First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu at Ko olau. Who Does This Guy Think He Is? (Encounters With Jesus Series) Ron Mathieu

Transcription

1 Notes Jn SERMON OF THE WEEK First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu at Ko olau January 31, 2016 Who Does This Guy Think He Is? (Encounters With Jesus Series) Ron Mathieu H ave you ever gone to church and sat through a sermon where the preacher said something you totally disagreed with? Maybe everything was going along just fine when, all of a sudden, the preacher said something that really bent you out of shape? It s pretty easy to do and whether I try to or not, there will be something in my message today with which someone will take issue. This morning, as we continue our series entitled Encountering Jesus, we look at the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. It s where Jesus goes to His hometown of Nazareth and preaches in the very synagogue where He worshipped while growing up. And this encounter sets off such a firestorm, He is nearly thrown off a cliff by the congregation! But before you decide to run me up to the Pali Lookout, see if God has a word for you in this morning s message. Turn in your Bibles to Luke 4:14-30 and I ll set the scene. Here is a quick geography lesson for those who may not have grown up in the Palestine. Bethlehem and Jerusalem are in Judea, down south, near the Dead Sea. Nazareth and Caperneum are further north, near the Sea of Galilee. This is the area where Jesus started His ministry, where the wedding at Cana took place, and where He gave the Sermon on the Mount. And in between is Samaria. Luke tells us that although Christ was born in Bethlehem in Judea, He grew up in Nazareth, in Galilee. Joseph was a carpenter from Nazareth, as was Jesus, until He was about thirty years old and embarked on His ministry. In fact, Jesus would become known as Jesus of Nazareth and sometimes as The Nazarene. The town of Nazareth isn t even mentioned in the Old Testament and was regarded with special contempt (John 1:46), perhaps for its dirty streets and poverty, or the aggression of its residents. One commentator described it as the redneck area of Israel. To be called a "Nazarene" was to have a bad reputation. The inhabitants of Galilee were looked upon with contempt by the people of the more refined and mostly Jewish Judea because they spoke a cruder dialect, were less cultivated, and because of their position just off a major trade route, more integrated with non-jews. This underscores Pastor Dan s reference two weeks ago when in the Gospel of John Chapter 1, Nathaniel says to Philip: Can anything good come from Nazareth? (John 1:46) Well, that perception was apparently going to change because everyone was undoubtedly aware of the growing reputation of Jesus. And it must have been the talk of the town when they heard that their local boy (who was performing miracles elsewhere) was going to be in their synagogue for the coming Sabbath. Let s pick it up in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4, verse And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. 1

2 N ow it can be a tricky thing returning to your hometown. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh announced he was going to try to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. No one had ever attempted to do that before. When word reached Lindbergh's hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota, a skeptic remarked, "No man will ever fly all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. And if someone does, it won't be anyone from Little Falls!" And even today when I go back to Rhode Island where I grew up although I had a distinguished military career, was president of a business college, am a pastor and executive of a prominent Hawaiian church, and am a director of a major global nonprofit organization people still call me Ronnie and remember the time my tuxedo pants split in public at the senior prom. It s been said that a small town is a place where there s nothing to see or do, but what you hear makes up for it! And by now, the news had spread widely about the miracleworker from Nazareth and His family, friends, and neighbors were eager to see and hear Him. For sure, many remembered Jesus, as Luke gives this brief glimpse of his growing up there: Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. Luke 2:52 So they wait for the nice kid who became a good man, who found favor and who, by all accounts, has made a real name for Himself (and Nazareth) away from His local community. They've heard the buzz people are saying He s filled with the power of the Spirit. As we just read, He teaches in the synagogues around the area, and He s praised by everyone. Now it s important to realize this is the synagogue Jesus Himself would have worshipped in. His boyhood friends would have probably been there, as well as his teachers, neighbors, and fellow townsmen. They would have known Him known that He hadn t had formal religious training, but was a humble carpenter and yet also heard about the stir He had created beyond the town limits. Luke picks it up in verse 16: And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. We need to understand that although there would have been several readings during the service, you didn t just get up and read, any more than any of you would pop up on stage during our service, read scripture and then start preaching! So Jesus was being honored as a very special guest preacher, and the synagogue attendant would have ceremoniously handed the scroll to Him And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon me Instead of having a Bible as we do, each book of the 2 Hebrew Old Testament was on a separate scroll. The Jewish scrolls had no chapter or verse divisions. In fact, they didn t even have spaces between the words. All the letters ran in together without a break. So Jesus had to unroll the scroll and find the passage He wanted to preach about, which means He must have been in God s Word a lot to go right to the place where it was written! 18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 - to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. 20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him And he began to say to them, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now I find it really interesting that this is not the point where His hometown crowd turned on Jesus we ll look at that in just a few minutes. However, in my previous readings of this passage, I understood the crowd was upset because He was claiming to be the Messiah, and that was a sacrilege deserving of death. But let s look more closely. He's rolling up the scroll, giving it back to the attendant, and sitting down.

