Home Truths
Luke 4.14-30
Jeremiah 1
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 28th January 2007

Jeanette preached on the programmatic speech of Jesus in the Synagogue at Nazareth, where he set the tone for his ministry in proclaiming good news for the poor, liberty for the captives, sight for the blind and freedom for the oppressed. This is a popular text for preaching – and this is entirely appropriate as this theme is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.

But today I would us to focus not on the speech of Jesus, but on the response of the people who were his neighbours and his friends, for this is the town where he had been brought up.  Not only does this passage reveal the program of Jesus’ ministry, it foreshadows the way people will respond to that ministry. If we look at the behaviour of the people we see an initial openness, followed by a positive acceptance of Jesus, then a violent rejection of Jesus and his ministry. Here the people of God find not only a summary of the ministry of Jesus but teaching as to how we should respond to the action of God in Christ.

When Jesus finished reading the lesson the text tells us “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” This word for intently gazing at something is a favourite Lukan word. It is used again of the serving maid who looked intently at Peter at the brazier in the High Priest’s House at the trial of Jesus. It is also used 10 times in the book of Acts.  It usually precedes some kind of action or encounter. Even in the English you have a sense of expectation, attention being given, of something going to happen.

The first thing that this congregation felt in the presence of Jesus was expectation. The first thing that any congregation should feel in the presence of Jesus is expectation. Worship is exciting and eventful and we should expect it to be so. Many years ago I preached one night in the heart of a great city, and I contrasted all that was going on in that city with worship: The excitement of the theatre, lovers gazing in to each other’s eyes over a meal in the fine restaurant, people in the cinema watching the thrilling special effects, people strolling in the parks or attending rock concerts or professional conferences in the five star hotels. And I said that worship was important but hardly as exciting as all that. A member of the congregation rebuked me heartily at the end of the service: did I know anything about the worship of the church? Here the estranged and embittered find reconciliation. Here crippling sins are forgiven and the old and cynical are born all over again. Here the dead come to life and the peace of the world is being slowly prayed into being. It’s far more exciting than any movie or theatre or romantic date! And he is right. Worship is not a dull weekly routine! God’s about the place, and if we have ears to hear it can be the most challenging, exciting, confronting experience known to human beings. The call to worship this morning is not just pretty words: they contain a great truth about a God who is present and might just act. Every eye in that synagogue was fixed on Jesus. When we come to church we should at least be keeping a sharp lookout!

And something did happen.  Before we can understand what happened we have to note what Jesus had already done. He rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant, and sat down!  That was the custom of the synagogue: one stood up to read and sat down to teach. It is different for us. But for once let us do it the way they did. The dynamic of what happens next needs us to emulate what Jesus did: rolled up the scroll put it back in its place and sat down, taking his place among the people. (At this point the preacher stepped out of the pulpit and took a seat amongst the congregation in a pew about half way to the back of the church)

Jesus then said something simple but remarkable: ‘Today this text has come true in your very hearing’.  This text that has been part of our history for 500 years has come true today. This text that has lived on the page for centuries has become real this morning! That’s a big call. The text from the sacred page, suddenly sits down beside us, and announces itself; it is coming true now, today, even as we hear it!

How does it feel, having the preacher sitting among you? Is it strange, unsettling, confronting? Or comforting and encouraging. How does it feel to dare to think that Scripture might come true in our very hearing, that the truth of God might sit down among us and become real beside us, for us, in us?

God is not a distant and obscure reality. According to the word that came to Jeremiah, God knows us intimately and is at work in our lives even before we born. I love this passage in Luke because it expresses the great truth of Christian experience: Jesus doesn’t stand in front of us, preaching at us – he sits beside us and makes the text true in our very hearing.

Where does the text come true?  Is it something only for the pulpit, for special people and long ago saints? Or is it something that ordinary people like us can experience? Some Christians, even whole congregations can be terrified of a God who sits beside us and texts that might become real among us. Where does the text come real for you? Do you know God closer than your own breathing? Does the text infuse your being and become fulfilled in your hearing, in your living, in your experience and your interactions day by day? Or do you prefer a comfortable distance, with preachers who stay in the pulpit, and promises that never leave the page?

To the credit of that synagogue crowd on that Sabbath morning they were ready for a text fulfilled, for a preacher who was one of them, even with such a radical and potentially disconcerting message: “Everyone spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. Is this not Joseph’s son?” They can handle this, a God who is next to them in the pews, who works in their everyday lives. They recognise him as one of their own and respond warmly to his teaching.

But then came the final challenge.  Jesus is deliberately provocative. He takes it all one step further. They stand ready to take him to their hearts but Jesus tells them that a prophet has no honour in his own country. He reminds them Elijah was sent to a widow in Sidon, of another race altogether. There were many Israelite lepers in the time of the prophet Elisha but it was the Syrian general Naaman who was healed. Jesus is saying God may be next to you, might be at work in your lives, but he is not the God of the family, or the village, or the nation.  God works as he will in sovereign freedom. His love embraces the outsider as much as it does the chosen people. God can never be domesticated as the protective deity of a cult or a tribe or a nation.

One of the objects in my parents home was a German soldiers buckle my grandfather had ‘souvenired’ in France in 1917. It bore the legend Gott mit uns, God with us!   Isn’t this the message of Christmas? But God is not the God of tribe or country; he is the God of humanity.  This is too much for Jesus’ hometown: they seem to think if God is going to be with us then he has to be on our side! What use is a God who knows me intimately if he does not then take up my desires and needs into his character, into his will? The text tells us that when they heard Jesus proclaim that God cares for the outsider even more than good upstanding Jews, all in the synagogue were filled with rage, they drove him out of the town and tried to hurl him off a cliff.

A God who is close and intimately involved in our lives is one thing, but if he cares for our enemies and will not protect us as his first priority he can be profoundly threatening. If it were Jesus sitting here today he may just remind us that God cares for the Islamic terrorist as much for law abiding Westerners, even Australians. We might be able to handle a God who is close by and active in our lives, but can we handle that kind of God, a God who is active in subverting our local prejudices, who undercuts our tribal and national interests?

These are important questions on the National holiday weekend. Can we live with a God who is quite un-Australian? Can we live with God intimately involved in our lives, whispering to us in the pews his truth, a truth that wants to be at home with us, but never a domesticated truth that becomes an ideology or defence of the tribe or the self, or the nation.

What do you expect when you come to worship – boring ritual or life-changing encounter?  Where does the text come true?  In the formalities and in ‘another place’ or in the drama and detail of the lives we lead and the struggles we engage?  Do you want a God who is on your side, or do you dare to be on the Lord’s side, the Lord who announces good news to the poor, promises liberty to captives and sight for those who cannot see?

As they did for Jesus’ friends and neighbours of his time, these questions invite us to ponder the home truths of where and how faith is real for us.