaii by going to the gym at 6:40 a.m. and returned more than an hour later. While Sasha and Malia got gifts, the first couple did not exchange presents, White House aides said. Neither did the family go to church; instead they spent the day at the oceanfront home they rented in Kailua on the island of Oahu.
In fact, as far as I can determine, the President and his family have not been to church since last Easter when they attended the 11 a.m. service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., just opposite the White House on Lafayette Square, a safe choice reporters said afterwards. Safe because every president since James Madison has worshipped at what is known as the “Church of the Presidents” at least once since the church was founded back in 1815, always sitting in pew number 54.
The church’s kneelers are embroidered with the names of different commanders in chief, and parishioners are proud that they keep their cool in the presence of the most powerful man in the country, even if they have to endure passing through metal detectors and having their bags searched.
Despite their avowed nonchalance, most in the congregation did not display Anglican reserve when the first family walked down the aisle to number 54; according to reporters, “nearly everyone started clapping and whooping.”
“It’s a very warm congregation,” said one 91 year old woman, a 35 year member of the parish. The president’s name came up only once in the service, in the prescribed prayer for “Barack, our president, the leaders of Congress, and the Supreme Court, and all who are in authority.” The church’s rector, the Rev. Luis Leon, did almost nothing to tailor his sermon to suit his high profile guest.
“I never preach to the president,” Father Leon has said, “I preach to the congregation. My rule of thumb has been that he gets what everybody else gets and I hope that some of it speaks to him.” Besides, his sermons are prepared before he knows if the president will be attending services; on Easter he only found out the night before. Once they are written, they stay as they are.
No matter how many times pew 54 has been occupied, Father Leon says that having the nation’s chief attending to his words is, and I quote, “daunting,” which my dictionary defines as “being drained of courage.” “You never get used to it,” he said.
Indeed. I cannot imagine what it would be like to stand behind that historic pulpit and make eye contact with the person who happens to be sitting nine rows back. Sometimes, no matter how nervous you may be, no matter who your congregation may be, no matter what you fear their reaction may be, sometimes the task of the preacher, as the great Reinhold Niebuhr once said, is to tell unpleasant truths to people you have grown to love. And, what is often true for preachers is often true for presidents; as Clarence Page pointed out in today’s Tribune: “Unfortunately…in our nation’s politics, telling uncomfortable truths is…a surefire way to get into deep you-know-what.”
Truth telling is never an easy task. How much more difficult is that task when some of those sitting in the pews are the very ones who remembered you as you were growing up? Jesus, as he preaches his first sermon, faces a daunting task of his own today, speaking, not to a government official but to people who regard him as their own. Despite his likely nerves, he gets off to a good start: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Now, despite the fact that Luke says “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth,” still they begin to question the source of those words. Who is he to be making such a claim? “Is this not Joseph’s son?” they mutter.
They know very well who he is; some of them have known him since his youth. They are not really asking a question about his identity here; they are making a statement of expectations. Since you are Joseph’s son, they are saying, a hometown boy made good, it’s time to deliver the goods to your hometown; it’s time to do for us what you’ve already done for others. Luke has already noted that a report about Jesus had “spread through all the surrounding country.”
The old maxim, “Doctor, cure yourself,” does not refer to Jesus’ own need for healing but to the perceived needs of what the crowd thinks of as “his people.” Family and group obligations ran deep back then; they still do in that part of the world. “If you were able to heal the undeserving people of Capernaum, the crowd insists, you should be able to do even better for your own kind.”
Their question as to his identity here is a demand for loyalty. Throughout the ages we hear of rulers and presidents who have demanded the same display of loyalty from their own preachers, many of whom met with unpleasant consequences, to say the least, when the powers that be did not appreciate their powers being publicly challenged. We cannot all live up the old Episcopal society lady’s praise of her rector: “He’s such a marvelous preacher,” she told a visitor. “He never talks about politics or religion.”
Today, the people don’t want talk about scriptural fulfillment; they want a display of spiritual power. Later, at the cross, Jesus will hear a similar, if more taunting demand to demonstrate that his words were true: “He saved others, let him save himself.” In fact, the shadow of the cross looms over today’s tale of adulation, expectation and rejection; a tale that ends not with Jesus crucified and resurrected, but saved at the last minute, passing through the crowd and going on his way, unrecognized.
Luke deliberately places this account of rejection at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, alerting us to the pattern that would prevail throughout this Gospel, a Gospel that begins with people’s heightened expectations and ends with their rage when God seemingly fails to deliver the goods. (Perhaps a president can relate to such a course of events; despite their high hopes at the outset, everyone gets angry when they don’t get what they want when they want it.)
Again and again, the scriptures make the same point but it never seems to penetrate the shell of our self interest. And that is this: God will not always act in the way we expect him to act; God will extend mercy to whomever he wishes, not just to those we believe deserve his favor; such people typically being those who look, think, and act just like us. Those from our hometown, say.
We are under God’s rule; God is not under ours.
At first the people in Nazareth marvel at Jesus’ “gracious words” about the fulfillment of scripture but when he stops telling amusing anecdotes from the desperate preacher’s joke book and begins giving illustrations of the ways God’s grace is extended to outsiders, very quickly adulation gives way to rage. A rage which is only intensified when Jesus takes the people’s own stories, their own memories, and uses them as an example.
Remember, he tells them; remember the stories of what God has done in the past; remember the truths which you have been taught.
Remember the time of the great famine when God sent the prophet Elijah to a foreign land to bring not only food to a starving Gentile widow but new life to her dead son. “Elijah stretched himself upon the child,” says I Kings, “and cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.’” And when it did the widow cried to the prophet, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is true.” (Recall what the Roman centurion says after Jesus breathed his last. “He praised God,” Luke says, “and cried out, “Certainly this man was innocent.”
Again and again, in Testaments Old and New, God chooses to bless those who lie outside the boundaries of our choosing. Elisha, who has been passed the prophetic mantle from Elijah, cures a Gentile warrior of leprosy who then proclaims, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
The people of Nazareth are familiar with these stories; they believe they are familiar with Jesus as well. But instead of telling them what he thinks they want to hear, repeating the familiar feel good stories he learned as a boy, he comes to them as a new man, one who tells old stories in an attempt to bring his people to new life.
The words just will not penetrate. Being reminded of what they already know by someone they think they know sends them into a rage; all they want to do is drive the word over a cliff; and all Jesus can do is leave his hometown. In Luke, he never comes back. Returning to Capernaum, he once again astounds the crowds, teaching and preaching with an authority that these outsiders eagerly grant him.
Prophetic preaching to those who hold power over you is daunting at the best of times. It’s daunting to call people to their better selves; all too often it brings out their worst. But when we feel our courage being drained; when we feel that it’s easier to go along and get along, we would be well to remember how many times in his life Jesus turns to the Spirit of God for support.
That same amazing, unrestrained, untamed Spirit that strengthened him, that fed the widow and raised her son, that washed the warrior clean, that amazed the centurion continues to strengthen, feed, raise, heal and amaze us; even as at times it enrages us when circumstances run contrary to our expectations.
Our God will speak and act in ways we cannot always predict or control; our children will speak and act and grow in ways we cannot always predict or control. So much is out of our hands; so much must be taken on trust. Nonetheless, we are all called upon to proclaim the word in whatever way we can, wherever we happen to be: behind a pulpit, behind a desk, behind a kitchen table. We are all called to speak the truth courageously in love, whatever the consequences, knowing who it is who holds us in his hands; knowing that we will not fall from the edge but are kept safe in the rock of his righteousness.
In that is our comfort; in that is our truth.