3 T hey can't take their eyes off Him. The crowd is mesmerized, waiting for the amazing words that will come from His mouth like everywhere else where He s preached! And Jesus continues, 21 - He began by saying to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. No anger! It says Jesus began, which implies He said more than was recorded, and the reaction of the crowd is amazement and no doubt appreciative for His gracious words. Now I m going to ask you to try and put yourself in the shoes of the Nazarenes who were there in the synagogue: The entire region was under Roman rule and even worse, a successive dynasty of Herod s who were so whacked that they made the term dyfunctional family seem like an episode of the Walton s. As Jews, for 500 years they d waited for the prophesied return of a Messiah who would liberate them from their sorry state and restore Israel to its former greatness. John the Baptist had convincingly stoked a rumor that the time for that liberation was at hand, and the Messiah was Jesus a Nazarene!! Reports were coming in from everywhere that Jesus was performing marvelous miracles, was the most awesome preacher of the day, and He was going to make an appearance right in their very own synagogue! (You think First Prez has a parking problem?) You d better believe that synagogue was standing room only. Imagine if the Powerball folks said that everyone had a free ticket and the winning ticket holders were from FPC, and they would be announced right here at Ko olau next Sunday. Be truthful, wouldn t you wonder if it was for you? Wouldn t you think about how such an unbelievable blessing would change your life, your children s lives? Wouldn t you imagine how you could erase our debt and impact your community and even change the world? That was the kind of anticipation the Jews felt with the possibility that the longawaited Messiah was coming and He was from Nazareth a place from where nothing good ever came up until now! So they packed out the synagogue and it says they were amazed at what He had to say, at the gracious words that came from His lips! Amazing statements? Gracious words? Proclaiming good news? Where are the cool miracles? When is He going to tell us how He s going to overthrow Roman rule? What about the restoration of the kingdom we had in the days of David and Solomon? But Jesus knows His people so well that He knows what 3 message they most need to hear, and He loves them so much He is willing to preach it. He s said He was anointed to release captives and open the eyes of the blind, so that is what He ll do. And then this encounter with Jesus pivots when the people of Nazareth ask: Isn t this Joseph s son? they asked. They might as well have said, Who does this guy think He is, God s gift to mankind? We watched Him grow up. I have a chair His father Joseph made. He never even went to seminary. Heck, He s from Nazareth, just like you and me! But I wonder if there s another implication to this comment: They would have known Him as he grew up but He also knew them. He would have known the good stuff and the dirt, who was honest and who cheated, who were the phony religious people, and they would know He knew! The problem was they saw Him only as the son of Mary and Joseph, the boy they had watched grow up in their own city. Isn t this Joseph s son? The irony is that He isn t Joseph s son, He s the Son of God! Angela and I are huge fans of Antiques Roadshow. It blows me away when someone has owned something forever, kept it in a closet or attic because it s ugly, and then find out it s really worth a lot.

4 S o when The Roadshow came to the Convention Center in 2007, we were really excited to get two highly-coveted tickets. We suspected the two small glass perfume bottles we owned were worth something, and it turned out they appraised at more than $2,000!!! We had no idea!!! But that was nothing compared to the lady who brought in a wooden bowl. She said, It was my husband's grandmother's given to me by my great-aunt, who acquired the bowl in the 1880s. It had sat on my husband's grandmother's floor for 70 years. The kids used to get in it and spin around. And when they got too big, then they couldn't spin the bowl anymore. And the appraiser calmly explained that it was an ancient koa poi calabash that was easily worth $20-30 thousand probably more at auction! The irony in today s passage is that the Nazarene s had a prize much better than a winning $1.5 billion Powerball ticket. Jesus really was God s gift to mankind! He was right in their midst but they didn t recognize it and refused it because even though He told them it was not the cash prize they expected and they wanted! Seeing that they wanted Him only if it is on their terms, Jesus refuses to go along. He says to them, 23 - Surely you will quote this proverb to me: Physician, heal yourself! And you will tell me, Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum Truly I tell you, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. Jesus closes the window to salvation He s offering and instead holds up a mirror to their lives. He says He s there to tell truth, not perform parlor tricks. God s house is not a showroom, it s a living room! He will not perform miracles because that will stand in the way of their seeing the kind of Kingdom that is truly at hand. It s as though He was saying, You think you want the truth? You can t recognize the truth, and you can t handle the truth. Or as He would later say in John 14:6: I am the Truth, and the Light, and the Way. And instead of shouts of Amen and Alleluia the hometown crowd starts to twitch in their seats. They individually know that He is talking to each and every one of them. And now that He has their undivided attention, Jesus doesn t just push back, He makes a point that really infuriates them: 25 - I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon And there were many in Israel with leprosy[b] in 4 the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed only Naaman the Syrian. You might be thinking: What s so irritating about that? It s important that we don t skip over it just because it s not obvious. Remember that these references were very familiar to His Jewish audience. In simplest terms, both this widow and Naaman were not Jews; not part of the chosen people. They were outsiders. It would be as if the Powerball guy came here next Sunday and said, I m not here as a messenger to announce which of you is the winner of the prize. I m here to tell you that I am the prize!!! And all of you who are disappointed don t recognize or properly value what God is actually offering you, so it will be given to someone else! Now why did He have to go and say that? His audience would also have known that Capernaum had a high percentage of non-jews, and Jesus was doing miracles there but would not in His hometown of Nazareth. Would we react differently? Well, sometimes I wonder. Now I m going to be very transparent. If someone accuses me falsely it really ticks me off. I think this is totally natural and suspect most of you feel the same way. Like if a minority accuses me of being racist. I m not. I fight against prejudice of all kinds, and have done so my whole life.

5 B ut being falsely accused doesn t come close to how upset I can get when someone calls me out with the truth, especially if it s a blind spot of truth in my life. Like if someone tells me I m not doing all I can to help the poor, or to lead FPC to reach younger people. It irritates me because I am very committed to ending poverty in the world. And we do lots for younger people, especially young families. But in my heart of hearts I get irritated because I know it s true. And I know I would have to get out of my comfort zone to do more. I know I ve spent more money on myself in one evening than what it costs one of my sponsored children s family to survive for a whole month! In my heart I know I ve resisted altering some of the ways we do church for a long time. Things that I and people like me find comfortable more than comforting for those who don t know Jesus. Approaches to ministry that would telegraph that outsiders are truly welcome and would feel as if they belong here. When I really encounter Jesus on His terms such challenges hit home to me as hard as they did to His hometown crowd. Today we re conducting our annual church survey, and believe me there s lots of revealing information that comes from such data. For example, one of the data points we re looking at is that out of nearly 1,300 members only 98 are between the ages19 and 29! Which shouldn t surprise us if we look around, even at the 11:11 service. There s a whole generation out there who aren t being reached by our church, and I guarantee you they aren t all in other churches (although many are)! And an irritating truth might be that as a church family we are able but not really willing to step away from what we are comfortable with to reach those who are unreached. Or those who walked away because they either don t feel welcome or don t feel that this church relates to them, their peers, or what s happening in their lives. I mean, suppose our church adjusted our worship style such that it spoke as much to the unchurched as those already in the pews? How would we react if Session decided to make it obvious that young families are welcome, even if it might be disruptive during the service or our fellowship time? Would our mission statement to love God, love people, and reach the world for Christ trump our comfort level trump how we like our church? Or would we insist that it has to be done on our terms or else? Or else what? Well, when Jesus suggested such a thing in Nazareth they got so furious that: 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. I ask this because I remember when Angela and I started coming here in the mid-90 s, shortly after Dan 5 became senior pastor. This church made a conscious effort to be seeker-sensitive, an outdated term today that meant we would adjust what we d always done to be more welcoming to those who saw the church as a country club for saints, rather than a hospital for sinners. And when we did, our church grew at a rate we haven t seen for the last few years, and I believe there s a correlation. I think the simple but powerful message is that God s Good News is to be shared with all, not just for us on the inside, not for us first. And as followers of Christ we are called to put our selfinterests second in order to reach and bless those that don t really know Him. To let them know that He came to proclaim good news to the poor and that means all who are poor in spirit including all who are marginalized. That He came to proclaim liberty to captives: freedom from the chains that bind us, chains like pride and selfishness and physical disability and addictions and unquiet minds and feelings of superiority over those who aren t like us. He came to restore sight to the blind and that includes the kind of spiritual blindness that prevents us from seeing our Savior right in our midst as blind as the Jews were in the Nazarene synagogue. That He came not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable!

6 T hat means to get out of our comfort zone for Christ s sake for Christ s sake and for the sake of others. To liberate those who are oppressed. To recognize that even if we think we ve been on the inside for a long, long time, we can be so spiritually outside that we re no different from those who don t actively follow Jesus. Now before some of you escort me up the Pali, there s a big but actually, a big but if. But if we embrace His mission as our own, if we accept His grace on His terms, if we aren t mouthing hollow words when we pray Thy will be done miracles are inevitable. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, good news will be proclaimed throughout the land, even to the ends of the earth, and yes, the dead shall rise again! The people of Nazareth may have asked, Who does this guy think He is? but this morning the question we should be asking is, Who do we think He is? If we believe He is whom He says He is, that He came to proclaim the good news and release those in captivity then as His followers we should also commit ourselves to reaching others to share in the grace we ve received. I left off the last verse of this morning s passage in Luke 4. After the furious crowd takes Jesus up to the cliff above town to hurl him to His death, Luke reports: 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. The only explanation I can come up with for his miraculous escape is that it was a miracle! The irony was they wanted to see miracles, He gave them one right before their eyes, and they still didn t realize who He was. Jesus will go on His way whether we accept Him on God s terms or not Note: Sunday sermon texts are also available at fpchawaii.org. The audio version can be downloaded from itunes. You may also request the audio version by visiting: fpchkoolau@gmail.com 6